Syracuse University

Tanner Stransky joined the SU Ed Chapter for a little snackage, celebrity dishing, and helpful internship and career advice.

Tanner started the Ed-on-Campus chapter during his senior year at Drake University. He interned in Meredith Publishing’s (their HQ is in Iowa, where DU is located) custom publishing department, was an ASME intern for Teen People. Post grad, he started working hourly at OnDirectTV magazine (akin to TV Guide). He simultaneously worked at the New York Post (a job he found through Ed2010!) in the dating (“Meet Market”) and weddings section.

Do you see a pattern yet? Tanner always knew he wanted to work for a celebrity/entertainment rag, so he continuously wrote pop culture-related articles to build a portfolio of clips. He was set on Entertainment Weekly from the beginning; he had a kick ass interview after senior year, but didn’t get the job. Undeterred, he found a reason to e-mail his contact at the mag every couple of months to touch base and keep himself fresh in her mind.

When he landed his dream job with EW, he started as an Editorial Assistant in the DVD section, and later became the TV Assistant. After two years of assistant-dom, he was promoted to TV correspondent, covering shows like The Real Housewives and Samantha Who? “Reality shows are fine, I love like, garbage (laughs),” he admits.

One of his favorite articles featured the 20th Anniversary of Rosanne, structured as an oral history—Tanner conducted 27 separate interviews with the cast members, and then proceeded to put the quotes together like a conversation. He sat with Rosanne Barr herself for two hours at her fave restaurant in Vegas. “She’s scary as hell … but an interesting case study,” he said. Let’s just say, her publicist advised him to keep the wine flowing.

“People love nostalgia. 20 years later, there’s a different perspective to stories we’ve heard before.”

Another milestone was his interview with the Jonas Brothers: “They were kind of guarded and weird … there’s this weird teen pop world where they exist,” he remarked. They weren’t too thrilled to be asked about Miley either. Tanner is currently working on a profile of Julianna Marguiles for her show on CBS, The Good Wife.

He also wrote a regular Ugly Betty blog, and was approached by Kaplan to write a book entitled Find Your Inner Ugly Betty, a TV-based internship and career advice book for college students and grads. In the future, he’d like to write teen fiction.

What’s a typical day at EW like? It’s not glamorous, there are several interviews in a week, and he’s never met better people to work with. “It’s 80 pop culture nerds.” Now, everyone works for the print magazine and the web.

Tanner left us with five pieces of career advice to remember:

1) Internships: It’s about observing and doing. He’s also the intern coordinator at EW, so clearly he knows his stuff. He wants to see a resume with clips (don’t send more than five), “a cover letter that is like, poppin … then I’m like, hi.’” “The best intern is a go-getter, doesn’t complain, and has great ideas.”
2) Networking (hello, Ed!)
3) Do what you love.
4) Personal brand (his is entertainment, sassy, fun, snappy writing)
5) Go-getter sans cockiness

Christine Quinlan actually came to magazines from an unlikely place: she started as a portfolio manager and equity analyst.

“I moved to NYC and no apartment and no job and I just hoped for the best,” she said. Quinlan took classes through MediaBistro to learn more about the communications industry and at Parsons. To support herself, she also worked as a florist and interned at two Italian food magazines.

She then started at Food & Wine as an Editorial Assistant to the Managing Editor. She explained that there are three different types of EAs: assistant to the EIC (kind of like a personal assistant), assistant to the Managing Editor (who focuses on the budget and staffing, and doesn’t write very much), and assistants in specific departments.

During her five years with the magazine, she has moved up to Senior Editor. Quinlan covers design, style, equipment, and increasingly beer, and deals with formulating issue themes, packaging stories, new editorial platforms, and works with the ad sales team and on special sections for advertisers.

Food & Wine actually began as an insert in Playboy in 1978, but today it’s owned by American Express and has about seven million readers. In comparison with its late competitor, Gourmet, Food & Wine is aspirational, but there’s a lot of accessibility; the gift guide features a lot of items under $20. Gourmet didn’t make money, was too asipirational, didn’t change their formula with the times, and didn’t translate well online.

For those of us who are starting out as an editorial assistant, it’s important to speak up if you find something missing or a hole; make yourself available and raise your hand and volunteer to do it, she advised.

Fact Checker and Research Editor can also be entry-level positions, but first get a sense of the career track, talk to editors and emphasize where you want to go.

It’s important today to be well versed in HTML, being able to complete a package and be online producers, have copy-editing and fact checking skills, to be organized and deadline-oriented (this is very difficult with creative types), smart, trainable, and enthusiastic.

In terms of finding fresh ideas, she said F&W is always looking for new new new and the “and factor,” meaning there are a bunch of components for each story, new food products. The staffers will attend events and trade shows for inspiration also.

Among her favorite projects to work on, Quinlan most enjoys the May travel issue, the Trends issue (which forecasts upcoming trends), “Chefs Know Best,” and “big things that tend to scare other people.”