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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NYU Summer Publishing Institute
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.
SPI’s Message in a Bottle
It only took six weeks for our Summer Publishing Institute (SPI) students to become industry experts, to change career paths, to expand their networks—just six weeks to transform from “SPI Students” to “SPI Alumni.” As we say “see you later” (never goodbye!) to our 2016 Class, we wanted to give them a chance to reflect on everything they learned this summer and pass their newfound wisdom on to the next generation. Read on to hear their from-the-heart advice:
Selling and Creating Books: An Inside Look
A private, early morning visit to the Barnes & Noble flagship store in Union Square. Sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with top editors busy flinging around ideas for new books at a “development meeting” at Alloy Entertainment. For NYU’s Summer Publishing Institute students, getting out on the town recently was great. They were invited to see how the book industry works in various venues all over the city. Here are reports on two student visits:
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Getting Real: the Making of a Nonfiction Imprint
One thing we are learning quickly here at the NYU Summer Publishing Institute (SPI) is the importance of diving in. In our magazine and book projects—and in our careers!—we’ve had to continually just go for it.
A little advice from Chris Guilfoyle, SVP and Group Publisher, Meredith Corporation, sticks in my mind. She spoke at the end of the magazine session of SPI and shared secrets of how to be great in our future publishing jobs. She stressed how important it’ll be for us to take initiative and figure out how we can help. Among other tips, she said, “Do more than your job description,” and “Proficiency is more than just learning.” When in doubt, figure it out.
We have now successfully completed the magazine session of SPI and are assigned to specific groups of ten students to create hypothetical book imprints in the book session. When we first met together in our groups,we knew it was up to us, just as Guilfoyle said. We received some instructions about what we had to create—a book imprint and three potential titles, including a lead title. Okay, but the how of doing that, at least initially, and the what of the content, were up to us.
Our group was assigned to create a hypothetical nonfiction imprint. (Other groups were assigned to categories such as illustrated books/graphic novels, children’s, entertainment, mystery/true crime and more). In our group, we started out with a lot of ideas scattered across a wide range of politics, news, history, and memoir. As we began talking, a few specific ideas stood out.
One of our strongest ideas was a memoir by a popular comedienne. Judging from recent bestsellers by her famous contemporaries, we knew the memoir would sell really well; we also liked the things the comedienne had to say about self-love and self-acceptance. We liked her strong voice, and her interest in speaking to people who may not always be considered a primary audience… in other words, those at times under represented. We also identified a compilation of personal essays and an exploratory look at the phenomenon behind Trump’s ascension as top ideas to present for review.
Next, we knew we needed a point of view—a coherent message and feel for all of our books. One of the book session speakers, Charles Ardai, Founder and Publisher of Hard Case Crime, emphasized the importance of having a unique and consistent vision.“All our books have a very specific DNA. When you pick up one of our books, you know it’s a Hard Case Crimes book” he said. So what was our imprint about and how would our books telegraph that specific message to readers?
We started to see a common thread: voices. All of the concepts we were most passionate about involved strong, unique voices with something to say. We decided our imprint should feature diverse voices that may not always have safe and broad forums.
Our executive editor, Hannah Neuman, said it best in our initial pitch to the program directors on day one: “We want to feature really distinct voices. Our authors say: ‘This is my story and this is how I see the world.’”
That first pitch meeting went better than we expected. Two of our book concepts were approved, and we just had to do a little more work on our imprint title. The program directors suggested that our proposed imprint name didn’t really communicate the human element we were so passionate about. Our early Trump idea also didn’t make it through the pitch meeting. The program directors helped us see that it wouldn’t sell really well long-term.
With that advice, we did some digging and found cool options of unknown powerhouse women in history. Alas, as much as we loved “A Tank Named Fighting Girlfriend,” the program directors pointed out that a biography about a Russian woman in WWII—regardless of what she named her tank—might not garner the sales and exposure we need as a new imprint.
Back to the drawing board we went, this time with the advice to go broad. We needed to find something people were talking about, something currently relevant. We brainstormed and researched some more and pitched an investigative look into a US crime trade not often talked about. Heavy stuff, but certainly broad, relevant, and giving a voice to the voiceless. The program directors agreed that this had potential, and with that we started digging deeper into our subjects and creating our imprint—now aptly named to invoke voices.
Now we are 9 days away from presenting our hypothetical nonfiction imprint to a panel of industry experts. We are learning about the constant refining and zeroing-in required in the creation of a book imprint. With more and more insights each day, we are excited to see where we go—both in our imprint and in our future careers.
by Jill Hacking
NYU Media Talk of the Town: Long Live Long Form
NYU’s Kimmel Center was buzzing with excitement. The 2016 Summer Publishing Institute class mingled with M.S. in Publishing: Digital and Print Media students, faculty, and publishing industry insiders while watching the sun set over Washington Square Park and anticipating a talk on the new ways print media is being reborn. The latest installment in the NYU Media Talk series, NextGen Editors: What’s New, Different, and Daring, began with an introduction from moderator Michael Calderone, Senior Media Reporter for The Huffington Post. “When I first graduated from NYU, I had one job at a newspaper, where I wrote one column,” Calderone explained, emphasizing how simple things seemed when he was a student himself. “No one can get by doing that now.”
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Ask Our Alumni: Reflections from SPI 2015 Graduates
Every year at this time, the Summer Publishing Institute inboxes are flooded with emails from prospective students asking about course work, schedules, housing, networking, life in New York and so much more. We understand! Attending SPI is a dream come true for many of our students—one that gets increasingly stressful the more you think about moving to New York, making friends, and landing that first real job in publishing.
Instead of telling you about it, we decided to let the Class of 2015 speak their minds and answer your questions. After all, they were asking the same things just last summer!
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NYU’s Summer Publishing Institute Alumni: The Inside Story
So many of you interested in NYU’s Summer Publishing Institute ask us what happens after the six weeks are over. Do you get a job? What’s that like? How did SPI prepare you for the real world? What’s the real world, anyway? We figured the best way to respond was through the reflections of three recent SPI grads who are now, yes, gainfully employed in publishing.
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Meet the Publishing Press
![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]](https://wp.nyu.edu/nyupubposts/wp-content/uploads/sites/7768/2015/06/panelists-2-photo-credit_-nyu-photo-bureau-elena-olivo.jpg)
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