Huffington Post: Pinkberry Days and Sushi Nights

The AOL/Huffington Post newsroom

Looking for a job at a company that encourages creativity and embraces diverse viewpoints? What if I told you that company also encourages its employees to recharge in private nap rooms during working hours? Now add in ping pong tables in common areas, “Pinkberry days” and “sushi nights.” Yes, a workplace like this actually exists, and it’s not Google, Facebook, or Twitter. It’s the AOL Huffington Post Media Group.

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, students in the M.S. in Publishing: Digital & Print Media program at NYU’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies had the opportunity to visit the AOL/Huffington Post offices in downtown Manhattan and meet with several in-house Huffington Post writers and editors for a brief presentation and a Q&A session. What did we learn? For starters, while working in an office space with cool perks is an attraction for sure, The Huffington Post editorial team takes real pride in crafting interesting and impactful stories for a publication devoted to creativity and innovation. Oh—and they’re also willing to put in long hours.

Maxwell Strachan, Associate Business Editor at The Huffington Post, explained: “At The Huffington Post, it’s not a simple nine-to-five day. I’m always watching the news.” Katla McGlynn, HuffPo’s Deputy Comedy Editor, added: “Working at The Huffington Post is the equivalent of working at a 24-hour news network. When a story breaks, you want to have something up. You want to win Google searches. There’s an urgency to web reporting that doesn’t exist in a traditional news setting. A day of web publishing feels like a week; a week feels like a month.”

But the race to publish quality stories is well worth the stress and time crunch. Especially rewarding is the opportunity to report on news items that don’t receive coverage elsewhere. Eleanor Goldberg, Editor of HuffPo’s “Impact” vertical, expressed it this way: “I’m working at my dream job. I’ve always been interested in covering stories about people making a difference. Here, I get to write about struggling people; people with disabilities. No other outlet focuses on that kind of subject matter.” McGlynn also appreciates the HuffPo’s culture of fostering editorial freedom: “At The Huffington Post, we cover the content we want. There’s no corporate stifling. On the Comedy vertical, we’re free to be silly or serious. Here, you can carve your own path.”

M.S. in Publishing students listen to (l-r from center) Maxwell Strachan, Katla McGlynn, Molly O’Toole, and Eleanor Goldberg

Students also heard from Molly O’Toole, an editor on The Huffington Post’s news desk. Among other responsibilities, those at the news desk edit stories prior to publication and decide what graphics or other multimedia accompany each article. With a background in traditional media outlets, including The Nation and Newsweek, Molly appreciates “working at a company that, like traditional media, focuses on quality, but is less tethered to old habits. We’re an editing desk operating in a new digital world. As capabilities expand, so do expectations. We’re still doing all the same work as those in traditional media, but we’re expected to do it faster. At The Huffington Post, you have to be your own one-man band.”

In the final moments of our Q&A session, Strachan gave us some insights into how the publication’s editorial mission shapes its culture: “What Arianna [Huffington, co-founder of The Huffington Post] has been trying to pursue is to have something for everyone. From cat videos to articles on middle-class deterioration to a focus on the Latino and African American communities, The Huffington Post offers perspectives on just about everything.” With over 40 verticals and more on the way, I’d say that assessment sounds accurate.

by Diana Carbonell

Digital Book World 2012: Changes and Challenges Ahead

A gathering of NYU Publishing student volunteers: Amy Goppert, Amelia Spriggs, Joana Costa Knufinke and Jaime Bode at Digital Book World

This year, M.S. in Publishing: Digital & Print Media students at the NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies were once again provided with the fantastic opportunity to volunteer at the annual Digital Book World conference. Between making sure that everyone entering the conference rooms was wearing a badge and helping to direct the 600 attendees to different breakout rooms, we volunteers were able to listen to the informative discussions about the deep changes that our industry is undergoing. On Tuesday morning, Mike Shatzkin, the respected blogger of The Shatzkin Files and DBW co-organizer (along with Publishers Marketplace founder Michael Cader) summarized the general goals for publishers this year, followed by a panel of CEOs from Hyperion, Yale University Press, Ingram Content Group, and Sourcebooks. Ellen Archer, President and Publisher of Hyperion (a Disney Company) and an NYU Center for Publishing Advisory Board member, stressed that publishers need to be open-minded to apply new strategies: “Books are elastic and dynamic,” she said. “Books can live in so many ways.” She mentioned Hyperion’s strategy of releasing mystery books based on the ABC TV show Castle in digital format. The third tie-in, Heat Rises, shot to #1. “Be really open-minded to doing things differently, and it can pay off,” she advised.

A major discussion that morning focused on the new quantitative industry research that proves once again the growing importance of the eBook industry. According to James McQuivey of Forrester Research, 25 million people now own an eReader and 61 million are projected to have one by the end of this year. The ongoing study by the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) on Consumer Attitudes Toward eBook Reading reported that an estimated 17% of book buyers purchased an eBook in December 2011. The number was 9% in December 2010 and 3% in January of the same year. This growing trend has also taken place among teens, who “report tripling their reading rate of eBooks.” The genres more likely to be bought electronically are mystery (22.9% of the market share) and romance (20.9%). Apple is, for young people and adults, the favorite reading device manufacturer. According to other research carried out by VERSO, the adoption curve of reading devices is now reaching “late majority.” However, 50% of the reading population is still very reluctant to purchase any type of reading device.

The morning sessions ended with a panel on the digital evolution of romance publishing. What was particularly interesting in this discussion was the talk about DRM (digital rights management) and the fact that romance publishers frequently omit it from their books. According to a survey of more than 6,000 users, carried out by All Romance eBooks (a specialized romance eBook retailer), 96% of the romance books sold through their platform do not have DRM, even if 91% of the total books on sale are protected by DRM.

In the afternoon, attendees could choose between four different panels that tackled issues such as marketing, design and/or social media strategies, among other topics. The second day included a presentation by Caroline Marks, CEO of Bookish, who explained more of the plans of this online digital platform for readers backed by Penguin, Hachette Book Group, and Simon & Schuster, launching next fall. Marks noted that Bookish will focus on ways to have “books find you, instead of you find books.” Overall at the conference, the push to increase discoverability was a very hot topic. Other key ideas that speakers emphasized throughout the two days were the role of Amazon as a “frenemy” of traditional publishers (who are now competing with their biggest retail customer); the difficult pricing strategies of eBooks and the impact of the agency model; the best cloud-based publishing infrastructures; the growing importance of self-publishing (now a real trend); the imperative that publishers need to know their audiences better to serve them targeted products; and the possibilities for international expansion of English eBook catalogues (either in English or in its translated versions).

In the exhibit hall, where tea and coffee were served twice a day, many publishing vendors presented their services to publishers. Miral Sattar, a graduate of the M.S. in Publishing program, presented her start-up company BiblioCrunch, a digital community where writers can write, read, and distribute their digital books into any format to any eReader. “One thing I learned,” said Miral, “was that being able to demonstrate your product live, one-on-one is very powerful.”

All in all, Digital Book World 2012 was proof of this very challenging and changing moment in the billion-dollar (and growing) U.S. eBook industry. I think DBW is an appointment no one will want to miss next year!

by Joana Costa Knufinke