I graduated from journalism school at New York University in the Y2K era. At that time, the magazine editor was still a diety. It was the age of idling town cars and Monopoly-money expense accounts, and it was highly (viscerally, achingly) aspirational for someone just starting out in the business.
In graduate school, I’d interned for Harper’s Bazaar editor-in-chief Glenda Bailey…’s assistant. (How could I forget the time when I was 25, already a graduate of UC Berkeley, and dispatched out in the snow with a severe head cold to fetch a watch from the watch repair shop for the EIC…’s lithe assistant?)
My duties also included assembling a daily dossier of buzz-worthy topics, compiled from actual print clips in Page Six and the like, Xeroxing them (!), and distributing them to editors’ desks.
Later, I had a much more valuable experience interning at WWD/W magazine, where I got clips that I know helped to launch my career. These are all tales for another newsletter. But I mainly mean to set the stage that I came of age at a time and place when there was no holier grail than a Conde Nast masthead.
That’s why it absolutely made me tingle to see this headline: “Conde Nast is "No Longer a Magazine Company.” The headline is attached to a New York Times’ Sway podcast, hosted by Kara Swisher, with her guest, Conde CEO Roger Lynch.
It’s a must-listen. Not just because, hey, had you noticed? The Internet is here to stay! But also because of the nuanced takes on both how we got to a place where Conde’s own CEO publicly distances his current-day brand from the magazines that built it, and also where we are going from here. I found it to be candid and fascinating.
The pod also covers gatekeeping and diversity in the ranks, why Anna Wintour is still a thing, and toxic work cultures.
To that end, let me briefly return to my internship days in Y2K NYC media to pose a second topic for discussion. Of course, I was never paid for my internships and never expected to be paid. I believed that this was all pointing me somewhere. And lo and behold, it was. (Here I am!)
Call it generational. The Great Resignation was not even a glimmer in anybody’s eye back then. Among the many reasons we worked: Work was an essential part of identity for a young media type. And work was glamorous (even when it absolutely wasn’t).
But I recently saw a post in a popular media group in which a publicist asked for crowdsourced feedback on the going rate for an NYC college intern. The consensus seemed to be around $25 per hour. I’m not mad at these kids for expecting to be paid for their work! I’m just reminded of yet another way how a generation or so can flip the script entirely.
See also: the disappearance of most print, and the devaluation of the formerly godlike editors who ran the show.
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