Summer Publishing Institute

Yahoo: A New View and Katie Couric, Too!

June 23, 2015 by vmckeon

NYU Summer Publishing Institute Students pose with Katie Couric, Yahoo’s Global Anchor, during an industry visit.

“Hold on. Oprah is Periscoping,” says Ameya Pendse, Audience Development Manager for Yahoo Live, texting a coworker. A few minutes earlier, our group of NYU Summer Publishing Institute students had stood in a state-of-the art video studio and listened as Katie Couric, now Yahoo’s Global Anchor, told us about her decision to join the media giant: “I wanted to be on the cutting edge,” she explained. We were getting the point that Yahoo, our old friend the search engine, is at the center of digital creativity, proudly offering its audience verticals known as “digital magazines” and expanding in all directions. [Read more…] about Yahoo: A New View and Katie Couric, Too!

Bon Appétit: A Taste of the Good Life

June 23, 2015 by vmckeon

039 — A state-of-the-art test kitchen makes cooking easy at *Bon Appétit*.

“Every day is different—it’s a real wild card,” said Brad Leone, test kitchen manager at Bon Appétit. Eager NYU Summer Publishing Institute students gathered at One World Trade Center to tour Condé Nast’s Bon Appétit offices. Emma Wartzman, assistant to Editor-in-Chief Adam Rapoport, led the tour.

First on the agenda was the test kitchen, an open, minimalist space where staff editors also develop and taste recipes for the magazine. Dawn Perry, Digital Food Editor at Bon Appétit, noted that the food editors also have restaurant experience, a crucial skill since the magazine works so closely with chefs. “Learning to cook and learning to use raw ingredients to their greatest potential can be a challenging, but you learn so much,” she said.

The process of developing and tasting recipes is an extensive one at Bon Appétit. Editors ask themselves three questions: “Does it look good? Does it taste good? Does it fit into the story?” At the end of the test kitchen tour, we even got to try some Belgian-style waffles, which had just the right balance of sweetness and crunch.

Meet the Publishing Press

June 13, 2015 by vmckeon

Moderator Brian Stelter (far left) of CNN with panelists (l-r: Bill Brink of The New York Times; Sarah Weinman of Publishers Lunch; Michael Calderone of The Huffington Post; and Sarah Ellison of Vanity Fair) [Photo: NYU Photo Bureau/Elena Olivo] — Moderator Brian Stelter (far left) of CNN with panelists (l-r: Bill Brink of *The New York Times*; Sarah Weinman of *Publishers Lunch*; Michael Calderone of *The Huffington Post*; and Sarah Ellison of *Vanity Fair*) [Photo: NYU Photo Bureau/Elena Olivo]

“The sky is changing colors,” claimed Bill Brink, Media Editor at The New York Times. This intriguing comment was more metaphoric than meteorological, referring to the current shifts in media. It was delivered during a panel discussion entitled “Meet the Publishing Press: How Media Editors and Reporters Cover an Industry in Transition,” the latest in the NYU Media Talk series sponsored by the NYU Center for Publishing. The panel, which was directed at an audience composed of NYU M.S. in Publishing: Digital and Print Media students and the NYU Summer Publishing Institute Class of 2015, featured a diverse and highly experienced group of media professionals from multiple platforms. The moderator was Brian Stelter, Senior Media Correspondent for CNN Worldwide and host of Reliable Sources. On the panel, in addition to Bill Brink, were Michael Calderone, Senior Media Reporter at The Huffington Post; Sarah Ellison, Contributing Editor, Media, at Vanity Fair; and Sarah Weinman, News Editor at Publishers Marketplace where she reports for Publishers Lunch. [Read more…]

Summer Publishing Institute Day One: “A Universe That’s Unique”

June 5, 2015 by vmckeon

Esquire Editor-in-Chief David Granger giving the keynote speech — *Esquire* Editor-in-Chief David Granger gives the keynote speech on day one of SPI.

“I’m going to talk about eighteen things,” said David Granger, Editor-in-Chief of Esquire, to a room full of anxious and eager recent college graduates ready to learn about the changing publishing industry. Granger was the first of a number of leading publishing professionals presenting to the students on day one of NYU’s 2015 Summer Publishing Institute. Funny, irreverent, and at times self-deprecating, Granger began, “My remarks will be wide-ranging and unfocused!”

