Google 1, Print 0

Earlier this month, Scott Karp, of Publishing 2.0, posted a discussion on the disconnect between magazines and the Web, telling a story about chasing an online piece published in The Atlantic. It is funny, but sad, demonstrating how even our best print publications have a wobbly relationship with their Web sites.  I suspect many of you will relate.  Publishing 2.0, as a whole, is fun reading.  As is The Atlantic.  (The article Scott was pursuing is "Is Google Making Us Stupid?")

Jobs for Recent Grads, Seasoned Pros

I just received this from min (Media Industries Newsletter) and thought I would pass it on.   Let me know if it works/has glitches/whatever.  PEP

Recent Graduates :
Ready to show the Media Industry that you are the next big thing? Then visit min's Job Center today and have your resume placed at the finger tips of the best Media employers!

Employers/Recruiters:
Be the first to find highly qualified recent graduates by posting your openings on the min Career job board. Resumes are being updated everyday!
Special Savings: Post your entry level job today using the promotional code "Grad", and save 15%!

For more information, contact Job Board Coordinator Rachel Smar at 301-354-1613.

Check out these top listings:

Art Director, Traditional Home, Meredith Corporation
Manager of Events Marketing, TechInsights (a division of United Business Media)
Manager, Digital Media, Verizon
Plans Merchandiser - Magazine Division, Hanley Wood LLC
Regional Sales Manager, Ziff Davis Enterprise
Business Manager - Fiber Division, Interweave
Audience Development/Circulation Manager, Crain Communications
Online Editor, Advertising Specialty Institute
VP, Editorial Director, PC WORLD

Dear PEP: Portfolio and Emailed Samples: Should They Be the Same?

I’ve landed myself an interview for an associate art director position. I am stoked, as I have been wanting to get back into magazines, and this is my first portfolio showing. What are your thoughts as far as what I should present in the printed portfolio in comparison to the e-mailed work samples? Do you think they're expecting entirely new content or do they mostly want to discuss what they've seen and, when applicable, review it in its printed & bound form? —Looking for Work in All the Right Places

Dear Looking: If you have any excellent additional samples, include them in the portfolio. But if what you already emailed is your best work, just go in with the printed versions and let them digest those. You are right that they will be ready to talk about the whys and hows of what you already sent. Never add samples just for bulk—only include top-notch work.   And good luck.  PEP

Negotiating: Silence Can Be Golden

There’s a basic rule of negotiating that the person who speaks first loses. For example, you’re offered a job at $75,000, and that sounds like a salary you could be more than happy with. Don’t jump right in and accept it. Be quiet for a bit. You might say something like “Uh, huh,” with a pensive intonation, just to be polite and let them know you heard them. In some cases, if the person offering the job really wants you, the silence might make him uncomfortable and he might fill the void with something beautiful like, “We could, of course, look at the benefits package and see what we could do there.” If, however, they also know about the keep-quiet rule or they’re not that needy, they can wait you out. At that point, start talking and go ahead and accept.

Still, it is worth trying. The silence should be only a few seconds.

Silence is no benefit, however, If the offer does not meet your requirements in terms of salary, benefits, job duties, or anything else. In that case, you have to speak up and make your terms known. Preface your requests with something like “I am really interested in this job” or “I was impressed with your company,” or “I enjoyed meeting with you and your staff and I think I would enjoy working with you.” Then add the “but….”

“As you know, I am making $75,000 now and would really need more incentive to move.”

“That’s quite a bit less than I had been expecting.”

“I was hoping to be president, so I am not sure I can accept the vice-presidency.”

If you cannot negotiate a higher salary, see if you can talk about benefits—more vacation, flexible hours, 401K additions.

Silence can help with other negotiations as well. Say you are at an impasse with your boss on whether an article idea is strong or not. You have made your point. She has made hers. Neither of you is ready to give. Rather than just cave, be quiet and give her a chance to cave first. It can work.

DEAR PEP: Should I start with the Web or print?

I am graduating in May and planning to work abroad for five months starting in the fall, so I've been applying for internships for the summer until I go. Luckily, I ended up with two choices. I was offered a job at a Web magazine and a city magazine. The Web magazinet seems like a better internship career-wise—it's an editorial internship with lots of writing opportunities and a chance to  help with a redesign. The print magazine internship is primarily research and fact-checking.

So, my question is how important do you think the opportunity on the Web is for landing future jobs? I know Web experience is so valuable these days, so I'm having a tough time
deciding. — New Grad


PEP Says: Congratulations on two fabulous opportunities. I do not think you can go wrong in your choice.

The Web is the future. And the thing is, most people in management have no idea what it is or how to use it or why they have it--only that they have to because everybody else does. I think the Web mag would be excellent experience to prepare you for a field that is going to define the future.

