Toby Young Oddly Prescient on "Making It" in Media Today
Fired Vanity Fair writer Toby Young's How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (movie version forthcoming) chronicled the Manhattan media hellmouth of the 1990s. It would be much more difficult to make it in print journalism today, he admits to WWD. In fact, he says, if he were trying to start a media-career in the aughts, he'd probably be, like, working as a "slave" for this website in particular—and "sleeping on [Brit It Boy] Euan Rellie's floor":
"I think it’s probably tougher to make it [in New York media] now than it was 13 years ago, particularly in the print media. I don’t envy young Brits crossing the Atlantic to make their fortunes today….Probably the difference is I’d rent somewhere in Brooklyn rather than in the West Village. I probably wouldn’t be working for Vanity Fair, I’d probably be working as Nick Denton’s slave at Gawker and being paid nothing. I’d probably be sleeping on Euan Rellie’s floor."
This is uncomfortably accurate, except we do too get paid! But for the record I was sleeping at the Malibu Hotel SRO during my first few weeks in the city, not Euan Rellie's floor. [WWD]