Moving to New York City, beginning a graduate program, and meeting new people all while navigating the job search? Getting ready to start the NYU Summer Publishing Institute (SPI) is both exciting and daunting for our prospective students! To help answer all of those pressing questions—and more!—we decided to ask last year’s class to talk about their experiences and share the insights they gained along the way.
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SPI Stories: Recent Grads Sound Off
As potential SPIers frantically prepare their applications for the NYU 2017 Summer Publishing Institute, we thought we’d ask some members of last year’s class to give you an inside peek at life during and after. Read on to hear from a sales assistant for SHAPE, a member of the production team at Thrillist, and an assistant to a literary agent. Their candid comments are a great way to learn more about NYU’s renowned six-week summer program for recent college graduates interested in careers in books, magazine and digital media. If you haven’t started that application, there’s still time! The final deadline is March 13th. For more information, or to download the brochure and application, click here.
Brand Awareness: Two Magazines, Two Views
“Printegration” equals the integration of print and digital. That was just one thing we learned on our visits to leading magazine media and technology companies as part of the NYU Summer Publishing Institute last week. And guess what else we learned? You can give away a magazine and make more than selling it!
On visits to GQ (land of printegration), Time Out New York (free is the way of the future), Refinery29, Bloomberg Media, AOL/Huffington Post, and Rachael Ray Every Day, we were exposed to top brands with unique viewpoints and selling points. Here’s an inside look at two of our visits.
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Internship Insider: Fall 2015 Edition
What’s it really like to be an intern? Many students in the MS in Publishing: Digital & Print Media program enroll in the internship course to get valuable industry experience and a credential on their resume. Students pick their internships based on their interests and work two or three days a week, generally in large companies so that they can have a broad perspective on the industry. To get inside the internship experience a little more deeply, we asked two of our students to give us a brief report on their positions this semester. Here is what they said.
Summer Publishing Institute Day One: “A Universe That’s Unique”
“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.”
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!”
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
Silver Spork is Golden: From SPI to the Web
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 4th, 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
Meet the Spring Faculty: New Faces and Surprising Facts
We know you have been waiting for this, so here’s our annual introduction to the new faculty members teaching during the spring semester at NYU’s M.S. in Publishing: Digital and Print Media program. Their interests are far-reaching, from expertise in mystery, science fiction and horror publishing to tablet and app creation. Our talented teachers can help students understand worlds ranging from Apple to analytics, consumer marketing to social media marketing, fiction to finance, metadata to magazine editing, video to new views of the future of media. Read on for profiles of the latest publishing executives to join our roster of media leaders in the classroom. Plus, you will learn a few fun facts about what our faculty members do in their time away from teaching: [Read more…] about Meet the Spring Faculty: New Faces and Surprising Facts
At SPI, Lunch Counts, Too!
“It’s all about attitude” said Katie Levine at one of the eighteen Brown Bag Luncheons arranged this year to give NYU’s Summer Publishing Institute students a chance to meet with alumni in small groups. The subject of the lunch was “Twists and Turns: Unexpected Careers after SPI.” The speakers were Katie Levine (class of 2007), now a Communications Specialist at HBO, and Cara Ann Serio (class of 2005), Manager of Corporate Affairs at Ralph Lauren. Each shared stories of their career trajectories, insights into the industry, and the positive impact that their SPI experience had on their professional pathways. [Read more…] about At SPI, Lunch Counts, Too!