The city magazine, however, would also be hard for me to turn down. If I were going to go to a print publication, it would be a city magazine. So that is a fabulous opportunity in a different direction and it will prepare you well in a traditional medium that is, I think, enduring no matter what some pundits say.

I think you need to ask yourself which fits you best. Which gives you entry into a world where you really want to spend your time? Your career is going to go in marvelous directions and you are going to have challenges and opportunities we cannot even imagine now. So go where you think you will have the best opportunity to grow the way you want.

Good luck with the decision.  And enjoy your time abroad.

Simple Site

Kaelin (Tripp) Zawilinski (‘06) recently set up a portfolio site  that’s an excellent example of simple yet effective. If you just want to get your clips out there and don't need a whole lot of hullabaloo, check it out. “Because most of my clips are online, I thought this would be a super simple way to show off my work,” Kaelin says. “I just used the iweb program on my mac, bought the URL and then a friend is hosting it for me on his server. It took me about 2 hours to set up.”

Kaelin was recently promoted to Decorating and Crafts Editor at bhg.com.

Esquire Covers At MOMA

Here's a reason to head to New York's  Museum of Modern Art within the next year:  "George Lois: The Esquire Covers" will run through March 31, 2009.

George Lois created some of Esquire's most memorable covers—Richard Nixon getting new makeup after his disastrous debate with JFK, who looked cool and calm while Nixon sweated; Svetlana Stalin with a drawn-on mustache; a composite cover of four different versions of heroes (JFK, Castro, Bob Dylan and Malcolm X).     

Lois designed 92 covers for the magazine from 1962 to 1972. The exhibit features 32 of them.

Mags launch social and professional networking sites

Forbes magazine online has launched a social network through which you can chat about "any topic from stocks to wine." This comes on the heels of other networking sites in Business Week (tied to LinkedIn) and Fast Company.

Companies use sites like LinkedIn for recruitment for full-time jobs, freelancing, and special consulting. The magazine sites add to the equation by allowing execs and interns alike a place at the virtual table.  They also automatically come with the added credibility of the magazine brand.

Writing newsletters online

Freelancing.com hosts several newsletters related to freelance writing and editing, including the Ed2010 weekly scribble and others from the Poynter Institute and the American Society of Journalists and Authors. It is one-stop shopping for industry news, although the site is annoying, with lots of ads. At least they're not pop ups, though.

Freelancing 101

Media Bistro has a discussion going about the merits and challenges of freelancing—the initial question being, “How long does it take to succeed at freelancing?” The discussion deals with how to get started, the benefits of a specialty, the income you might likely make, and how to manage getting gigs.

I would add:

• The Internet makes my specialty—health and medical writing—far more possible than it would have been even ten years ago. I can find medical research that would have been inaccessible to me because I do not live in a city with a medical research university or center.

• The Internet also improves access to experts. I can find emails for major researchers, give them my pitch by email, and add a spiel about my own university experience, which gets some of them to talk with me, as most have some sort of university connection. They can also Google me. One health researcher recently told me he turns down most media requests, but I looked like I knew my way around. He might have meant I looked old, who knows. Still, a well-crafted email with biographical information, which is what I send, can do wonders for access. Far better than a phone message that is by nature pretty abrupt. Of course, some folks still do not use email, so that means I have to develop a well-crafted phone spiel.

• Gizmos like Skype make international calling cheap and easy. You sound a little like Darth Vader, but people in New Zealand are usually understanding when you explain you are calling on your computer. You can even record your conversations.

• It is really easy to get lazy. I have a home office and I get myself in here every morning just like a real job. The afternoon is easy to fritter away, though, especially if I go out to lunch. Still, I am sort of retired, so I think I should have that latitude. But I still feel lazy.

• It is far easier to take good care of yourself when you are your own boss—usually. I get in my daily yoga and my daily walks, and it is easier to schedule around myself than to work around meetings and office hours and other things that require you to be at an office in nice shoes.

• I do sort of complain now when I have to “dress up” to jeans instead of my usual sweats.

• It can be difficult to balance the too-busy times, especially if you get assignments you really want to do. I have had a couple of months that were a tad stressful, but that was because I had a problem magazine I was working with, not because I was working a lot of stories. I dumped the magazine and lost that stress. And $2000 a story. So I have a hole to fill in, or a budget to realign. That’s no way to get to Machu Picchu. But the stress of the magazine was more than I thought was healthy. (Bad editor, bad planning, bad editing, slow payment.)

• I feel less isolated now that the weather is nice. Cabin fever can be a double-whammy when you are in an office with you alone.

• If you spend too much time writing things that you do not enjoy—things that just pay the bills—you might want to reconsider your approach. Good freelancers are strategic—working their way bit by bit to the types of assignments that challenge and reward them with more than just money.

