Speakers: Victor Navasky (Publisher Emeritus of The Nation), Jesse Oxfeld (Senior Editor of NYMag.com), Ben Leventhal (Editor of Eater.com), Faran Krentcil (Editor-in-Chief of Fashionista.com)
Yeah! The Condé Nast party was pretty great, but I feel that I have to start from the beginning of the day to do it justice.
Journals of Opinion
big ideas for a little industry
What can I say about today’s first talk? I’m not very into politics. That sounds about right. For those who aren’t too savvy about The Nation, it’s a weekly political magazine described as “the flagship of the left”. In his early days at Yale, Navasky co-founded The Monocle, a political satire magazine whose catch phrase was, “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” He later went on to become an editor and eventually the publisher of The Nation. Navasky didn’t just talk about politics in his talk though; actually, now that I think about it, it was more as if he added political connotations to the publishing of a magazine.
“Enter your career at the point of least resistance.” -Victor Navasky
I would normally argue against this, saying that it’s better to enter the industry where you can make a meaningful initial impact, but after having gone through this course, I find that difficult to do simply because 1) people in the industry don’t know who I am and 2) there are many better qualified people wanting the same job position I do. I guess it’s a matter of giving up your pride when it comes to breaking into publishing. The only thing I really have going for me at this point is the help of Lindy Hess, CPC’s lovely director, who has been working to find every student a job.
Aside from the breaking & entering speech, Navasky talked about some progressive ideas for newspapers and magazines. (…to be continued…)
