Inside the Belly of The Daily Beast with Editor-in-Chief John Avlon and Senior Editor Harry Siegel

By Allison Raymond and Dan Denning

On Wednesday, April 5th, Profressor Joy-Ann Reid’s Race, Gender, and the Media class took a field trip to visit The Daily Beast, a political and pop culture digital news source.

From 11 floors up, we had a fantastic view of the west side of Manhattan as we waited for our hosts: John Avlon, Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Beast, and Harry Siegel, senior editor at The Daily Beast and columnist at the New York Daily News. We talked about a lot of different topics: from diversity, to the controversial Pepsi ad, to their career paths. The best thing about this field trip was that it was completely unstructured, so we could ask them anything and really just have a conversation about it.

We discussed challenges facing the digital news landscape today, and discovered that The Daily Beast has a few rules when it comes to publishing. “We only write headlines that we would want to read,” Avlon explained. “It’s our job to make real news stories colorful and interesting, without using clickbait titles.” The goal of the site is to be like an interesting friend at a bar: you enjoy talking to them, and you learn something too.

We asked about how they’ve seen diversity in the newsroom change and evolve over their careers. Siegel commented, “Our job is never done. Our writing staff can always be more diverse. It’s a matter of taking the extra effort to go out and find a writer who is doing great things and also has a new viewpoint that our team lacks.” Avlon said he often refers to The Daily Beast as “non-partisan (but not neutral)” because they do not have a political leaning or affiliation with a political party, but their writing staff includes people from all kinds of backgrounds with different political leanings. “Diversity is always at the top of our mind when hiring,” Avlon said. “It’s essential to reflect the culture that we are trying to represent.”

Thanks to John Avlon and Harry Siegel for taking the time to talk about diversity in the newsroom and news in the digital space!

Live from New York, It’s Newhouse NYC: Exploring NBC with Professor Joy Reid

By Allison Raymond

On Wednesday, March 29th, the students of Joy-Ann Reid’s Race, Gender, and the Media class were not in class. Instead, we were inside NBC at 30 Rockefeller Center—one of the many benefits of having such an amazing teacher!

Once we cleared security and were ushered to the appropriate elevator (there are 60 in the whole building!), we entered a conference room filled with burgers and fries, which Professor Reid was so kind to order. As we ate dinner, we heard from a few guest speakers. Thomas Roberts, an MSNBC anchor, talked about the importance of diversity in the newsroom and gave us one piece of advice that really stood out to me: “Whatever you are passionate about, you can bring that into your profession—it doesn’t have to be on the side.” It was great to hear someone who is so successful encourage us to bring other passions into our work.

We also heard from Professor Reid’s boss, Yvette Miley, Senior Vice President and Executive Editor of MSNBC, who gave us advice about entering the workforce after college. She told us about the value of being able to communicate effectively and reminded us to create strong relationships with our peers.

Lastly, we got to hear from Lorie Acio, Manager of Media Relations for MSNBC. She told us about her career path (she started as a production assistant) and about her current role. She emphasized the importance of organization and prioritization in her job, since she manages so many different accounts.

After we thanked the speakers for their time, we piled into the elevators once again and began our tour. Professor Reid took us throughout the building and it was so cool to see the unfiltered version of the NBC tour! We walked through hallways, stumbled into makeup rooms, saw studios, and snuck a peek into a production room. We explored the largest studio (Studio 3A) and Professor Reid told us about set production, lighting, and the behind-the-scenes side of news.

If you follow @NewhouseNYC on Instagram, then chances are you can guess what our favorite part of the tour was. We got to stand on the SNL stage! It was a very overwhelming experience for all of us, as we thought about the countless idols that have stood where we were standing.

That night was truly amazing and one that will be hard to forget! We are so grateful to Professor Reid for showing us around, Thomas Roberts, Yvette Miley, and Lori Acio for taking the time to speak with us, Cheryl Brody Franklin for helping it all happen, and the Newhouse NYC program for making all of this possible.