After months of applying for grants, coordinating travel plans and contacting alumni, the Media LLC finally made it to the Big Apple.
During the afternoon we got a chance to explore NYC before reconvening for an alumni dinner. Recent IU grads met us for pizza downtown where we mingled and talked about their success after graduation. Alumni from Time, Glamour and NBC offered us valuable advice for the Do’s and Don’t’s of breaking into the journalism industry.
On Sunday, we traveled to midtown to visit the Museum of Jewish Heritage. We spent the afternoon going through the three floor of artifacts and historical videos highlighting the Holocaust. Later that night, we saw the off-broadway show Avenue Q. The adult puppet show was then followed by some equally sinful burgers and cheese fries at the Shake Shack.
Our final day in NYC included more media tours. We started the morning off in the Time & Life building to visit Sports Illustrated. We navigated through the halls of sports memorabilia and infamous swim suits to a Q&A with alumnus Matt Dollinger. Afterwards we were invited to sit in on the daily budget meeting. There, we got to have a first hand experience of how a newsroom operates with story and viewership rating updates.
That afternoon, we had lunch in Rockefeller Center before going upstairs to MSNBC. There, we visited the set of All In with Chris Hayes and met with the host, Chris Hayes. He stressed that now, more than ever, news outlets are in tune with their audience. He explained the delicate balance of informing and entertaining consumers without pandering to them with tabloid-esque news.
The executive producer of The Rachel Maddow Show, Bill Wolff also stopped by. After detailing his various experiences from being a PA at ESPN to a screenwriter in Los Angeles, he suggested that as young journalists we shouldn’t be afraid to “get in over your head.” He explained that the industry is full of unexpected opportunities that can lead to big breaks.
And finally, we learned about internship and employment opportunities from two NBC pages. The pages outlined their year long program and shared their favorite assignments, such as crowd control at popular NBC shows like Saturday Night Live and Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.
The whirlwind of a weekened made a grueling 18 hour ride back to Bloomington worth it.
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