Magazine Writing

Christopher D. Benson, Charles F. Whitaker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781136191213
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Lingue e linguistica
• Subtopic: Giornalismo

What does it take to launch a career writing for magazines?

In this comprehensive, up-to-date introduction to magazine writing, students will learn everything from the initial story pitch all the way through to the final production, taking with them the essential tools and skills they will need for today's rapidly changing media landscape. Written by a team of experienced writers and editors, Magazine Writing teaches the time-tested rules for good writing alongside the modern tools for digital storytelling. From service pieces to profiles, entertainment stories and travel articles, it provides expert guidance on topics such as:

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• developing saleable ideas;

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• appealing to specific segments of the market;

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• navigating a successful pitch;

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• writing and editing content for a variety of areas, including service, profiles, entertainment, travel, human interest and enterprise

Chock full of examples of published works, conversations with successful magazine contributors and bloggers, and interviews with working editors, Magazine Writing gives students all the practical and necessary insights they need to jumpstart a successful magazine writing career.

1
Beginning the Journey: An Overview

▶ Introduction

Welcome to the world of magazines. This is the beginning of an exciting journey of discovery for the emerging writer who wants to get published. As we will see, arriving at that destination takes a good dose of skill and understanding. Equal parts art and science. What we hope to accomplish on these pages is to help you sharpen your critical thinking skills, as well as your writing ability. What we will see here is that establishing and maintaining a successful magazine writing career is as much a matter of analysis as it is creativity, with a good deal of determination and hard work.

Learning Objectives

1. The nature of the modern magazine.
2. The things a freelance writer should know to get published.
3. How a magazine is organized around content.
4. How a magazine is organized around key staff.
5. The things to consider before pitching a magazine story idea to an editor.

Our focus in this book will be on the magazine article—from conception to publication. This is a fascinating and unique area of journalism, one that can allow considerable freedom of expression, even while it demands structure according to a set of well-established conventions, which we will cover. Our objective is to help you understand the field of magazine publishing, as well as the process—what it takes to get your story published as a freelance writer. Our hope is that at the end of this journey, you will have taken great strides in developing the skills necessary for any writer to draw the right kind of attention in this highly competitive area. Of course, the right kind of attention means getting published. The suggestions and assignments here are designed to help you develop your ability to conceptualize a publishable magazine piece, sharpen your idea, market the story, and finally understand what it takes to produce it—the research, the writing, the editing.

Thinkstock / Zoonar

Without question, understanding the dynamics of this field requires an appreciation of the special qualities of the magazine story. For example, the difference between a magazine article and a news article is clear. But what might not readily be apparent are the distinctions between magazine articles and newspaper features. You must consider these distinctions as you begin to formulate your concept of the magazine article, learn how to develop it, how to write it, and—as important as anything else—how to sell it.

That is why this book basically is organized around four concepts, although there is some measure of overlap. First, we will set the context for everything that comes up during the writing process. It is important that you understand the marketplace you might want to enter as a freelancer. Accordingly, we will take up the basics. We consider the nature of a magazine, as well as the history, the development, and the current state of the industry in which an editor has to make professional judgments about your work. You will consider who might be interested in publishing your article and why. What are the interests of particular magazines and their readers? In what ways will you reach them with the piece you propose to write?

Second, we deal with story development. This process begins, of course, with conception. We will discuss the sources of good magazine story ideas, and the enterprise it takes to recognize and refine them. Ultimately, you will think about what makes an idea a good topic for publication in a specific magazine aimed at a particular readership. What makes it appealing? Again, what makes the story marketable?

Third, no matter how effectively you develop the story, and no matter how good you might think your work happens to be, you must be able to approach editors and show them that the idea is perfect for their publication. How well you do that will go a long way toward your success in getting published.

Finally, there is the writing. A substantial portion of the material presented here focuses on the writing process. Information gathering, of course, is key to your success as a writer. We will examine the critical sources of information you will need to complete your assignments successfully. We also will consider the essential elements of the interview, from mechanics to substance. The small and large stories you hope to develop over the course of your journey through these pages will give you the opportunity to refine your writing skills. It is important to note that even the lesser writing assignments you might undertake will increase your knowledge and ability in a few key areas. Hopefully, you will gain a deeper appreciation of quality magazine writing on multiple levels and you will make appreciable progress toward producing it. Throughout this book, you will be exposed to writing selections we believe set good examples of particular aspects or categories of magazine writing, or simply represent some of the best writing that has been published. We will guide you through a critical appraisal of these excerpts.

Additionally, it is important that you read magazines on a regular basis in order to apply the lessons you learn here, see how the guidance in this book springs to life in published articles, and to analyze for yourself why certain pieces work or don’t work; why certain stories are published in particular magazines; and how story ideas are generated. Not only will you become familiar with the focus of some of the leading publications, but you can learn quite a bit about effective writing by reading the stories that get into print or are produced for online magazines. You also can begin early on to focus on a particular magazine to which you would like to submit your work. The information on these pages certainly will help in setting your own writing strategy. But, first, there are some basic questions that must be answered.

▶ What is a Magazine?

A magazine is a publication that typically is produced and distributed periodically. In a previous age, we thought about magazines largely as printed publications that were distributed monthly, weekly or bi-weekly. But in the digital age—when many online magazines are updated daily and have no print component—our notions about the frequency of magazine publication and the method of distribution have changed dramatically.