In honor of his eighteenth anniversary with Esquire, Granger presented his list of 18 key magazine moments (ranging from what he called, “magnificent to idiotic”) that have resonated with him during his time as editor of the legendary men’s magazine.

One of his most memorable moments was the publication of the article titled, “The Falling Man,” written by Tom Junod for the September 2003 issue. Granger told the class that it was the most widely read story of the 21st century. He read aloud the moving first paragraph of the article about a man who jumped from the burning World Trade Center during 9/11. He explained that publishing a deeply moving, seminal story that lives on in multiple formats and multiple minds was one of the reasons he finds working in the magazine industry so profoundly important. Granger said he greatly values the chance to work on, “something timeless, something that will last.”

Granger ended his list with the best pitch he had ever heard. “A Thousand Dollars for Your Dog” was a story suggested by a writer who wanted to travel to Chicago to see what personal items people would give away in exchange for $1,000. “The story started out as a stunt and became something profound,” Granger said, noting that it explored issues of what we value on many levels. “It [the results] was something you just didn’t expect.”

After Granger concluded his talk, Michael Clinton, President, Marketing, and Publishing Director of Hearst Magazines, outlined the positive future for print magazines during the program’s business keynote speech. “Print is our bricks and mortar,” Clinton claimed. “Consumers still want a physical product despite what they can get on a tablet.” He noted that one of the most challenging parts of his job was countering the mantra that, “print is dead.”

Hearst Magazines' Michael Clinton — “Print is our bricks and mortar,” says Michael Clinton of Hearst Magazines.

Clinton said that he began his publishing career at age 22 when he moved to New York City with $65 in his pocket. He slept on his aunt’s couch until he took his first job at NBC collecting data for news polls. “Twenty-five years later, I think I’ve done okay,” he said with a smile.

At Hearst Magazines, Clinton now oversees a long list of magazines including Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Esquire, Food Network Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Harper’s BAZAAR, HGTV Magazine, Marie Claire, O, the Oprah Magazine, Seventeen, Town & Country, and more.

He emphasized the need for new interactive content in both digital and print. “If consumers didn’t want print, then the new ideas would be dead upon arrival.”

Clinton claimed that the companies are now interacting with the consumer, and have changed from yesterday’s print magazines to today’s magazine media companies. The vital element, he said, is “consumer demand, which is the key to vitality.” He advised students to always ask about this when talking to potential employers: “Tell me about your readers. Tell me about your metrics.” The consumer-facing, multi-platform innovations of the industry are so exciting to him that he admitted: “I am angry that I have 25 years behind me and I don’t have 25 years ahead of me!”

ELLE's Robbie Myers talking to SPI students after the — *ELLE*‘s Robbie Myers talks to SPI students after the “Future of Content” panel.

After a lunch break, Mark Jannot, Vice President of Content at National Audubon Society, moderated a panel titled, “The Future of Content.” He began by asking his three panelists what constitutes a magazine in a time when a company’s content expands so far outside of print. Robbie Myers, Editor-in-Chief of ELLE, responded: “It is something well and deeply reported. People understand a magazine to be something more thoughtful.”

The panelists then launched into conversation about maintaining a magazine’s voice across print and digital platforms. Robert Safian, Editor and Managing Director of Fast Company, stated that the company must be agnostic about the way the consumer wants to access content. “That’s the job,” he said. “We have to create a universe that’s unique.”

Susan Kittenplan, Vice President and Executive Editor of Digital Magazines at Yahoo!, believes that for Yahoo!, lacking a print medium is not a disadvantage for establishing a voice. She stated: “We have embraced the large audience and we can reach people very quickly. There’s something liberating in that.”

When Jannot asked for questions from the students, a wave of hands shot into the air. One student asked how it is possible to stimulate creativity in a field that explodes with information. “We get bored easily,” Safian concluded. “There’s so much content out there. And if we’re excited, then maybe consumers will be, too.”

