Week One: Business vs. Newsroom at The New York Times

My first week at The New York Times was both a whirlwind of fun and excitement mixed with the overwhelming fear of starting a new job and meeting new people. My first week on the job began with a two day orientation in which we attended several different speakers and went on a scavenger hunt of the entire city before officially meeting with our teams and managers on Wednesday. I can tell you one thing, on my first day at the company I’m pretty sure my mouth was open the entire time as I listened in awe to all of the different people who came to speak to the 2018 summer intern class. From Dean Baquet, the Executive Editor at The New York Times to Meredith Kopit Levien the Chief Operating Officer, I got to listen to so many interesting and intelligent individuals who talked about their careers with the New York Times. Each individual who came to speak with us was equally as enthusiastic with the strides the paper has taken over the year and stressed the importance of being a source of information and truth for most of the world.

In the skyscraper building that the company occupies there is a business section of the newspaper as well as the newsroom section. In just my first week at the company I got the sense that the business and news sections of the company operate somewhat separately from one another. The individuals in the newsroom work endlessly night and day to produce interesting and informative stories for the paper while the business end of the company supports the news room through advertising, finance, human resources, events and much more. As a business intern within the events department, I mainly see the inner-workings of the business section of the company.  The events department touches several other departments within the company including finance, advertising, brand, sponsorship, sales and more. I had the amazing opportunity of attending a TimesTalk with former President Bill Clinton and James Patterson about their book The President Is Missing. TimesTalks are just one of the many events that my department is responsible for.

I am a part of a small team of only four four other individuals including the event manager, event coordinator, sponsorship manager and event assistant. We all work very closely with one another as well as with many other departments throughout the company. We will have meetings throughout the day with individuals in finance, the Chief Operating Officer, Meredith Levien or the Executive Director of Client Relations, Karen List. It is a really welcoming and fun environment in which a lot of important work gets done. I know I have only been at the company for a short amount of time, but at least within my department the leader/follower relationships are very respectful and everyone is open to listening to one another. They even asked my opinion at a meeting with the Executive Director of Client Relations which was both overwhelming and exciting, especially on the third day on the job.

Even though I have only been with my team for three days I am already really excited to see what this summer entails. The New York Times works on over 70 different events a year that range from sponsorship to client entertaining, editorial events and even custom events. After working at Ashley Douglass Events last summer and working mainly on weddings I am excited to witness the planning and execution of several different types of events this summer. I have the opportunity of working with Ashley Douglass again this summer and look forward to comparing my time at her small company with my time at a large corporate company like The New York Times. 

Overall, the entire staff at The New York Times is proud of their newspaper, whether they are on the news side of the company or the business side. And while business and newsroom seem to be somewhat separated, the company still works and operates cohesively. I look forward to seeing how this organizational culture and structure plays out in my following weeks at the company.