Beth Quill Moves to Smithsonian Magazine

Beth Quill and friend in Madrid.

After almost five years as an editor at Science News in Washington, D.C., former Ithacan Editor in Chief Beth Quill ’06 has moved over to Smithsonian magazine, where she has been hired as senior science editor.
“I am so excited to bring compelling science stories to millions of readers.” she said.
Beth’s career has been an impressive one. After graduating from Ithaca with a degree in journalism, she went on to earn a master’s degree in MIT’s prestigious science writing program. From there she went to England for a five-month stint writing daily news stories at Science magazine, and then came back to the U.S. to work for Science News.
It will be exciting to see what she brings to one of the country’s most prestigious magazines.

Chili Fest, Team Newsday and Others

Team Newsday, from left: Casey
Musarra, Kaydi Poirier and Erin Geismar

Chili Fest last Saturday brought students flocking to The Commons — and alumni returning to town. Among those who came in for the event were our three alumni at newsday.com: former Ithacan Editor in Chief Erin Geismar ’09, now newsday.com's online community news editor; former Multimedia Editor Kaydi Poirier ’11, now newsday.com's assistant entertainment news editor; and former Managing Editor Casey Musarra ’11, now a newsday.com sports web producer. They drove up from the city with former Multimedia Editor Andy Swift ’09, now senior entertainment editor at hollywoodlife.com.

From left: Kaydi Poirier, Andy Swift,
 current Editor in Chief Kelsey O’Connor,
Aaron Edwards and Erin Geismar.

We made the rounds of chili stands (VIP tickets are the only way to go) and later ran into Aaron Munzer ’08 and   Kara Cusolito ’08. Last year’s editor in chief, Aaron Edwards ’12, was here for the weekend as well. He’s currently a news producer at Digital First Media in New York. In addition to attending Chili Fest, he spoke to a group of our feature writers on Sunday, spent some time in the Ithacan office and gave us all his cold. Thanks, Aaron.

Aaron Munzer and Kara
Cusolito

Kerry Tkacik ’12, who’s living in Queens and freelancing in Manhattan after interning at Rolling Stone last fall and graduating in December, stopped in on Friday on her way to visit her family. And former Managing Editor Deepa Shah ’06 was in town this weekend as well, although we missed each other.
One highlight of Chili Fest was watching our current sports editor, junior Taylor Palmer, compete in the  hot pepper–eating contest. He’d won the competition the past two years, but finished second this year. You can read his first-person account of the experience in this Thursday’s Ithacan.
Seeing these former students was a pleasant preview of next month’s annual dinner with the New York alumni in conjunction with the spring National College Media Convention at the Sheraton Hotel and Towers in Manhattan. Eight students and I will be attending.

Taylor Palmer competing in the hot pepper–eating contest.

The Return of Taylor Long

Taylor Long at the Berlin Wall

Senior Taylor Long is back at The Ithacan this semester editing the 2013 edition of Year in Review after a summer in New York at Food & Wine magazine and a semester abroad in Prague.
She was at Food & Wine as an American Society of Magazine Editors intern, following in the footsteps of such ASME-intern alumni as Libby Sile ’11 (Reader’s Digest), Erin Geismar ’09 (Smart Money), Vanessa Schneider ’07 (InStyle), Elizabeth Quill ’06 (National Geographic), Michelle Theis Cuthrell ’04 (Smithsonian Magazine) and Kelli Grant ’04 (Smithsonian Air and Space Magazine).
“My internship with Food & Wine and the ASME internship program as a whole completely exceeded my expectations,” she said. “There were many lessons learned and friendships made last summer that I take with me as I prepare for graduation.”
As for her four months in the Czech Republic, “Because creative and political movements in Prague have often been closely linked, it was the perfect environment to experiment with fiction writing while continuing to develop political themes in my work.”
She’s writing for the paper again as well. Check out her latest story, an observational piece on rapper Talib Kweli’s visit to Ithaca College.