Sam Szorentini

While I have never really watched Jon Stewart religiously, I was definitely entertained and surprised with how he could make such serious matters seem funny and insignificant.  With a Republican senator as his guest, Stewart was still able to make the audience laugh and engage everyone throughout the whole show.  

 

 

Day 3  1.14.15

 

Wednesday we visited high profile news companys from the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, to start-up companies like Capital New York.  Our first stop we met with two Miami grads from The Wall Street Journal.  David Marino-Nachison is special projects editor for the Journal.  He has worked in both print and online publications and shared first hand the differences and difficulties of each.  He shared with us that there are three general deadlines throughout the course of the day with print publications, and at some point print stops until the next day.  However, online deadlines never stop.  Marino-Nachison came off as very humble and acted as if he just stumbled upon his success, but was still kind enough to take the time to answer our questions as best he could.  

Next we met with Lisa Bannon, Deputy Editor for the Arts and Culture section of the Journal.  This was my first experience as lead student for a guest, and Bannon did not disappoint.  A Miami grad, Bannon wrote for the MIami Student and highly encourages current students to participate in the Luxembourg program, which helped lead to her first job with the Journal as the Italy correspondent.  Based in Milan for work, Bannon was able to hone skills to write for different countries and appeal to larger audiences.  Because she was able to speak the language and was already familiar with working in foreign parts of the world, she differentiated herself from the crowd, which helped further her career within the Journal to currently being deputy editor for the Arts & Culture section.  Her latest focus for the Arts & Culture section is covering how business and art are intersecting.  For example, her writers focused on a recent hit movie "The Imitation Game" and looked at how the director used marketing strategies to make the movie more well known, instead of just simply writing about the characters and plot.  Some of Bannon's career goals for 2015 include getting more involved with social media, "to think digitally first", and to potentially publish a book with her husband.  Pictured below are Bannon and Marino-Nachison with our class. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Afterward, we visited a few employees at Bloomberg News.  Our main guest was Andrew Martin, an investigative reporter and Miami grad.  Martin spoke highly of his employer, that "gives you financial data you can't get anywhere else".  Martin says the most challenging aspect of being an investigative reporter is asking the right questions, and how to know what the right questions are.  He remarks that everyone wants to move to digital, and himself and the company are in the process of figuring out different ways how to tell stories quickly and efficiently with this new digital platform.  Tech reporter Sam Grobart and stock market reporter Leslie Picker also attended our meeting.  Both report on unfamiliar aspects for most journalists, but I found them to be very interesting and knowledgeable in their chosen fields.  Be sure to look out for Grobart's production on Bourbon after his visit to Kentucky and Picker's latest tips from her sources. 

 

Next we met with Emily Holman, events manager at Capital New York.  Capital NY is a start-up magazine aquired from Politico.  Holman explained how Politico is a very experimental, trial and error format that is different from most places.  Others in attendance were co-founders Josh Benson and Tom McGeveran, and Katherine Lehr, vice president for operations. All agreed that their company employees have grown since its founding, and everyone seemed passionate and excited for what is in store for this new company.   

 

Barton Gellman, contract freelancer for the Washington Post was our last guest of the day. He was a highly awaited guest, due to his Pulitzer prize winning pieces involving Edward Snowden and the NSA.  Gellman "likes to be curious for a living" and really emphasizes that journalists should delve heavily into facts before forming and writing their opinions.  Gellman believes there is no such thing as objectivity as a journalist, but believes in accuracy and fairness when reporting and writing stories.  He highly suggests that college students develop a body of work doing what they enjoy, for resume purposes but also to get a leg up in the field of their choice.  After uncovering the story of the NSA and Snowden hacking into unencrypted fibers of Google, Gellman's main goals when saving files and his work are encryption and anonymity.    

 

After a group dinner, the class headed to the Schoenfeld Theatre to see "It's Only A Play", starring Martin Short, Matthrew Broderick, and Stockhard Channing.  It was an interesting plot, a play about a play to be exact, with worthy performances from Short, Broderick and Channing. I was previously unfamiliar with Short and Channing, but was excited to see one of my favorite movie actors from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Matthew Broderick on Broadway.  It was really nice to have a group dinner and outing for our last night in New York City.  One more day to go!

