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:

SPI Day One: Passion, Power Editors, and Russian Poetry

Zinczenko and Leive at NYU’s Summer Publishing Institute

I’d wager there’s at least one kid in every city who dreams of making it big in New York. While a fair few aspire to Broadway stardom, our kind imagines something slightly more bookish, although undoubtedly as enchanting.

Our kind is the readers, the writers, and the would-be editors and publishers. We grew up checking out too many books from the library, using our allowances at Barnes & Noble, staying up way past midnight to read the new Harry Potter book, and just generally spending hours (possibly days) with our faces buried in text. While for some, this process may have manifested itself in a less-pronounced fashion, 116 of us applied and were accepted to the Summer Publishing Institute at NYU’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies. At SPI, as we call it, we’ve now found ourselves eagerly immersed in one of the most intense summers of our lives. 

Mashable Media Summit 2011: Tweetable Moments

Pete Cashmore, Founder and CEO of Mashable

Is “frictionless sharing” the way of the future? That was one of the questions at the recent Mashable Media Summit, where I was lucky enough to be one of the NYU-SCPS Master of Science in Publishing students invited to volunteer. I’ve personally been a fan of Mashable, the online news site and blog, for years, looking to its editors for the leading tech news, industry rumors, best practices in today’s emerging social media platforms, and tips and tricks for enhancing my own user experience. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to hear a number of the thought leaders and influencers from across the media industry in exchange for helping out at the registration table.

“You’re Hired!” One Student’s Story

Daniell Maupai: from the Capstone to a job at Condé Nast

“I was SO nervous,” remembers Danielle Maupai of the moment she stood up at an NYU Center for Publishing Board of Advisors meeting and summarized key elements of her graduate thesis, or “Capstone.”  After delivering a flawless Capstone presentation the week before in front of her fellow graduate students in the NYU M.S. in Publishing program, Maupai had been selected to tell the Board members about her thesis.  Maupai knew this was a wonderful opportunity to outline her business plan for a new magazine for American teachers in front of executives like Nina Link, President and CEO of MPA: The Association of Magazine Media; John Q. Griffin, former Executive Vice President of Time Inc. & President of Time Inc. News Group and current President of Griffin & Associates; and Louis Cona, Chief Marketing Officer for Condé Nast.

Meet Random House’s Markus Dohle

Random House Chairman and CEO Markus Dohle speaks to NYU-SCPS Publishing students in the company's conference room.

As part of a group of NYU Master of Science in Publishing students eagerly gathering in the lobby of Random House last Friday, I marveled at the display cases that enclosed hundreds and hundreds of Random House books, old and new, of every category and representing a myriad of international editions. I was one of 30 students lucky enough to ride the elevator up to the twenty-fifth floor conference room to meet with the company’s Chairman and CEO, Markus Dohle, and hear his viewpoints on book publishing.

When the elevator doors opened and we piled out into the hallway, it came as no surprise that more bookshelves lined the walls outside the conference room, which was adorned with yet more bookshelves.

While most of these books featured the name of a single author on the cover, one of the major points I took away from Dohle’s talk is that publishing a book is a team effort. After Andrea Chambers, director of the program, introduced Random House’s chairman, he jumped right into revealing the way in which he leads Random House, which has over 120 publishing imprints worldwide —through “shared values, a collaborative spirit, and teamwork.”

Abu Dhabi Diary, Part II

Peter Balis shows his iPad to Sulaiman Adebowale from Senegal

The delicate art of the swipe and the pinch was demonstrated again—and again—as 25 publishers from all over the Arab world (and beyond) fingered iPads and also got acquainted with the Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader and the new Kobo eReader. Peter Balis, director of digital content sales for John Wiley and  Sons, had hauled his stash of digital toys half way around the world to demonstrate the latest technology to his 24 students assembled in the brand new, high-tech classroom on the campus of NYU Abu Dhabi.

It was day three of the four-day executive training sessions for Arab-region publishers co-sponsored by The Center for Publishing at NYU-SCPS and KITAB, the joint venture company formed by the Frankfurt International Book Fair and the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair. Today’s subject was digital publishing: the what, the why and—for some in the room—the when.

On the Inside at Time Out New York

Time Out New York Editor Freidson with M.S. in Publishing students

The Students of the M.S. in Publishing program at NYU-SCPS ventured this week to the place that helps turn events into hot parties and couch potatoes into busy bodies: Time Out New York (TONY).

Michael Freidson, editor-in-chief of Time Out New York, welcomed us in an industrial-chic conference room with whiteboards covered in notes about cover and story ideas. Freidson, in beaten denim jeans and a sharp powder blue dress shirt, began with the history of the weekly print magazine. Englishman Tony Elliott created Time Out in his bedroom in London in 1968 because, said Freidson, “there wasn’t a resource that could digest all of the events going on in London at the time.”

Meet Adam Moss

Editor Moss at NYU's Center for Publishing

New York magazine is a mindset, according to its Editor-in-Chief, Adam Moss, and students in NYU’s Summer Publishing Institute were given the opportunity to probe that mindset during a question-and-answer session with the man who has run the weekly for six years.

“It’s a magazine about a way of looking at the world,” Moss said, as cover images of Lindsey Lohan, LeBron James, and Caroline Kennedy, among many more, streamed across a screen, delineating the magazine’s prolific range of topics. “Even though we’re out there against a sea of other publications, we feel we have something to offer,” Moss said. And those who critique the world of magazines agree. This year, New York won four National Magazine Awards, including General Excellence in its category, 250,000 to 500,000; NYmag.com won a General Excellence National Magazine Award for the second year in a row.  Moss and his team of editors achieve such renown through an uncanny eye for putting unique spins on local and national news stories, and by staying one step ahead of the competition.

Mobile Mania at SPI

Matt Bean chats with a Summer Publishing Institute student while Michael Gutkowski looks on

“To infinity and beyond!” said Matt Bean at the opening of the NYU Summer Publishing Institute panel discussion on mobile publishing applications. While Bean, brand editor for Rodale‘s Men’s Health and Women’s Health, is no Buzz Lightyear, he was referring to the optimistic outlook the magazine industry has on its own technological Toy Story. The three top digital executives on the panel enthusiastically agreed.

A magazine’s mobile extension is easy, Bean said. For one, there are no page constraints, so content is limitless. And thankfully, the consumers are there and ready. Twenty-one percent of the mobile market already has a smartphone, and there are at least 200 apps listed in the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) registry alone.  In fact, in 2010 mobile ad spending totaled $10 billion and is expected to increase to $32 billion by 2013. While these revenue statistics are certainly encouraging, Bean emphasized that of 10 total app downloads, 8 or 9 are for free apps — a conundrum for publishers and consumer marketers alike.

Spotlight on M.S. Publishing Alumni

Three notable graduates of the NYU M.S. in  Publishing program recently spoke with current student Seth Harris, a digital business development analyst at Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., about their newest roles within the publishing industry. They also discussed how they are applying aspects of the program to their current jobs, and advice for new and current students.

Till Wirth was recently promoted at Random House.

Till Wirth recently was promoted to manager of digital content and product development at Random House Children’s Books. He began working at Random House as an intern while a graduate student in publishing at NYU, where he received the program’ s Oscar Dystel Fellowship and  2008 Excellence in Achievement Award in Book Publishing. Before coming to New York, Wirth managed his family’s book publishing house in Germany.