Emily Mae Czachor is a junior majoring in Print and Digital Journalism and minoring in Law and Public Policy at the University of Southern California. She enjoys writing-both creatively and in a journalistic sense-playing the piano, making homemade wallpaper out of old issues of Vanity Fair, talking too loudly in public and accidentally binge watching an entire season of Orange Is The New Black when she has midterm papers due (this is actually a self-imposed nightmare with no associated enjoyment whatsoever, but it is pretty closely tied to her personal character).
A New Jersey native, Emily Mae flew the old-school Italian coop when she was 17 years old and trekked out to Los Angeles to study at the prestigious Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
As she became immersed in Annenberg's hands-on curriculum, she slowly began to navigate her growing interests. Emily Mae began to write for the Arts and Culture section of Neon Tommy , Annenberg's digital news site and supposedly the most-read college publication in the country (she's not entirely certain of the legitimacy of this fact but it does sound nice in an interview!). There, she began focusing heavily on documentary reviews and eventually served as Culture Editor for one year. In the fall of 2014, she reviewed the Netflix documentary The Punk Singer, and was able to interview punk feminist icon (and one of Emily Mae's personal heroes), the "riot grrrl" motherlord herself: Kathleen Hanna.
But this piqued interest in art and niche film presented a dilemma: if not news, then what? Is a journalist even a journalist if she's not chasing after freeway fires or filming city council meetings? Emily Mae largely explored her interest in the intersection between art and journalism through a few varying internship opportunities. In the summer of 2014, she interned in the script department during the inaugural season of Late Night With Seth Meyers at the ever-majestic 30 Rock. She spent that summer running 11 copies of each day's script around the building and mastering her "cool, calm and collected" face upon running into members of the SNL cast.
In the Spring of 2015, she began an editorial internship at Ms. Magazine, a feminist news publication founded by Gloria Steinem. There, she muddled through hefty fact checks and produced her own original content weekly for the publication's online outlet. This was her first experience in a professional setting in which she was given free rein to be both creative and analytical at a level similar to that of an employee. She learned how to pitch ideas at a board meeting, reach out to subjects for interviews and craft stories in a timely manner. The brilliant women at Ms. gave her a platform to find her voice as a writer, and guided her narrative as a young woman.
This past summer, she worked both in the research department at The Rachael Ray Show and in the editorial department at Harper's Bazaar--two vastly different work environments that complemented one another almost impeccably. On one hand, The Rachael Ray Show gave her an opportunity think in an out-of-the-box, innovative sense. She pitched segment ideas to the executive producers, one of which, entitled "Things You Shouldn't Say On Daytime TV," was is now slated to appear in the show's upcoming tenth season.
At Bazaar , Emily Mae handled all publicity contacts for the features department, including books, theater, art and film. She spent work days sending emails and making long-distance phone calls to PR representatives across the world and compiling lists of upcoming releases, performances, etc. for the features editors to review. She now knows too many International Direct Dialing codes by memory and can say "May I have the contact information for your publicist?" in French. She worked closely with the Assistant Features Editor and is continuing to write freelance articles for Bazaar's website. Overall, the experience was transformative, both for her sense of style and her career aspirations.
Eventually, Emily Mae would love to write for a magazine like Rolling Stone or TIME. In the meantime, she would also like to learn how to edit a video in less than six hours (in solidarity with all my print majors) and to stop understanding HTML the way she understands Egyptian hieroglyphs.