Dorkfest 2007

So you've just moved out of a 94-year-old landmark historic building that's about to be completely gutted. What do you do? Party in the newsroom! I was working last night but the boss said whoever wanted to stop in for awhile could do so (free beer on company time? I'm there). It was a good time, even though Gawker.com called it dorkfest 2007. I heard they were drinking on the roof by the end of the night.

How To Identify the People on the Elevator

I think it was Mom who told me a few months ago that she saw a picture of the newsroom of the Virginia Tech college paper, in which everything was immaculate and all the staffers were dressed up. She was wondering if they always dress that way, and I've concluded that they probably don't. Journalists are not big fans of dress codes. At the New York Times, for example, there isn't one. You can walk in wearing sweatpants if you want, and every so often people do. They say dress for the next job up, but whenever I see the executive editor he always seems to be wearing jeans and a polo shirt. But I guess he doesn't have any higher up to go.

The people in corporate, on the other hand, are suit-and-tie types. And I hear the ad representatives get a clothing allowance so they can wear designer clothes.

Also, that's the flip side to being a journalist and not getting paid much — you have a whole department of people who get paid (a lot more) to worry about money so you don't have to.

Fotos!

The other day I was sitting in the dorm lobby and I heard music coming from outside. I walked out and this is what I saw ...



Apparently they have street fairs around the city every weekend. Yesterday I went wandering around for awhile (quite awhile actually; I walked about 20 blocks down in central park and another 30 or so back ... then I bought a giant Hagen-Dazs shake and canceled out my efforts. This is what central park and such look like from the time warner center:



And here's union square, which is kind of by my dorm, which bridges the gap between soho and my quirky little neighborhood. This was taken from the window of a store called Helene's Basement (which is, obviously, not a basement). I think this is possibly my favorite place in the city thus far, either that or I've already been here long enough to think green space is amazing.



A few weeks ago Julie, Cynthia, Greg (other interns) and I went to a swanky piano bar on the eighth floor of a hotel in times square. It was a pretty good time.

So this blogging thing isn't working out too well, partly because the computer at the dorm has been down for several days and partly because working 35 hours a week at a copy desk (regardless of where it is) isn't quite as blog-worthy as having random adventures in Europe. I gave us sometime ago trying to compare New York to Europe. But to sum it up, the pigeons are less vicious, the traffic is more vicious, the customer service is better and the subway is more complicated.

I think New Yorkers are notoriously good at ignoring people on the street because every few days a street person will try to call the attention of everyone on the subway car and talk about how their wife is sick and their kid is hungry and they have no insurance and if you just give them a quarter they will be profoundly grateful. Because if you don't get used to tuning it out after awhile you will either become either broke or depressed or both.
also,
New Yorkers walk faster than anyone else in the world — unless you're trying to get to work.

As far as work goes, the big Times drama is the move from the old building to the new building (or in my case, watching everyone else freak out about it since my department moved before I got here). The old building had this kind of lived-in, all-the-president's-men feel to it, where you can just walk around and trip out that 90 or so Pulitzer winners and numerous scandalized reporters and editors have worked there. The people that bought it for $100 million or so turned around and sold it for about half a billion, and the new owners are going to gut the inside, which is kind of sad (the outside is a protected landmark). The new building is big — the fifth tallest building in manhattan I think. And cold. And decorated in white and red with green accent chairs. And the shades go automatically up and down and the elevators have number buttons on the outside (oh, the other thing I don't get is that we have this big eco-friendly state-of-the-art building but yet there's not a recycling building in the place). If I had anymore journalism classes I'm sure this would make a great metaphorical discussion of the state of the industry. But wait, I don't. oh darn.

Oh. I almost forgot about boot camp.

There is a man named Dr. Ed Trayes. He knows amost everyone in the journalism business. This man has taught the Newspaper Fund's editing boot camp — basically a semester-long graduate editing class crammed into two weeks — for 40 years, and he can still name a good number of his interns and tell you where they ended up.

This man ran my life, and the lives of 11 other interns, for two weeks. We had class through the weekend. When we weren't in class, we we studying, and we had a program assistant/RA to make sure that we did (and to provide us with snacks. Lots and lots of snacks).

