Week 5- Speaker Series at the New York Times

With the Fourth of July falling right in the middle of the week this year, it was quite and unusual work week at The New York Times. It felt like a ghost town in the office, with the majority of the employees out of the office for the week. The interns, however, were in the office and got to enjoy speaker series and other events put on by the HR staff. We have been able to enjoy a lot of amazing speaker series from employees from throughout the company. We have had talks from Cliff Levy, Deputy Managing Editor, Sam Dolnick the Assistant Masthead Editor, Sydney Levin the Executive Video Producer and many more. Each speaker told the interns about their individual roads to the company and the work they do with The New York Times.  One of the main messages I have taken away from the majority of the talks is how much each individual loves their time and job at the company. They explained how important it is to do what you love in life and I think that message holds true with a lot of employees at the company.

One of the events the interns got to attend this week was a screening of The New York Times Showtime Documentary, The Fourth Estate. The documentary looks at the company after the election of Donald Trump and follows reporters in the Washington District as well as the New York office. We only watched the first episode of the series but when I got home that night I immediately bought a subscription to Showtime so I could watch the rest.

Aside from the speaker series, the office was very quiet and my manager and I spent the majority of the end of the week looking for venues in California. The New York Times hosts a lot of client entertaining events in different states. Generally they are dinners hosted by a VP of the company for 20-30 guests. Our job as the event team is to reach out to venues to get an understanding of pricing and availability and a menu for the event. We compile a list of venues and send it to an executive in the company to approve one venue to host the event.

Going forward this upcoming week will be a lot busier than last as we prepare for more client entertaining events, Shakespeare in the Park, the US Open and many more events.