Moderator Carr and Panelists Smith, Malda and Quittner at NYU Media Talk
Social.
If the attendees of the latest NYU Media Talk had to sum up the event using a single word, that would have been it. Students and alumni of the NYU Summer Publishing Institute (SPI) mingled with faculty members and prominent figures of the industry both before and after the highlight of the night: a panel discussion entitled “Social Content: What’s Working? What’s Not? What’s Next?” Read the rest of this entry »
AAP's Tom Allen addressing SPI students
“You may well have signed up for this summer institute because you want to edit fiction or nonfiction,” Tom Allen, President and CEO of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), told the students in his keynote address at the beginning of the book session of the NYU-SCPS Summer Publishing Institute (SPI). “But in a few weeks, you’ll learn what that [editing] entails,” Allen counseled, and then added:
“You’ll also gain insight into the breath of jobs in this industry in finance, production, rights, marketing, to name a few, that directly affect the success of books. In publishing, it takes a village. It really takes a village. I urge you to be open to the many—what I think will be unexpected—opportunities that you come across that will offer you a fulfilling career within the community of literate, engaged, and interesting people.”
After this brief appeal, Allen then launched into a discussion of the effects of the digitization of books on the publishing industry. When more than half of the SPI attendees told Allen they read on digital devices, it would have been remiss for him not to focus a majority of his talk on this topic. Still, I wondered, if digital was so important, why would he have urged us to stay open-minded to all the opportunities that the publishing industry affords? As I listened to the panel discussion that followed on the future of book publishing, I had a far better understanding of what Allen meant. Read the rest of this entry »
Carey and Carr at NYU Media Talk
Are “two pizza” teams the future of media? Championing the value of start-up staffs being small enough to share, well, two pizzas, Hearst Magazines President David Carey praised the entrepreneurial spirit at the latest NYU Media Talk. Sponsored by The NYU-SCPS Center for Publishing, “Magazines 2011: The New Conversation” featured Carey and David Carr, Media Columnist for The New York Times, talking about important issues facing the industry. “There’s never been a better time,” Carey began about working in magazines. He described his faith in publishing as a ship that can change course, reroute and stay solvent (with proper leadership) in any tide.
Carey is widely known as an eloquent speaker about media. It was David Carr who had suggested him to Center for Publishing Director Andrea Chambers as perfect for the Media Talk. To be sure, Carey was a timely choice: earlier this month Hearst Magazines completed their $900 million acquisition of Hachette Lagardère, acquiring nearly 100 magazine titles in 14 countries, including Elle, Elle Décor, Woman’s Day, Road & Track, and Car & Driver. The merger is a bold gesture that now makes Hearst the largest publisher of monthly magazines internationally, and a dominant player in all sectors of lifestyle publishing. Carey addressed the importance of emerging markets for publishing such as those in China and India) and commented that Hearst’s aim is to have a heightened presence in those climates, meeting the growing demands for consumer goods and Western culture. Next up for Cosmopolitan, noted Carey, was a possible move into Mongolia, though the magazine “takes a different tone” in such climates. Read the rest of this entry »
Media Talk panelists (l-r): Moderator Carr, Tumblr's Karp, YouTube's Grove, Foursquare's Crowley, AOL's Eun
“You’ve all got the tools of insurgency in your hand… show me what you’ve made, show me what you’ve built,” David Carr, media columnist for The New York Times, told the M.S. in Publishing students assembled for the NYU Media Talk series, a panel discussion on “The Case for Media Optimism: What’s Working and Why” hosted by the Center for Publishing at NYU-SCPS. His message? In today’s business climate, you have the opportunity to handcraft your own job. Read the rest of this entry »
Being stood up by Britney Spears in Las Vegas, going on free vacations, and filing stories from sweatshops in Mexico all come with the territory, a panel of freelance journalists told students at NYU’s Summer Publishing Institute (SPI).
Virginia Sole-Smith
As Donna Sapolin, Magazine Director of SPI, deftly moderated, four top freelance writers and editors generously shared secrets and advice about how to get published happily and steadily in some of America’s leading publications. How to get started? Virginia Sole-Smith, who has filed stories from sweatshops in Mexico and whose bylines appear in the Progressive, the New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, and Elle, among other publications, suggested setting up a schedule to help keep on track. When she was starting out, she made a list of potential stories and publications which might run them, and then resolved to pitch three stories a week. Within three months, Sole-Smith was a published journalist. “Set your own goals and deadlines and be strict with yourself,” she emphasized. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
Kia DuPree: all smiles over her literary good fortune
He was right. That advice plus my experience as a student in NYU’s Summer Publishing Institute in 2006 made all the difference in the world. I had been calling myself an “aspiring novelist” for years. Until I actually published a book, I didn’t think I could ever call myself a novelist. I took money from my savings account and published Robbing Peter, a novel about three fatherless families. I sold it at work, to friends and family, online, at the grocery store, at hair salons and at night clubs. Everywhere. It was a lot of work. To my surprise, it went on to win a Fiction Honor Book Award from the Black Caucus of The American Library Association. It was the first self-published novel to do so. Read the rest of this entry »
David Carr(l) and Ken Auletta have a Google chat
Did you know that employees at Google’s Mountain View, CA campus get free oil changes and car washes on Thursdays? Or that there are five doctors on campus? How about the fact that engineers can spend 20% of their time working on what they want? This 80/20 rule, which has spawned Google Wave, Google News and Gmail, is part of a corporate culture where boss and cofounder Sergey Brin rollerblades (late) to meetings in his gym shorts. Every building has its own cafeteria serving everything from Mexican food to sushi and free food is everywhere. Read the rest of this entry »
Alexis Mersel
At the Center for Publishing, we continue to add new courses and grow our faculty of industry experts, so we thought we’d blog about some new faces at the front of the classroom this semester and next fall. For those of you new to our blog, we created NYUPubPosts earlier this summer. While our initial focus was on our Summer Publishing Institute (scroll down to read all about our great speakers and field trips), SPI has ended. Now, we are shifting our focus to our Master of Science in Publishing program. Throughout the year, we’ll be posting about our many events, new courses, faculty and much more—and inviting students and faculty to contribute as well. Read the rest of this entry »