After listening to the innovators and risk takers of the publishing world, the students left the classroom with an arsenal of inspiration, ready to take on their launch projects for hypothetical magazine brands, and to learn more about the publishing world. The students discussed one of David Granger’s comments on the subway ride home: “A magazine has the ability to take ideas and images and aspire to something beautiful, something that lasts. It’s different from what you see on your phone.”

by Lauren Grygotis

Reflections from 2014 SPI Alumni

April 13, 2015 by vmckeon

Every spring, our inboxes are clogged – in a good way! – with emails from all of you, prospective students of the Summer Publishing Institute checking in. You are talented, eager, full of great questions. So what is SPI really like? Can I hear from alumni? What kind of career help will I get? We understand: It’s The Dream of every word and book lover. We had (and followed) that dream too: Move to New York. Make friends. Learn the industry. Land my first publishing job. It’s all possible at SPI. But don’t just take it from us. Hear what members of the Class of 2014 say about their experiences: [Read more…] about Reflections from 2014 SPI Alumni

Silver Spork is Golden: From SPI to the Web

January 8, 2015 by vmckeon

CAPTION PLEASE — The original SPI Silver Spork team collecting an award.

Silver Spork was never supposed to happen. How often do you think about any class project after you turn it in? Truth is, we dedicate hundreds of hours to assignments, present them in a classroom setting, and then leave them in the rearview mirror.

And that’s exactly what happened with Silver Spork, a full plan for a hypothetical new print and digital magazine created as a team assignment at the 2014 NYU Summer Publishing Institute (SPI). Our team of 11 students was even awarded a first-place prize by the judges, a group of heavyweight publishing executives. After the exhilarating 24 hours following our star performance, the team split up and we went our separate ways. Silver Spork became this myth in our minds that we would discuss after a few drinks. “What if?” That was the question.

“What if Silver Spork was a real brand?” We joked about returning to the idea years later after we were all successful publishing executives. However, it was never something that was actually going to happen…at least until I realized how painful the publishing industry can be. I won’t lie; Silver Spork came about because I looked around and saw extremely talented people struggling to find employment. And there I was with an extraordinary idea that needed talented people and an action plan.

I started talking to people from the original team and a few others from SPI who had shown excitement about the idea. I was fishing for interest, and the hook caught less than I had hoped. Still, we built a small team and established some arbitrary job titles. We began with a website. Then we started writing material for the site.

The beauty of an idea is how simple it can seem on paper: “I’m going to create [a digital version of] Silver Spork.” That was pretty much the pitch I ran with in the beginning. So when I found out that SilverSpork.com would cost me a few thousand dollars more than I had to spare (about ten dollars), it was back to the drawing board. My SPI colleague Bailey James (Executive Editor) and I (Editor-in-Chief) tried out a thousand new names: Silver Spork Brand, Silver Spork Food, Silver Spork Media, etc, but nothing rolled off the tongue quite the way we wanted. After a dozen more terrible names, we stumbled onto Silver Spork News. And suddenly, we knew we had it.

The funny thing about establishing a brand is all the new information you need to take in. If starting a website has taught me anything, it’s that I used to be an idiot and might still be. Let’s talk about some of the issues and solutions that we worked through:

Contributors: Who was going to write for this site? We had a bank of posts built up from before the site launch, but blew through them pretty fast. After that we had to write articles by the seat of our pants (see 2). After the loss of the original team, we sought out friends from the program and from our lives to help us. Most of them didn’t work out, but some of them did. And those who did are still working with us today. Our contributors are the real heroes of the site. I might manage some stuff here and there, but they are the people who made Silver Spork News something to be excited about. They did this, not me. And I owe them everything.

Writing by the Seat of Our Pants: If you’ve spent time reading articles on our site, there’s a good chance you’ve read something I wrote three hours earlier. Whether it’s because someone missed a deadline or aliens abducted our contributors, it falls to me and (if I’m trapped under a car or some other calamitous event) Bailey to keep our publishing schedule. We post at least one article a day. And you can quote me on that. We have not missed a day since we launched on September 4^th, 2014. I’d miss my mother’s funeral if Silver Spork News needed a post. She’d understand.