But what does it publish? As a glance at any magazine might suggest— whether you find that magazine at the checkout counter in a grocery store or on the shelves of a bookstore or the racks of a corner newsstand or, increasingly these days, online—the scope of content appears to be unlimited. The range of offerings has been defined and refined by editors and publishers over more than 200 years, as we discuss in Chapter 2. But this brings us to the very definition of “magazine.”

MAGAZINE: A collection of stories published and distributed periodically for a specific audience.

The word “magazine” comes from the French word “magasin,” which means “store” or “storehouse,” often used in connection with storage of weapons or ammunition. In the case of periodicals, it means a collection of stories. As we begin to see in Chapter 2 and continue in Chapter 3, these stories can be framed in a number of ways and directed at a number of communities, based on specific characteristics and interests. So, we should begin to think about the magazine as an assortment of content (long articles and short ones) that is curated and/or aggregated to appeal to a community of readers or users who are bound by the similarities of their characteristics, their affinity for a subject area, and their perspective, or point of view. The audience for the “zine” is key to many of your considerations as a freelance writer, just as it is to publishers, editors, and—importantly—advertisers.

In its 2013 Magazine Reader Experience Study and a subsequent 2005 User Engagement Study, researchers at the Media Management Center at Northwestern University conducted a survey of magazine readers and web users to help identify those characteristics that most engage an audience.

Among the qualities noted by the nearly 11,500 survey respondents to the print magazine study was that engagement in magazines—especially for women—was highly personal. Respondents noted that they spent time with magazines because:

• It makes me smarter.
• It’s my personal time out.
• The stories absorb me.
• It’s relevant to me.
• I trust it.
• I talk about it and share it.
• I learn things here first.

Among the qualities noted in the survey of web users:

• It connects me with others.
• It touches me and expands my views.
• It helps and improves me.
• It’s tailored for me.
• It’s my personal time out.
• It gives me something to talk about.

What’s interesting about those characteristics is that they’re applicable to both the lean-back experience of reading a print magazine and the lean-forward experience of digital presentation. That digital presentation increasingly is part of the “delivery” system for many zines.

Lean-back vs. lean-forward When we talk about the lean-back experience, we’re addressing that “personal time out.” It’s the experience of kicking back and relaxing with a media property, whether that means being engrossed in a long-form narrative piece or poring over the pages of a fashion layout or a home decorating (“shelter”) magazine spread.

The lean-forward experience is largely about service. It’s all about seeking information and sharing it through individual searches online, hyperlinks embedded by aggregators of previously published content, and through social networks. It’s about connecting with people in the “community.” In the lean-forward experience, the user is in control. She determines in what order she wants to experience the content. Unlike the lean-back experience, where writer and editor control the narrative and guide the reader through the content, the lean-forward experience is not linear, allowing the user to hopscotch through the content in any way she chooses. Although we tend to think of print as a lean-back experience and digital as lean-forward, the advent of the new digital readers and tablets (spearheaded by the Kindle and iPad) has made it possible for people to replicate the print experience in a digital format. The tablet also creates opportunities for people to surf the net for multiple platform presentations, even while reading magazines in traditional form. Best of all for writers, it means many opportunities to create content across multiple platforms.

AGGREGATOR: A person or media organization that collects and assembles previously published material and distributes in its own collection mostly online.

PLATFORM: A method of delivering information whether by traditional print broadcast or audio or digitally on computers tablets and smart phones.

It’s important for emerging magazine writers to understand how content is curated and used in the magazine, whether digital or print. Understanding the magazine environment is just as important as understanding the audience, tone, and point of view of the magazine.

As we shall see, good magazines have strong identities that are made apparent by way of an easily discernable voice, look, and worldview. Editors are the guardians of those identities, but it is vital for the emerging magazine writer to try to understand the editor’s goals and objectives for reaching her audience with content. This is vitally important in that the rejection rate among freelance writers is exceptionally high. All this will become clear as we dig deeper into producing and pitching your story ideas. But coming to understand the industry, as well as sharpening your writing skills, is imperative in moving beyond “no,” as the experienced freelancer is quite adept at doing.

Clearly, knowledge is the key. In fact, we suggest that there are five “knows” to get to “yes”—the successful magazine assignment.

▶ Getting the Assignment the Five Things Every Freelance Writer should Know

As stated, there are five “knows” that get you to “yes.” Quite simply, you must:

1. Know the magazine.
2. Know the audience.
3. Know the history.
4. Know the story.
5. Know the voice.

Know the magazine Even where magazines might appear to present the same subject matter (as in zines that are aimed at women readers), there are distinctions you should come to understand before developing story ideas and submitting them for consideration. As we discuss in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, magazine publishers and editors have worked at shaping their publications to speak with a clear and distinctive voice and to appeal to a very select audience. So, knowing the magazine—as you might know a friend—is the first step in navigating a way into the conversation you want to engage as a freelance magazine writer.

Getting to know the magazine involves some preliminary research. Even if you think you already know a magazine because you have seen it on newsstands, read it periodically, browsed online, or even subscribed to it, there are additional steps you must take to really get to know the magazine intimately. Writers Market is a great first step in zeroing in on magazine profiles, the departments, and other sections of the magazine that are most likely to provide “break-in” possibilities for new writers. It also provides information and instructions for submitting a query—pitching your story idea to an editor. But don’t stop at this resour...