Recession Session - Making It In Journalism

NEW YORK - On February 11, 2009, Diane Dragan, the online executive editor of “Every Day Rachael Ray” spoke to Jill Hamburg-Coplan’s journalistic inquiry class at New York University about working as a journalist on the web. Dragan started out as a struggling freelance writer and worked her way up to executive editor through sheer determination and talent.

At her job at “Every Day Rachael Ray,” Dragan is responsible for the website design and content of the online counter-part to the magazine. Her talk to the wide-eyed students however focused more on an inside look to the workings of a magazine company during a recession rather than the job itself.

The stress of the current economic state wore on the faces of all the students as the questions turned to how to get a job and keep it in a few years after leaving NYU. Dragan calmly explained how although 300 people were cut from Reader’s Digest (Rachael Ray’s parent company) in the last year, most of these cuts were in the human resource, advertisement, and corporate departments. Dragan also offered another reassurance to the aspiring journalists, saying how small properties inside of a larger company is usually safe from cutbacks. For example, her online department is smaller compared to other areas of the company, making it less prone to lay-offs though their budget has been decreased.

Just because life is easier on journalists than human resource employees during hard economic times does not mean that it’s easy going; there are hiring freezes occurring and less opportunities for freelance writers to get their pieces bought. However, Diane Dragan is living proof that with perseverance, a hard worker can make it through anything.