Art: This brand was started by a bunch of writers. But news flash: art is important. We’ve had two amazing artists (Angeli Rafer and Molly Johanson) working with Silver Spork from the beginning and they’ve been nothing but incredible. Our Facebook ads have the highest click-through when accompanied by an original Silver Spork drawing. Writing is worthless if no one reads it, so we need art to draw in the consumers. You can’t just draw a grasshopper in Microsoft Paint either. It’s gotta be real art that people want to see.

Facebook Advertising: Wow. I’d be better off trying to understand Naked Lunch. Facebook Advertising is a simple interface that sets you up with everything you need to be successful. And then what? “You wanted college students 21 and up? Here’s an eighth-grader checking out your weed articles.” I will say this for Facebook: it gets us likes and page views, but not always from our sought-after demographic. It also puts everything into convenient charts to show how it didn’t do what it said it did.

Management: I’m learning, okay? I became the leader of Silver Spork News because I had the most passion for the project and knowledge about working in the kitchen, not because I knew how to herd cats and communicate. I am in charge of scheduling projects for art, editorial, and marketing. I’m also the voice of the brand when speaking externally to restaurants and performing interviews. The only reason I can do any of this is by having a kickass second-in-command. Along with working another publishing job, Bailey James writes, edits, and posts material for the site, and she works as our Marketing Executive. Without her, all of my ideas would be nothing. She keeps me in line so that I can keep the brand on point and on time.

Silver Spork News is currently a 10-person team operating across the nation. Check us out at silversporknews.com or, if you’re looking to join the team, contact us at silversporknews@gmail.com.

by Ian Sims, Editor-in-Chief, Silver Spork News

Views and View-points at John Wiley & Sons

July 3, 2014 by vmckeon

Balis, Karrel, Dalessio, Giffi and Smith with SPI students at John Wiley & Sons

After weeks studying magazine and book publishing, the NYU Summer Publishing Institute (SPI) students were excited to escape the classroom and go on industry visits. My group crossed the Hudson on the PATH Train to quiet Hoboken, NJ, home of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Separated from the hustle of New York City, Wiley is no less of a force in the industry—the focus on global research, global education, and professional development has created a culture that fosters lasting careers and personal growth.

Harper-Collins CEO Brian Murray: Bullish on Books

June 26, 2014 by vmckeon

Brian Murray, CEO and President of HarperCollins, speaks to students — Brian Murray, CEO and President of HarperCollins, speaks to NYU SPI students.

In his keynote address opening the book session of the NYU Summer Publishing Institute, Brian Murray, President and Chief Executive Officer of HarperCollins Publishers, assuaged our frantic, job-desiring minds. “Depending on what you read and when you read it, you’ll see a whole lot of headlines telling us about publishing is dead,” said Murray. It depends on who is writing these negative stories, he added. Some might have an agenda behind them, or be based on misinterpreted facts. “But for every one of these articles saying publishing is dead, there’s one saying that big publishing companies are doing great,” Murray noted. “I actually think it is an extremely exhilarating time to be in publishing. From where I sit, looking at all these different markets and all the different publishing we do, I don’t think it’s ever been as exciting or as dynamic as right now.”

The Wonder-factory: Down the Rabbit Hole

June 24, 2014 by vmckeon

David Link and students outside the “hidden door” to The Wonderfactory

“We want our brand to hit you in the face when you get off the elevator,” said David Link, Co-Founder and Creative Director of The Wonderfactory. This Manhattan-based advertising, design, and app development company creates interactive experiences for Fortune 500 brands in the publishing and media industries. [Read more…] about The Wonder-factory: Down the Rabbit Hole

Native News, Native Now at NYU Media Talk

June 13, 2014 by vmckeon

Andrew Fitzgerald of Twitter, Jim Roberts of Mashable, Shani Hilton of BuzzFeed, Dan Roth of LinkedIn, and moderator Jessi Hempel of *Fortune* before the NYU Media Talk.

“Fish where the fish are,” said Dan Roth, Executive Editor of LinkedIn, referring to how to best deliver digital news in a deep, roiling sea of online content. Roth was one of four panelists gathered for the latest in the NYU Media Talk Series, “Native News, Native Now: The Changing Face of Digital Content,” sponsored by the NYU-SCPS Center for Publishing.