Basically, we memorized the AP Stylebook and the important parts of the Times stylebook, assorted random pages from this amazing reference book called the Visual Dictionary, and the geography of pretty much the entire world. Oh, and we had lots of spelling tests. And we wrote some headlines. In between that, editors from the Times and the AP and assorted people who came from this program came to talk to us. And did I mention that when we weren't in class, we were studying (even at mealtimes)? We studied a lot.

But the point, acccording to Dr. Trayes, was not so much to makes us know all of it as to make us aware of what we don't know. And that we should always look it up. And, of course, we now have that bond that forms only under extreme duress.

never ... let it ... drop ...

Today one of the other interns (Julie) and I had a little adventure. Her boyfriend had heard on public radio about this 26-hour live music marathon down in the financial district. It sounded like some folky-hippiefun-world music-type thing, so we figured it would be a good way to get out and do something. So we went there, and it was not folky. or fun. It was one of those self-important new-age type things. Highlights included a four-piece band that played the same note continuously for about 15 minutes (after which there was uproarious applause) and one of those dramatic black-turtleneck-and-beret percussion peices with a man screaming the Our Father over it in Russian. It reminded me of that scene in She's All That where freddie Prinze Jr. does the hacky-sack thing. Twenty-six hours, this went on. Apparently they did it for twelve last year and decided that wasn't long enough. On the plus side, there was gelato.

And of course, when we finally left after four hours of this craziness, it was raining. Hard. And my umbrella broke. But now I'm here and it's all OK.

New York and such

So here I am in New York. Specifically, in the lobby of my NYU dorm in the East Village, listening to horns honk incessantly outside and watching all sorts of random people walk in and out past the security guard. I just got back from my first day of work. The training guy (and most of the people within earshot) already thinks I rock because I caught a fact error in a famous writer's obit.

But for the uninitiated, I should start with how I got here.

This all started about a year and a half ago when I was on my (now) ex-boyfriend's sister's ex-boyfriend's blog reading a column from the San Fransisco Chronicle called Notes and Errata (Specifically, this one.) At which point I decided I wanted to intern at the Chronicle. So I found out that I had to enter this thing called the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund, which sends copy editing interns to a whole crapload of major papers, which required you to take a big scary editing test. So I found out that one of my professors happened to be giving this test and I took it, and then one day when I was skipping that same professor's class my nap was awakened by the Director of Copy Desks at the New York Times who said that I had been selected for an internship there.

First I spent two weeks at copy editing boot camp (And I'm not lying, the man who taught it is an ex-Marine) In Philadelphia. But that's another post.

I've been in New York for about a week, paying $860 a month to live in a "suite" - a private room with a teeny-weeny kitchen and bathroom that I share with another girl (READ: Crashing at my place is not an option, unless you really enjoy spooning). But that being said, I think rent in Manhattan averages $2000 a month, and there is a laundry room in the basement and a really nice workout facility down the street that I can use for free. Plus, the village is an amazing neighborhood. "Rent" took place here. The other night I went wandering around with two other interns who know the area and we discovered an amazing bakery that has been open for 113 years (and now none of us can remember where it is). Basically, life in New York involves a lot of eating. And walking. And once I get paid, shopping.

But when I'm not eating and walking, I'm working. It's a headtrip knowing that I am working someplace where I can get in an elevator and stand next to a Pulitzer Prize winner and where typical conversations include, "He's covering Gaza?! But no one can get into Gaza!" Also, there's the free book table, where they dump off all the extra review copies for anyone to take. During training we got to meet the editor and the publisher and sit in on the meeting where the section editors pitch the stories they think are Page One-worthy.

My job is at the News Service, which is the department that sends content to other papers that buy it from us. We put out a large-print edition, the Times Digest, an international weekly insert that goes to 20 or so major papers worldwide, and we run our own wire service (like The Associated Press). This is where they are starting me.

My co-workers at the News Service like to tell me I have the best job of all the interns. They may be biased, but I do have Saturdays and Sundays off, which hasn't happened to me in a long time. But I think I am going to celebrate the upcoming weekend by going to bed. Nighty night.