Behind The Magazine

I love, love, LOVE my job!

~shivers~

It turns me on so much!

Let me tell you how a typical workday goes for me.

I arrive at work an hour before the staff writers do so I can get my head together and go through my daily reports. The daily reports consist of a list of stories that each writer has completed and has dropped in the editorial production folder for me to review and move to copy editing.

I copy each of their daily reports and make a comprehensive daily report to send to my publisher, my editor and the CEO. This allows them to gauge the staff progress and keep an eye on the stories that we are about to run.

After I send out that report I review their individual lists of incompleted stories and I mark which stories I want them to work on for the day making sure that the stories I assign are consistent with the holes I have in my upcoming editorial calendars. The editorial calendar is a spreadsheet that I have to make that lists all of the stories that will run in each issue and since our magazine is national with local content for the major markets, I have to make sure that the local stories are placed in the right cities. It’s a little complicated but I love the details so it’s exciting to me.

After I meet with each of the writers and give them their assignments, I add their assignments to a running spreadsheet that I keep for future reference in case someone asks if a particular story has been run and who wrote it.

Once I’m through with all that, I scour the editorial production folder on my computer and review the stories and choose which ones I want to place on the calendar. I then move the story to the copy editing folder so the first copy editor can edit it and send to the 2nd copy editor who edits it again and they place it in another folder for the graphics department to grab and place in the layout. After the graphics people do that, it goes to copy editing again for a final read through.

I can spend hours filling the calendar and passing along my spreadsheet to the graphics team so that they can add pictures. Once I’m done with the calendar, I have to work with copy editing and graphics to make sure that all of the stories are in with the corresponding photos. This process lasts for a couple of days because sometimes pictures are missing and we have to create new ones or the copy editor rejects the story and we have to request a rewrite.

So all day long I’m marching up and down the corridor, checking up on writers and graphics to see if they need anything from me. In between all of that I’m fielding calls from publicists who want their artist or business covered. I listen to their pitch and decide if it’s something we are interested in writing about. If it is, I will assign the story to the writer who I feel will best connect with the topic (or who is available to do the interview).

Ahhhhhhhh…..

It’s beautiful because if the publisher and editor leaves me alone, I can ride my management high all day as I watch as magazine after magazine is put together from start to finish. It’s a beautiful sight! On Thursdays, the new magazine (which we call a ‘book’) comes out and everyone reviews the magazine looking for mistakes and to read each other’s stories and offer words of appreciation.

Man…Most people go to college and have to figure out what they want to be, changing majors at least once during their process. When I got to college, I looked at my choices within the journalism major and I didn’t hesitate to elect magazine journalism as my concentration. I’m so glad I did. I love what I do everyday. I smile when I walk through the front doors.

Although my publisher frustrates me and I believe it is my own paranoia that makes me defensive when he instructs me because I believe all men are out to tear me down, I really listen to everything he has to say and I breathe it in and try to implement it into my daily thought process. I’m learning so much from him and though my feelings get hurt in the process because he always has a word of instruction/correction, I know it’s for my own good and I will become a better content manager which will eventually make me a better managing editor one day.

Whoo!

Lord, I know I chose the perfect career… Give me strength to endure the criticism as I focus on my goal of becoming an editor within the next two years.

I can not BELIEVE my life!

I’m blowed.