Spencer Bailey

It was all sort of the tail end of the big Condé, Hearst, Time, Inc.

years.

And at that point, I had interned at HarperCollins and kind of learned through that experience.

I didn't really want to go become a book editor.

I loved the pace of magazines and something faster.

But of course, when the Lehman thing happened, it was just all my friends who graduated with me in 2008.

We were all kind of like, well, now what?

I finagled my way into a paid internship at Esquire magazine.

How did you finagle?

I've read you use that word and I saw it in my research.

You just said finagling.

Yeah.

Okay, the backstory here is that my college hosted a career trip to New York for juniors, seniors, looking to enter the communications field, whatever that means.

And I joined the trip, and we visited the offices of Cosmopolitan magazine.

I was one of two men on this trip, and it was like 20 women and two men, so I stood out.

We're on the floor of Cosmo.

And you're rather tall.

Yeah, we're on the floor of Cosmo.

And yeah, I'm like this six foot three guy in a sea of women.

And the editor in chief of Cosmo, Kate White, was hosting us.