 

Day 4  1.15.15

 

Our last day in the city entails three guest appointments all involving magazine editing and writing, and attending one of David Letterman's last shows before his retirement.  First up, we met with Melissa Knific, Associate Food editor at Family Circle.  Her recent promotion from assistant to associate food editor pretty much entails the same responsibilities and demands, just a different title, which in New York is a pretty common thing, Knific explained.  She graduated from Miami with a BA in English, and then attended the French Culinary Institute, and basically spends her job half writing and the other have experimenting and cooking in the kitchen.  She was able to maintain her journalistic writing edge while in cooking school by creating the blog, dontgetchopped.com which outlined the aspirations and anxieties of her time studying the culinary arts.  This also coincides with other guests' encouraging college students to create a body of work in something they are interested in and can share with future employers.  A few of Knific's recipes can be found on the front cover of Family Circle's magazine, and another interesting fact she shared with us is the long amount of preparation time, usually about 4 months in advance, for her published recipes and writings for the magazine.  

Our next appointment was with Amanda Wolfe, Fitness Magazine's digital director.  Like Family Circle, Fitness Magazine is owned by the Meredith Corporation. Wolfe's main advice to us was "to be game for anything as an intern", attributing this as to how she got hired and how she chooses to hire certain interns for herself. Her typical day consists of lots of meetings brainstorming, editing content, what stories are trending this month, and marketing strategies to name a few.  She has different agendas to complete everyday, which is a great aspect for a job in my opinion since you won't be working on one thing for too long.  Social media is a huge part of Fitness Magazine according to Wolfe, with ten to fifteen Facebook posts per day, as well as a daily morning motivation instagram quote to hopefully get followers and social media traffic for the brand.  The move to a digital platform introduces the print magazine brand to a whole new consumer, but another trend Wolfe claims to see is that people still like magazines in print form, and Wolfe "feels strongly that there is a place for both print and web" in today's society.  

 

Our last stop of the trip was at Hearst Digital Media, where we met Alie Martell from Cosmo, and Jane Frye, managing editor at Hearst. Martell originally wanted a job in broadcast journalism, but as she decribed it, fell into her job at Cosmo now, which is managing editor. She again reiterates how having a voice for your brand is important in order to differentiate yourself from the crowd and gain confidence in your work.  In Martell's line of work, she explains the importance of social media for gaining exposure for your brand and for news to talk about in upcoming articles.  She ends her time with us by explaining the excitement, and also fear about the fact that five years ago, her job didn't exist, and may not exist forever in this digital media age.  Pictured below is our class after our meetings with Jane Frye and Martell. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jane Frye came from The Daily Beast, and now works as managing editor at Hearst.  Her and Martell were both encouraging us to visit the Hearst Career site online, and offered us to reach out to them for further questions or internship possibilities, which will be a great help for our class.  Frye reflects back on her time at The Daily Beast and her present line of work as very different in many aspects, but both experiences were very worth having. 

And lastly, we end our trip with VIP tickets to The Late Show with David Letterman.  This particular show featured guest star Larry David, creator of Seinfeld, and also featured a few lesser-known guests as well as a band performance to close out the show.  Both Letterman and Stewart have a unique skill set that seems to make anything, no matter how serious the topic may be, comedic and enjoyable to talk about.  It was definitely a great way to end an amazing trip to the city as a class of college students eager to enter the world of New York media.  

 

Post-trip blog

 

Immediately following our visit to The Late Show with David Letterman, a few classmates and I returned to our hotel and took a train home.  Our week in the city really flew by, and it was a great experience staying in a hotel away from home and touring many prestigious media organizations, feeling as if we had jobs in the city already.  Despite one rainy day and cold temperatures, we had for the most part ideal weather for such a busy five day schedule.  This week is now all about networking, and reaching out to certain guests we've met that we admire or could see ourselves becoming. Only two more online class meetings this week, and NYC Media will quickly come to an end. I recommend this class to fellow Miami students, for we now have some contacts and experience in the city that most of my fellow classmates and myself formerly did not.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two Guest Portfolio's 

 

Lisa Bannon- Deputy Editor, Arts & Culture at the Wall Street Journal

 

Lisa Bannon has been the Deputy Editor for the Arts and Culture, (also called ‘Arena’) section of The Wall Street Journal since September 5, 2006.  Bannon has stayed with the Wall Street Journal for a number of years, consistently moving up in her positions.  Bannon previously served as Deputy Bureau Chief of the Journal's media and marketing section at The Wall Street Journal from 2003 to 2006.  Before moving to New York in 2003, Bannon was based in Los Angeles, where she served as a Senior Special Writer for the Journal for eight years. Before that, she was based in Milan for The Wall Street Journal Europe, focusing on political, business and economic coverage of Italy. From 1984 to 1992, Bannon served for Fairchild News Service as a reporter covering business in Toronto, Paris and Milan. Bannon received a Bachelor's Degree in political science and English from Miami University, and resides in New Jersey with her three children and husband, George Steinmetz, a professional photographer. 

