Lauren Dolgen, creator of MTV’s popular 16 & Pregnant and Teen Mom franchises, first got her foot in the door at the network as an intern. With 16 years at MTV and several hit shows under her belt, the head of West Coast reality and EVP of series development spoke with Mediabistro about how others can break into the biz.

“I actually was an MTV intern, like, a gazillion years ago, but it really sparked my interest in television, really sparked my interest in MTV in general,” she said. “I also think that production assistant work and getting in on the production side is a really great experience, and I think that it has helped me, as well, in my career. Especially on the development side, knowing production a bit really does help, because when you are asking your producers for things, you recognize what you’re really asking for and will help strategize to get those things and accomplish them.”

Read the full interview in So What Do You Do, Lauren Dolgen, EVP of MTV’s Series Development?

– Sherry Yuan

In Tiger Eyes, Judy Blume’s new movie based on her 1981 novel – check that, her first movie - the best-selling author collaborated with her son and filmmaker, Lawrence Blume, to bring it to the silver screen.

After a recent screening concluded in Manhattan, she explained to the audience, “We always said if we were going to work together on a project, it would be Tiger Eyes. It was Larry’s favorite.”

There were some concerns, however, about translating one of her books onto the screen. She revealed, “It just needs to be emotionally true to the story and the characters and we didn’t want to make a schmaltzy movie.” Read more

If you don’t live in the New York TV market, you may know her from the cable clip show “The Soup” as the woman who puts up with co-anchor Greg Kelly‘s antics.

Rosanna Scotto, morning anchor for New York’s FOX owned station WNYW, sat down with the mediabistroTV crew to talk about how being willing to work when no one else will can help you get your foot in the door and how the antics of world-famous director Woody Allen are what lead to her first big break.

For more videos, check out our YouTube channel and follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

At Newsweek Daily Beast’s fourth annual Women in the World Summit, Tina Brown said the glass ceiling is a “luxury” compared to the atrocities women in the rest of the world face, like the honor killings in Pakistan and the tens of thousands of rapes in Syria.

In her opening remarks Thursday at New York’s Lincoln Center, Brown gave credit to Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg for “starting the conversation” about the lack of female leaders in business with her buzzed-about book Lean In. However, she stressed, there is still much work to be done.

“Leaning in can only be a part of the strategy. Leaning in works only in places where women are close enough to reach their rightful goals,” said Brown.

“Our mission at this summit isn’t just to lean in, but to lean ON — lean ON corporations to change the pitiful representation of women in board rooms, lean ON prosecutors to commit to end rampant sexual violence, lean ON the courts in Latin America to put an end to punitive violence against women, lean ON the pimps who sell girls for sex and the johns who buy them, lean ON the clerks of all religions who condone or turn a blind eye to the abuse of women and deny their fundamental rights, lean ON brothers who murder their sisters in so-called honor killings, lean ON entire governments to safeguard the rights and well-being and free up the economic potential of all their citizens. Lean ON.”

See more photos from the event on FishbowlNY and watch a live stream of Day 2 here.

By now you’ve probably heard that Roger Ebert passed away yesterday in Chicago. Having dealt with cancer and health-related issues head on since 2002, there’s no doubt he made a mark in journalism and fought ’til the very end. Here are several things we can learn from Ebert’s illustrious career.

1. Become your own brand. Before this even became en vogue, Ebert was already doing it. When you thought of movie critics and columnists back in the day, there’s no doubt his name would come to mind. And depending on your generation, perhaps his show, Siskel & Ebert At the Movies, would come to mind. Or how about the ubiquitous thumbs up or thumbs down approach regarding a movie?

As per The New York Times obituary, President Obama said in a statement, “For a generation of Americans — especially Chicagoans — Roger was the movies. When he didn’t like a film, he was honest; when he did, he was effusive — capturing the unique power of the movies to take us somewhere magical.”

Again, he was a brand: “Roger was the movies.” Read more

If you like watching rich people buy things on TV or prefer doing it yourself while watching QVC, then you’re probably familiar with Lori Greiner.

Greiner, known as the “Queen of QVC,” is also a regular on the ABC show “Shark Tank” where those that have millions listen to pitches from those that have little more than a million dollar idea.

SocialTimes editor Devon Glenn sat down with Greiner to talk about the show, her reign on QVC and if any of the products she’s invested in on “Shark Tank” have any bite.

