Confessions of Student Cover Designers

“Forty seconds left,” Michael Freidson, Editor-in-Chief of Time Out New York, said to our group as he came around collecting sketches of everyone’s  ideas for  the cover of TONY. We quickly scribbled our names on our group’s sketch and handed it in.

When we were initially invited to visit the office of Time Out New York last week, we thought we were just going on one of the educational field trips the M.S. in Publishing program at NYU-SCPS offers to help students  learn more about the media industry. Little did we know that  Freidson and Design Director Adam Logan Fulrath would turn a part of the visit into a real cover design session—and that our idea would be selected to appear on this week’s (October 7-13^th) issue of Time Out New York!

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.

A Visit to Entertainment Weekly

Stivers and Cagle (center) with M.S. in Publishing students at Entertainment Weekly

“You’re never done,” said Cyndi Stivers, managing editor of EW.com about career trajectories and the importance of staying current.   “Get comfortable with that idea and keep learning. The stuff that comes easily to you may actually be a rare and marketable skill.” Next to her, Jess Cagle, managing editor of Entertainment Weekly (all Time Inc. top editors have this title instead of Editor-in-Chief), nodded in agreement. Both editors had agreed to sit down with NYU’s Master of Science in Publishing students to talk about careers, publishing, and the challenges of entertainment journalism.