Interviews

While Lola Ogunnaike has interviewed First  Lady Michelle Obama for BET and been a regular contributor for Today and MSNBC, her first love is writing, with her byline appearing in the pages of Rolling Stone, Vibe, New York, Elle and Glamour.

So what does it take to land those coveted cover stories time and time again? Cultivating strong relationships with editors, she says in mediabistro.com’s So What Do You Do? interview.

“One of the key things is to make sure they know who you are. That can be as simple as asking them out for coffee or tea or asking them out to dinner and offering to pay for both of those things, which is very important.”

Don’t think once you’ve got your story in, you’re done. “It’s also just following up with a link to a story that you may have written, something as simple as ‘You may not have gotten the chance to see my New York Times piece in the style section; thought you may be interested in this.’ What I found in my years in the industry is that most people don’t follow up. So, if you actually do, then that puts you head and shoulders above the pack.”

Read the full interview.

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

With 21 years of experience under his belt, Dan Savage knows sex — sex journalism, that is. In mediabistro.com’s So What Do You Do interview, the noted columnist and star of MTV’s Savage U discussed how today’s media coverage on sex and homosexuality has changed since he first launched “Savage Love” in Seattle’s The Stranger in 1991.

“When I started the column, The Village Voice wouldn’t pick it up because it was too dirty for New York, which was saying something,” Savage recalled. “I was writing this column for kinky, rainy Seattle, and the then editor of the Chicago Reader told me that if I wanted to be in the Chicago Reader I had to write less about anal sex. I think that has changed and the Internet helped change it, because suddenly there was this place for sex writing without the gatekeepers and this paranoia that some child somewhere might pick up this newspaper.”

Find out how he finally got his column syndicated in So What Do You Do, Dan Savage?.

 

It was hard to miss the buzz surrounding the scandalous Gossip Girl when it debuted in 2007, and the books the television series is based on weren’t any tamer.

In mediabistro.com’s So What Do You Do? interview, the series’ creator Cecily von Ziegesar explained how she came up with the inspiration for those elite Upper East Side teenagers.

“I always start with something that’s real, an actual occurrence or somebody that I really know. Then, I change it so much that it’s not that anymore. But that’s always a kind of germ of where the person comes from,” she said. “I had a friend who was obsessed with Audrey Hepburn and, so, Blair is obsessed with Audrey Hepburn. But I just borrowed that characteristic from a friend. The rest of Blair’s characteristics have nothing to do with that friend.”

Click here for the full interview.

Isn’t it nice to know that even someone like James Lipton struggled to pay his bills while living in our fair city? Makes you feel good about spending a small salary to live in your own tiny apartment, no?

In mediabistro.com’s latest So What Do You  Do? interview, the host of Inside the Actor’s Studio talked about why he ditched law school for acting and studying under greats like Stella Adler and Harold Clurman of New York’s legendary Group Theatre.

“When I moved out to New York, I was going to go to continue my education in the law. That was always the intention; I was going to be a lawyer. But I had to work as well, you see, and so I looked around me and I saw that the [acting] track was pretty fast. And I thought that if I was going to work in New York as an actor I should study some of that at least. Otherwise, I’d be unemployed and I’d starve to death and terrible things would happen.”

Of course, we all know now that that didn’t happen.  Find out which ensemble cast will kick off Inside‘s 18th season and the legendary actor who refused to appear on the show in So What Do You  Do, James Lipton?

It’s been a crazy year for Janice Min. Since the powerhouse editor jetted off to the West Coast to take over The Hollywood Reporter, the 81-year-old publication has pulled in more than 55 billion media impressions and received more Web traffic than its three biggest competitors combined.

At first glance, it seems Min is settling in nicely with her big move to Los Angeles. But the publishing vet says there are some big differences of the media scene in both coasts that made the transition rough.

“It’s weird,” the editorial director told us. “New York is so media-centric. People find people in the media fascinating.” But L.A., said Min, isn’t down for fawning over big-name editors when there are Hollywood heavyweights stealing the limelight. “There’s no media hangout in L.A.”