 

The Wall Street Journal is primarily known as a business newspaper, focusing on in-depth, analytical stories regarding stocks, economic and political aspects in the U.S, and also has publications in Europe and Asia.  Therefore, readers of The Wall Street Journal are typically well-educated and affluent people who pay close attention to and are directly affected by these topics.  However, Bannon is chief editor of the Journal’s Arts and Culture section, which focuses on more lifestyle and leisure stories that anyone could be interested in reading.  

 

 

The Wall Street Journal is an international daily newspaper with a special emphasis on business, economic and financial news.  The Journal is published six days a week in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corp, who also owns editions of the Journal in Europe and Asia.  It is the largest newspaper in the United States by circulation.  The Journal’s first product was short news bulletins that were hand delivered during the day to traders at the stock exchange. They were later compiled in printed daily write-ups called the Customers' Afternoon Letter.  Reporters Charles Dow, Edward Jones and Charles Bergstresser then transformed these into The Wall Street Journal, which was published for the first time on July 8, 1889.   More recently, The Wall Street Journal Online was launched in 1996, and in 2007, it was estimated to be the largest paid-subscription news site on the Internet with 980,000 paid subscribers. 

 

 

Current issues about The Wall Street Journal

• This article talks about two WSJ hotshot executives leaving the company in September of 2014, currently without successors.

  • http://talkingbiznews.com/1/wsj-losing-two-executives/

• This article takes a broader look at the implications of why these two executives, Chief Digital Sales Officer Brad Westbrook and Kelly Leach, publisher of The Wall Street Journal Europe and managing director of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and what it means for the future of the WSJ, as well as what the two former executives’ future plans are.  For example, Westbrook plans to start a new media company with actor and investor Ashton Kutcher, while Leach has for the most part declined to provide more details. 

  • http://adage.com/article/media/wall-street-journal-loses-executives/294761/

 

 

Recent Works by Lisa Bannon:

• Since Bannon is chief editor of the Arts and Culture Section, she oversees much more of the editing, look and feel aspects of her fellow writers for the section, but I have found a few leisure and very conversational pieces she has written about her own life, children and family vacations.  This first article documents her and her family’s exotic yet dangerous adventure on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada on horseback.

  • http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303816504577307970491146042

• A similar article by Bannon illustrates the self-guided rafting trip through the Grand Canyon herself and her family took in October 2014.  Her writing is very conversational and full of well written, illustrative descriptions that I consider very readable, and shows her natural talent for writing engaging, leisure pieces for a well-known business oriented newspaper. 

  • http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-self-guided-rafting-trip-through-the-grand-canyon-1412958658

• This article is about how Bannon’s twin sons did not make the cut for their town’s travel baseball team in July of 2012.  Bannon, upset at how cutthroat sports could be for children who are only nine years old, along with her husband decided to form a ‘B travel team’, composed entirely of the kids who were cut in the tryouts to boost their self esteems as well as giving them a chance to play the sport they love.

  • http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304211804577505010161475028

 

Questions

 

• Did you find it difficult to transition from writing about political and economic issues as the Italy correspondent of the journal to deputy editor of the Arts and Culture section?

• What do you think was your most important career move that got you where you are today?

• What are some of your career goals for 2015?

• Your writing style is conversational with vivid imagery, yet factual as well.  How did you hone these skills?

• What are your main priorities when editing the Arts and Culture section?

• How much of being deputy editor requires you being at your desk versus traveling or out in the field reporting for arts and culture?

• Which family vacation or arts and culture story stands out as most meaningful for your career or your family?

• Do you employ any specific strategies for choosing the locale or destination for an upcoming piece?

• When you are preparing to write about one of your exotic yet dangerous family travels, do you keep a running journal throughout the trip or compose your piece once you are back home?

• If you could offer advice to someone trying to achieve your level of success, what would it be?