• You have to be your own IT person.  I have a son, daughter and son-in-law who introduced me to Skype and got me started with some cool electronic stuff and who can help me with my random, "What the #@!%$#! is going on" sorts of problems.  And I am in awe of the Apple geniuses at our local Apple store.   Still, nothing can match having the IT guy come in and just fix what you need while you go out for a cup of coffee.  

Tanner's Inner Ugly Betty

Tanner Stransky (2005) has just published a handy little book, Find Your Inner Ugly Betty: 25 Career Lessons for Young Professionals Inspired by TV Shows.     Tanner takes incidents from shows like Betty, The Office, 30 Rock, and How I Met Your Mother—plus his own experiences as a professional newbie—to demonstrate how to act, or not act, when you want to get a foothold on the career ladder.   It's  a helpful and concise primer on entering the workplace, full of on-target tips and real-life examples and written with Tanner's usual lively style. The Des Moines Register did an article about Tanner and the book this week.  When he in not channeling his inner Ugly Betty, Tanner writes for Entertainment Weekly.   Meet and greet Tanner during Relays week at East Village Books, 510 East Locust St., Des Moines at 5:30 p.m. April 24. He will give an author talk at 6:30 p.m.    

An Editorial Guy in the IT World

This could be the answer to Meredith editors’ dreams: Phil Morgan (‘94), an editorial staffer with a talent for design, has joined the company’s IT department as a business analyst for content management. Why in God’s name would Phil do such a thing? He has always been a man of many hats, wearing his technology beret with as much panache as his editorial top hat (think Eustace Tilley of The New Yorker).

“I’m excited about the opportunity to be more focused on the type of work I really enjoy—database development and automation tools for editors and designers—but also nervous about working within IT, ”he says.

Phil jokes that it sometimes seems that Meredith’s IT department would like to refashion the corporation to be “a technology company with a very large publishing support group.” He plans to change as much of that as he can.

“I hope to work from within to change the culture. I’ve had plenty of first-hand experience with the current relationship between IT and editorial departments within the Publishing Group. So if I can bring a bit of perspective and a better sense of customer service, I might be able to do a little good.”

An IT guy who understands editorial and design? We see a lot of recent alums with these dual skills, but Phil has been in the workplace long enough to be at a level to really make a difference.

Big Bad Boss

In a comment on the last post, Mark Harbeke ('01) recommended Big Bad Boss, a great site that offers insights into dealing with devils who wear Prada. Check it out.

DEAR PEP: My Boss Went to Charm School with Simon Cowell

My boss is a bully. I often wonder if I have thin skin, or if he's really a bad manager. He tends to easily dismiss my ideas in front of the whole staff, mull about it for a bit, then come back later and present the same ideas as though they were his own. He harpooned me in my review, asking me if I was speaking ill about the magazine to the advertising folks at a trade show we were working. Funny though, because I had the flu and was not at the show. He is the most difficult, egotistical person I’ve ever met, professionally or otherwise. He makes others miserable as well, so it is not just me. It is amazing how we put out such a great product—it’s a pretty dysfunctional staff. I have been here only six months and I’m not sure I want to start a job search again. Should I stick it out or start looking? — NOT READY FOR AMERICAN IDOL

DEAR IDOL: People who are overly driven by their egos tend to actually have some level of insecurity. It sounds like Boss Man is a little intimidated by you and needs to put you in your place to settle his own fears. If he were confident of his own ideas , why challenge—then swipe—yours? Or make up bogus accusations in your review? What you do about all this depends on how well you can work in this environment. Ask yourself: Does he make me question my talent or my skills? Is my work suffering, so that I have less respect for the finished product? Do I feel like I am being reduced professionally rather than growing? Does he make me overly anxious? If so, it may be time to get out of there.  But remember: Always go toward something good, not just away from something bad,  so wait until you have another job that is a good match.  If, however, you like your work and are proud of it and still feel like you are developing and growing professionally, then it could be worth sticking it out a bit longer. If you do stay, you obviously cannot avoid the boss, but you can avoid internalizing his nastiness.  When he's a jerk, take a deep breath,  put on your most professional face, and rise above it.  Don't try to argue with him if he is being unreasonable, but do continue to offer your ideas, even if he steals them.  Ultimately, it will be clear that your smarts are strengthening the magazine, and that reality is what is important, not how he sees it. It is always good to have reality on your side, which you do and he doesn't.   Let your work and the rewards of the magazine  be your motivators.  Ultimately, you can control how much power he has over your thoughts and feelings, even if he does control the big red pen. This is a big challenge—it is extremely difficult to not let somebody else’s negatives influence how we see, or live, our lives. But difficult people are everywhere—too often in the corner office—so learning to deal with them is good practice. The best thing we can do is keep their bad attitude from influencing ours.  Plus, it is always possible to outlast him. Perhaps you can start sending his resume elsewhere?