Photo: New York Magazine.
Would you like to learn the keys to a great personal essay from a master of the genre? Or have a professional photo editor show you how to take a magazine-cover-worthy image on your iPhone? Or examine the finer points of onscreen performance from one of our renowned film critics?
Then you should enroll in New York Night School, a series of subscriber-exclusive newsletter courses in which our writers and editors play professor and share their highly specific expertise. Each course spans five or six weeks and begins as soon as you sign up.
Here’s a look at all of our Night School offerings:
New York executive editor Genevieve Smith will explore core tenets of the craft — finding the right idea, determining structure, honing your authorial voice — through lessons derived from roundtable discussions with features editors and writers, including Lane Brown, Emily Gould, Allison P. Davis, Lila Shapiro, and E. Alex Jung. Whether you’re an aspiring journalist, a hobbyist Substacker, or just wanting to write better emails, we think you’ll find something of real value in this series. Sign up here.
In six weeks, you’ll take in a rarefied collection of municipal tips, tricks, and hacks that even the most jaded New Yorkers may not have known until now. We reached out to ER doctors, traffic attorneys, and particularly New York–y New Yorkers like Alison Stewart and Gay Talese for advice, but most of the wisdom comes from the shrewd, budget-minded New York Magazine editorial hive mind. Consider this a crash course in the knowledge set that New Yorkers who grew up here have amassed over decades. This is your guide to beating the system, even in this impossible city of ours. Sign up here.
Senior art critic Jerry Saltz will be leading a course on the art of looking at art: the techniques and habits of mind that will enrich your museum experience and allow you to go deeper into the works you are beholding. These are lessons not in art history per se (though naturally, there will be plenty of those) but rather in being a better observer and interpreter and appreciator. You can expect tutorials on how to approach established masterpieces, new works in small galleries, and outsider art, and the institution of the auction house, as well as on ways of writing about art that help you understand it. Sign up here.
Our award-winning photo department will give a five-week crash course on improving your photography skills — whether you’re an aspiring professional, a devoted hobbyist, or just trying to take better pictures for the family holiday card next year. Expect pointers on everything from taking portraits that show your subject’s personality to documenting vivid scenes on the street to getting delicious-looking food shots with your phone’s camera — and at the end, we hope you’ll share some of your work with us. Sign up here.
Over the course of five weeks, critic Angelica Jade Bastién will examine stardom across time and place. We’ll focus on one star a week: Elizabeth Taylor, Tom Cruise, Pam Grier, Alain Delon, and Tony Leung Chiu-wai. And every week, you’ll work your way through our syllabus of selected films so you can revisit or get to know the greatest cinematic performances from these stars. Sign up here.
The team of professional shoppers at the Strategist will teach a five-week course on gifting — which we’d argue is both an art and a science. You can expect to learn our personal gifting theories and go-to gifts (as well as the gifts we specifically advise against), a roundtable on what kids (and their parents) actually want, and dozens and dozens of tips on how to navigate weddings, birthdays, and, of course, the holiday season. Sign up here.