mediabistro.com's THINK{drinks} series is a series
of intimate, invitation-only gatherings on a timely topic relating to the media
community. It is a salon-style gathering meant to inspire provocative discourse
about the way we read, report and publish stories. Each month, the THINK{drinks}
panel will be recorded and the transcript will be edited and posted on mediabistro.com
for the record and to inspire further on-line discussion.(Scroll
down for the topic schedule.)
September
The Pink Ghetto: The real
dope on writing and editing for women's magazines.
Panelists:
Laurie
Abraham, Executive Editor of Elle
magazine, former features editor at Mirabella and contributing editor
to Health magazine.
Chandra
Czape, Founder of Ed2010, a networking
group for young magazine editors, and Deputy Articles Editor at Cosmopolitan.
Debbie
Stoller, Founder/Editor in Chief of Bust
magazine.
John
Godfrey, senior editor at Glamour
and single dad.
If you would like to register to attend any of these
panels, become
a mediabistro.com member, and contact David
(specifying which one) to be put on the invitation list.
Join
AvantGuild, mediabistro.com's new membership association, and we'll save
you a spot at an upcoming THINK{drinks} panel. AvantGuild members also qualify
for reduced admission rates to THINK{drinks} and other mediabistro.com events,
plus they can take advantage of our discounted health insurance and lots of
other great services that are coming soon.
THINK{drinks}
Topics for 2001: (note: topic subject to change due to news
events and natural disasters)
October Fuzzy
Borders: Is the News for Sale?
November Covering Bush: Political Journalism, Post-Clintons.
Past THINK{drinks}:
March Media Culpa: Can the
Business Media Cause a Recession?
Our March panel drew 70 members of the business media
to The Half King bar. James Surowiecki, a financial columnist for The New
Yorker, moderated a panel that included Christopher Byron, veteran financial
columnist for Bloomberg and TheNew York Observer, Malcolm Gladwell,
a New Yorker writer and author of the best-selling book The Tipping
Point, and Geoff Lewis, a long-time business journalist who recently lost
his job at CNBC during a company downsizing. Transcript
May Heroes, Hellions, Hedonists: the
Making of Modern Sports Figures
How have we changed the way the public views athletes?
The gloves came off for mediabistro.com's second
official THINK{drinks} panel. Held at the Half King Bar in West Chelsea, nearly
fifty sports journalists from ESPN magazine to the New York Times
gathered over beers to listen and discuss whether the press has stepped too
far into the personal lives of players. Alan Schwarz, a senior writer for Baseball
America magazine and sports history guru, moderated the panel, which included
Steve Jacobson, a reporter for Newsday who has covered sports since the
Sixties; Alan Grant, a former NFL player and reporter for ESPN magazine;
and Sam Marchiano, a Fox Sports NFL reporter and correspondent for the National
Sports Report on Fox Sports Net.Photos
August
Beyond Adrenaline: Death-defying stories and hair-raising ethical dilemmas from
high-risk journalists.
Our August THINK{drinks} panel focused on journalists
whose stories demand that they risk great physical danger, whether it is covering
a war or working as a prison guard. We delved into what drives these reporters
to do their work. If you look back on the war reporting of journalists such
as Ernie Pyle or George Orwell, you'll see that these writers almost never put
themselves in their stories. But today, personal memoirs of adventure and risk
in dangerous places have become a hot-selling genre. Some would argue that the
stories often focus too much on the writer's personal risk-taking prowess and
too little on the story they are covering. Does it detract from the journalism
if a journalist focuses on their own risk over that of others? Are today's high-risk
journalists doing it for the reader or to satisfy a personal desire? What are
some of the most difficult ethical dilemmas they have faced on assignment, and
when is an assignment too risky? Our panelists
wereSebastian
Junger, author of The Perfect
Storm and magazine journalist covering war, mostly for Vanity Fair;
Ted Conover, author of New Jack: Guarding Sing Sing; Stacy Sullivan,
whose articles on Kosovo have appeared in Newsweek, TheNew York Times, and
other publications; and Tuen Voeten, a photojournalist
covering conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Rwanda, Chechnya,
Sierra Leone, Haiti and Columbia. Our moderator was Mark Dennis, who has
covered wars and conflict zones for Newsweek in Kosovo, Algeria, Chechnya,
Northern Iraq, the Gulf, Sudan, Lebanon and Israel/Palestine.
THINK{drinks}
Curator:
Rachel Lehmann-Haupt is a Manhattan-based freelance writer. She writes about
business, technology, media and style. Her work has appeared in The New York
Times, The New York Observer, Wired, Vogue, Self, Brill's Content, The Industry
Standard and Business 2.0. During a stint as a staff writer at Business 2.0
she founded Salon 2.0, a live talk show and community event focusing on business
and technology trends. As the curator of THINK{drinks}, she is working with
Laurel Touby to bring this type of event to the media community.
Please contact Rachel
with topic ideas and potential speakers at 212.691.3588.