Ladies and Gentlemen, Carlo Vittorini!

This past week in class Carlo Vittorini came and spoke to us about his time in his career in the business of print media. He was offered his first advertising job in 1955 and did not stop until his retirement in 2000 at age 70. That’s dedication. He spoke to us for a long time (longer than he actually wanted to) about his career and there were a few things that stuck out in his talk.

           1. You may start out wanting to do one thing, and end up doing something else. Mr. Vittorini started out wanting to be a writer. He majored in English in college. But his skills led him in the advertising direction.
          
           2. Trade magazines are genre magazines targeting a certain career demographic.
           3. Some publishing companies can control a number of different publications in a given area. Whether it be major magazines or small town newspapers or even newsmagazines, these publishing companies become oligopolies.
          
           4. There has been a huge progression of different kinds of printing presses through Mr. Vittorini’s career. The publishing companies went from hard, metal presses to electronic digital presses.

           5. Making early decisions can be a very bad idea. Everything is changing too often to make a decision early, and this can affect ratings if things are not current or up to standard because of a poor decision.

           6. Some companies don’t function well because they run on a top-heavy system. When a company is top-heavy, it affects their profit margin in a negative way.

           7. Mr. Vittorini was able to help build up some of the newspapers he worked for because he had skills in marketing and production.

           8. No matter how many new multimedia technologies are made, print media will never die out completely. There will always be a hard copy to back it up.

           9. Relating to the last point, printed word will never disappear. It‘s our main outlet of communication. Whether it be through texting, through a blog or an email, we use language to communicate, which is expressed through printed word.

          10. Finally, Mr. Vittorini kept repeating one main point over and over again. If you don’t like what you’re doing, chances are you won’t do well. But if you do like it, you can climb higher in your career.

Mr. Vittorini’s talk was very informative and very interesting. He was sure that he was going to bore us, but I don’t think he did. It was cool to listen to someone who has a lot of real experience.