For more videos, check out our YouTube channel and follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

Earlier this year, Discover magazine, purchased by Kalmbach Publishing, finally announced it was moving to Wisconsin from New York to be based with Kalmbach’s other titles.

About 20 edit and design staff were invited to move to Wisconsin; only two took Kalmbach up on its offer, Folio: reports.

So earlier this week, Discover announced its new staff lineup—13 new hires. The staff includes:

• Two senior editors: Tasha Eichenseher, formerly environment editor and producer at National Geographic Digital Media
• Siri Carpenter, founding editor of The Open Notebook
• Kathi Kube, acting managing editor and former ME of Kalmbach’s Trains
• Photo editor Ernie Mastroianni, from Kalmbach’s BirdWatching magazine
• online editor Lisa Raffensperger
• Bill Andrews, associate editor
• Alison Mackey, senior graphic designer
• Gemma Tarlach, associate editor
• Breanna Draxler, staff writer
• Elisa Neckar, editorial assistant
• David Lee, copy editor.

It’s a good week, PR-wise, for Discover to announce these talented hires. Last week Discover bloggers Ed Yong and Carl Zimmer announced that they were taking their popular blogs to National Geographic (along with two other bloggers, not poached from Discover).

Meredith Xcelerated Marketing (MXM) has brought on four new hires from the media and agency worlds, MinOnline reports.

The new hires are Tom Donnelly, formerly of CQ Roll Call, Gail Weiswasser (pictured), social media VP at Discovery Communications, James P. Clark of Mindshare and Megan Malli of AKQA.

Donnelly will be VP, public affairs at MXM. Weiswasser’s new title is VP of engagement. Clark, who led integrated paid and earned social media programs for Sprint’s digital presence at Mindshare, will be strategy director, and Malli will be senior account director.

MXM is an arm of Meredith, the media company that publishes Better Homes & Gardens among other titles. But MXM takes that experience and turns it into marketing wins for clients like Kraft Foods, Acura, and Lowe’s.

Dancer, check. Actress, check. Host, check. Correspondent, check. No wonder Tanika Ray calls herself a Renaissance woman –  not only has she performed with Will Smith and Brandy, she’s hosted shows on Lifetime, CBS, TLC and had gigs as a correspondent for Extra and HGTV’s Design Star.

In the latest installment of Mediabistro’s So What Do You Do? series, Ray says that her TV career began when, after watching a red carpet interview, she thought, “I can do that.”

“It’s not about being still in a place and holding on to it for dear life. I don’t think we live in a society where we celebrate ‘oh, for 35 years I’ve had the same job.’ That’s just not how we’re wired anymore and there’s no security in that anyway. So, why not be free to check off everything on your life before your days come to an end?”

Read more in So What Do You Do, Tanika Ray, Red Carpet Reporter and Host of The CW’s Oh, Sit!?

This is the third and final part of our week-long look at Poynter.org’s Mediawire and JimRomenesko.com, and the differences in traffic, coverage, etc., that they have from one another.

After putting both sites under pretty intense scrutiny for a week, we thought we’d be able to come away with a firm answer of who was doing media criticism better.

But overall, it’s much harder to declare a “winner” than we thought it would be. With the sites so divergent, we’re (almost) glad the separation happened as it did. Romenesko’s focus seems squarely on short items that will get clicks–some of them simply hilarious, though, to be fair, some are yawners. He also receives many more internal memos and other exclusive documents (due to his long track record as the media industry one-man watchdog, no doubt). Romenesko seems to be focusing on speed and scoops, and supplementing those items with fluff here and there; on the other hand, we get the impression that Mediawire is trying to post more items and more thoughtful items, even at the expense of speed. Poynter’s Julie Moos and I didn’t discuss the speed of breaking news during our call, but she did say (as previously mentioned) that Mediawire was trying to do more analysis–and that this was a change put into motion even before Romenesko’s resignation. “Before Jim left, we were making changes to the blog and to the site, and after that [we] continued to make changes,” she said.

The new Mediawire is clearly going in a new direction, with fewer short items and more in-depth pieces. This has gotta be expensive, however, since the site displays bylines from not just Andrew Beaujon but other Poynter staffers as well. Seen from that light, Romenesko’s one-man site is certainly coming out ahead. But the people who follow media industry news would be well-served to subscribe to both sites. The people who vowed never to visit Poynter.org after Romenesko’s resignation (“I’m sure there are some of those,” Moos said) are only doing themselves a disservice. Bottom line: if you’re a journalist, you need both.