 

 

 

Melissa Knific- Associate Food Editor at Family Circle

 

Melissa Knific refers to herself as a Cleveland-born New Yorker.  Knific graduated from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, with a BA in English in 2003.  After college, Knific furthered her education and love for food by attending the French Culinary Institute in Paris, graduating in 2011. In July of 2010, Knific founded the food blog Dontgetchopped.com, which detailed the trial and error, excitement, and anxieties of culinary school and what plans could unfold for her afterwards.  She soon became a freelance editor for Recipe.com Magazine from 2011-2012, where she “edited content, and conducted nutritional and cost analysis of recipes for the Meredith Corporation startup”.  In February of 2011, Knific was hired by Family Circle as an assistant food editor, where she created about ten recipes per issue, perfected and revamped fellow editors' and contributors' recipes, and “writes and edits copy for national consumer magazine with 4.2 million circulation”. Knific has also produced a few cover recipes for Family Circle’s magazine and controls Family Circle social media accounts.  Knific has recently been promoted to Associate Food Editor at Family Circle. 

 

 

Family Circle is an American women's magazine published fifteen times a year by the Meredith Corporation.  The magazine is considered one of the "Seven Sisters", which is a group of seven women-oriented magazines, also including Ladies' Home Journal, McCall's, Good Housekeeping, Better Homes and Gardens, Woman's Day, and Redbook. Family Circle readers are typically moms whose primary concern is the health and well being of their family.  Family Circle outshines all women’s lifestyle titles and ranks #1 in number of readers who noted or took action on their ads. 

 

Family Circle is one of the nineteen magazines that is owned and operated by Meredith Corporations. Edwin Thomas Meredith founded the company in 1902 when he first began publishing Successful Farming magazine.  In 2009, Family Circle launched their first social network called Momster.com directed specifically for moms of tweens and teens.  Family Circle is known for covering advice regarding tough parenting challenges, providing suggestions for family activities, sharing healthy and delicious recipes (Melissa Knific’s concentration) and sharing projects from editors to create a comfortable home for their readers.  Family Circle, and Melissa Knific in particular, work to share nutrition, diets, and recipes ranging from a simple, on-the-go breakfast idea to intense recipes for dinner parties.  They also cater to the holiday seasons by sharing recipes specific to certain times of the year as well as the latest nutritional and diet news and trends. 

 

Family Circle In The News:

• In an October 2014 issue of the magazine, Family Circle made history by featuring a gay family in a publication for the first time, as well as receiving negative comments and criticism from hateful readers.

  • http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/23/family-circle-magazine-gay-family-backlash-osner-hackett_n_6035150.html

• The Meredith Corporation bought Selectable Media, a leading advertising company, on Tuesday- a move that will “enhance its digital native ad solutions and drive better engagement”.

  • http://www.netnewscheck.com/article/37891/meredith-corp-buys-selectable-media

 

 

Recent Work by Melissa Knific

• Knific created four affordable and easy pasta dishes suited for a range of people from 20-somethings to large families for a healthy, quick and affordable dinner with flavor.            

  • http://www.familycircle.com/recipes/ingredient/pasta/easy-affordable-pasta-recipes/

• Knific lays out a slideshow of six health-boosting and nutrient rich meals with pictures of each recipe, ingredients needed, serving sizes and how much time they will take to prepare.

  • http://www.familycircle.com/recipes/healthy-eating/family-dinners/6-nutrient-packed-meals/

 

• Knific caters to the holiday season with this recipe slideshow of a five-course feast any family can easily create with her specific guidelines and suggestions-with certain course preparations as short as five minutes.

  • http://www.familycircle.com/recipes/holiday/christmas/amazing-5-course-holiday-feast/

 

Questions:

 

• With your recent promotion from assistant food editor to associate food editor, what are the differences and/or difficulties of your new title?

• How do you feel your BA in English from Miami has prepared you in your current line of work?

• What is your biggest career goal for 2015?

• What drew you to enroll at the French Culinary Institute after graduating from Miami?

• How did you come about creating your food blog, Dontgetchopped.com?

• When creating and writing about your recipes, do you follow a certain strategy or do you have a more experimental, trial and error approach?

• Given that the Meredith Corporation just recently bought leading advertising company Selectable Media, how, if so, do you feel this acquisition will affect your work ethic and the content you publish?

• I read that you have some experience operating Family Circle’s social media accounts, what does this entail?

• Which of your magazine cover recipes has gotten the most positive feedback?

• What advice do you have for aspiring magazine writers who will soon be out of college and out in the real world?