Work the Angles

greatdaytobeanathlete:

A “short” summary of my Spring Break Trip exploring the worlds of Publishing, Journalism, and Media in New York. Thus far. Day 1.5.

I thought this trip was going to be HORRIBLE when I flew into JFK carrying what could possibly be some sort of influenza. Stomach flu, maybe? Either rate, it kept me up all night Sunday into Monday. I was miserable most of Monday, but managed to crawl out into the (ironically) beautiful New York sunshine for bubble tea with Felipe at Columbia. Much needed.

My hosts, by the way, are AWESOME. I’m staying with ‘07 Carleton grads Aaron Colussi (freelance photographer — check out his stuff!) and Ben Surajat (lawyer, nbd) in this sweet Upper West Side apartment. They’re both super chill and they keep offering me  food. They even let me take over their living room. (Their couch is SUPER comfy.) And guess what! Best part: Ben was like, “Oh, you run track. Is that one guy still around? Did he marry that one girl?” And Aaron was like, “Oh, you mean Steve Harris?” (!) And Cassie too, of course. They liked her last name better. Anyway, we all attended the first gathering dinner of students and alumni hosts Monday night on Wall Street. I chatted up alum Brandon Walker, who is working as a broadcast news reporter in Albany New York. And he’s a friend of James Morrissey!

I felt better this morning, so I ventured out on a brief run in River Side Park. I couldn’t believe it when I saw REAL daffodils blooming on the side of the path. In the middle of the city? Amazing. Also surprising were the bouquets of real flowers at Georgetown Cupcake. A few of us ventured there on our mid-morning break (I may or may not have broken lent for a good cupcake … ).

Today we met with publishers from Penguin and Scholastic, as well as Anthony DeCurtis, a writer for Rolling Stone. Most will remember that Cheryl Klein (‘00) was the editor of the last few Harry Potter books. The publishers gave us lots of free books (!) but what I gathered from hearing them talk was that publishing is a crazy hard industry to break into, it requires a lot of persistence, knowing the right people, and little bit of luck (you never know when someone is going to go on maternity leave and create a new job opening). Over a fabulous lunch of Dean and Deluca sandwiches, we got to listen to DeCurtiss had cool back story: expecting to go into academia, he got a Ph.D. in English and had virtually no jobs offers there. Instead, he fell into writing about one of his passions — music.

Free books!

On my break, I bought a (cute orange) messenger bag to hold my newly acquired books and my notebook. Then I met up with Ezra at Rockefeller Center after he finished up hours for the day for his internship at MSNBC. We walked around, ending up in Times Square, where I gleefully pulled out my camera to take pictures of people taking pictures of Times Square. It’s kinda like what we used to do on our trip to Europe, except way more fun because I don’t know the people, but it’s totally kosher for me to point my camera at them, because it’s Times Square! Maybe I’ll post them at the end of my trip, “This is how different people take the same photos of the same hackneyed tourist trap.” Gah, I’ll just have to go back there — to the crazy busy, advertisement heavy, shiny flashy part of NYC.

We concluded the evening at Carmine’s for dinner with other publishers. They gave us more books, of course :) One of publishers sat down at our table and proclaimed, “I’m Sarah Palin’s publicist!” Well, that piqued my interest. She even traveled with Palin all over the country for her book tour. She wasn’t Palin’s “personal” publicist, but was rather a big-time publicist for the imprint that published Palin’s book.

Also, I bought a cute hat. :)