Read more in So What Do You Do, Janice Min, Editorial Director of The Hollywood Reporter?

This is an interview classic, but although you know it’s coming, it’s never easy to craft the perfect answer. So we spoke to job and career experts to break down interview questions we’ve all come to know and dread — and got great advice on how you can tackle each one.

“Don’t try to use a cliché like your weakness is that you’re a workaholic. No one will believe that answer,” says Melanie Benwell, managing director of Canadian recruitment firm PathWorks Personnel. Instead,  author and president of Penguin HR Consulting Ronald Katz says just be honest. ”Honestly tell the interviewer what it is that you don’t do best. No one can do everything perfectly.”

For guidelines for this and three other questions, check out 4 Common Interview Questions — And How to Answer Them [sub req'd].

New York magazine recently interviewed Reverend Al Sharpton for its “21 Questions” column. For those of you craving insight into the MSNBC host, here are a few tidbits:

Age: 57
Neighborhood: Upper West Side
Occupation: Host, MSNBC’s PoliticsNation at 6 p.m. ET

In one sentence, what do you actually do all day in your job?
What I do all day is I do three jobs: I run National Action Network early in the morning, I do my syndicated radio show from 1 to 4, then I do Politics Nation with Al Sharpton pre-production from 4:30, go live from 6 to 7, then we do afterstudy and analysis, and then maybe in the evening I might have a speaking engagement. But on a slow day, I do three jobs.

What’s your favorite medication?
Air, while I’m on the treadmill. I like doing inhale-exhale exercises while I’m doing my workout.

How much is too much to spend on a haircut?
Over $50. I go up in Harlem, to Betty’s on Eighth Avenue.

Read more

The New York Observer is getting into the art game with the launch of a new site, GalleristNY.com. Launching tomorrow, GalleristNY will focus on the city’s art scene, all with the patented Observer delivery.

“The art world, which just a few decades ago comprised, ’4,000 heavily medicated human beings,’ to borrow critic Dave Hickey’s phrase, has grown dramatically in recent years, and is growing still, becoming a multi-billion-dollar industry that stretches around the world,” explained the site’s Editor, Andrew Russeth, via email. “And yet art journalism has not scaled at the same speed. We think people are looking for a serious and yet entertaining take on these far-reaching changes, a public forum that mirrors the industry’s wider changes.”

Read more

Gothamist, the blog that covers anything and everything New York, has entered the world of long form writing in a big way. Today the site has published snippets of a piece titled, “Confessions of a ‘Rape Cop’ Juror.” The article was written by Patrick Kirkland, one of the jurors who acquitted the infamous NYPD “rape cop,” Kenneth Moreno.

It’s a very powerful read, so FishbowlNY decided to catch up with Jake Dobkin, Gothamist’s Publisher and Co-Fouder, to talk with him about it and the site’s first foray into long form pieces. [Full disclosure: I have freelanced for Gothamist]

Gothamist got about 300 submissions when it put out the word that it was looking to publish something in the long form realm, but Dobkin said Kirkland’s easily stood out among the crowd.

Read more

Mental Floss, the magazine packed with information that can stump pretty much anyone you know, has a new guy tinkering under its hood. Jim Kaminsky is the title’s new Editor-in-Chief, and the first issue under his guidance hits newsstands tomorrow.

We got a chance to preview the issue, and from the looks of it, Kaminsky already has the magazine humming. Mental Floss’ Sept./Oct. issue is filled with entertaining and engrossing features that are sure to gain it new readers.

Kaminsky told FishbowlNY via email that when he came aboard, the magazine already had these things, he’s just been doing some fine tuning.

“The core idea of Mental Floss is so strong: the fantasy of a perfect liberal arts education between the pages of a magazine,” began Kaminsky. “The voice springs from that. It’s as though you’re hanging with your smartest and funniest pal, the one who wears geekiness on his sleeve, but is lovable and awesomely fun to be with. Will Pearson and Mangesh Hattikudur, the magazine’s founders, nurtured that voice over the course of a decade, so everything I’m doing with it is just an amplification of what was already there.”

Read more