This will date me. I majored in magazine journalism in college, intending to work for big glossy magazines back when they were still relevant. The biggest and richest still are. The smaller ones struggle, or have evaporated. Still, I’m amazed by the variety of publications I see when I open the Apple News app on my phone, or scroll the magazines available via my Magzter app. I love browsing the magazine racks at Barnes & Noble, or Hudson News when I’m passing through airports. But seriously, how many of us know where we can find a solid newsstand anymore? They used to be ubiquitous when print was king.
About a decade after I went freelance, my old writing professor asked me to speak to his class of magazine journalism students. We kept trying to find time when I’d be able to fly up from North Carolina to Syracuse. I never did. But I did write the following memo, which I sent, and which he distributed to his students. I offer it now because beyond that one sharing, it’s never seen the light of day. I’ll bet it still has relevance for some people, but by way of explaining how old this thing now feels to me, let me say that when I typed “missing images” in the text you’re about to read, I was thinking specifically of lost slides. As a young magazine editor in the 1990s, that’s what would screw up our day. But enough of modern me talking…
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I have held full-time jobs in publishing, I have freelanced while working full-time, and I have been a full-time freelancer for nearly 10 years. Most of what I’ve learned is applicable in all three of these settings. Whether you’re a freelancer or magazine staffer, you need to know how to deal with reporting, writing and editing a piece with an editor’s help. Some people say there are good editors and bad editors. I doubt that. We’re all people. But we probably never had to do an editor’s work, which is to coach someone to turn in a better piece of writing. This is hard to do.
Having said that, there are lots of bad editors. The reasons vary. The three most common problems editors have are a) not being able to figure out what’s wrong with a story, b) not being able to communicate those problems to a writer, and c) being unable to make the changes themselves and wrecking the story in the process. Editors who are fine writers themselves tend to rewrite your work to sound like their own voices. Good editors edit stories in such a way that you cannot tell where your words end and theirs begin.
Truly bad editors are the ones with emotional problems. They’re nightmares for everyone in their life and are to be handled carefully. They can harm your reputation, set back your career, and destroy what peace you enjoy on the job. Minimize your contact with such people. As soon as you can, find a better job and get away from them.
Before you take an assignment, make sure the editor spells out what the piece must contain. A good question to ask is: What elements absolutely must be in the piece in order to make it work? This way, you know up front the story’s “make or break” elements. If you manage to pack all these elements in your story, and the editor says later he wants something else, HE has changed the rules, not you, and you need to call him on it.
Consider the first few days of reporting a trial period: If you’re two days into reporting and you KNOW the information the editor wants doesn’t exist, can’t be found, or is dubious in nature, you owe the editor a call before you go further. Call and say: I’ve done some research and here’s what I have. I’m worried that there’s no there there, and here’s why I think that. Do you still want the story? (That way, you haven’t wasted your time and theirs, and maybe you can still get a kill fee.) It is far worse to write the story without the critical elements, trying to cover up the piece’s obvious flaws, and then, when the story’s shortcomings have been revealed, scrambling on deadline to find that info and cram it in. If there’s a problem, tell the editor ASAP. Get them to help you.
If there is something there but it’s not for you, say so and get out. Editors respect writers who do preliminary interviews with a potential profilee and say, “Who know what? Here’s an interesting guy, but he’s not someone I would want to profile.” I did this when editors wanted me to profile a kid genius; I interviewed the kid and he creeped me out. I could not see making someone who was smart but not wise into a warm or interesting human being. Susan Orlean famously declined to profile Macaulay Culkin, and convinced her editors at Esquire to let her profile a typical American preteen boy. Culkin fell into obscurity, but Orlean’s piece lives on in anthologies. Only two pieces of advice on bailing on a piece: You must do it early in the game, and you must do it only after you’ve got a good reputation. I bailed on my first assignment from Esquire and I’m still kicking myself.
Should you take a kill fee? Absolutely! New writers often feel that a kill fee means that they screwed up. That isn’t true. Usually it means the editor is a nut job who changed his mind. Or it means the story was poorly conceived to begin with. Or it might mean that both writer and editor were chasing something that couldn’t be nailed down in a cogent fashion.
Learn to spot problem stories a mile away: As you get more experience, you will feel the nightmare looming before the words are out of the editor’s mouth. If a story is not working out after a few phone calls, alert the editor and get out of it. Or talk over a new approach. You want to have an open mind. Sometimes you need to be persistent. Or sometimes, the idea is dumb. Some examples.
“We want a story about some cool people and some cool things they’ve done.” (This assignment is impossibly vague. What people, what age, what professions, how do you define cool?)
Story ideas based on one person’s observation, anecdote, or opinion. (Unless that person is the next Einstein, why is their opinion worth a story?) Watch out: if the person with the dubious opinion is the editor, tread carefully and get the hell out.
Trend stories based on people’s observation that something “seems” to be going on. Trend stories need serious facts to back them up. Beside stats, you must locate sources who can speak intelligently about the issues, problems, trends, etc. The key word is intelligently.
“We’ve assigned this story to another writer but he just wasn’t able to pull it off.” Chances are, if one person failed at this project, there’s a good reason why. Don’t learn the hard way what it is.
Good stories jump the gun: I’ve noticed that cutting-edge science stories are the ones that come out before the hard science has been done. I think the same is true in other disciplines. If you wait for the definitive word, the hard science, the irrefutable proof, the story will be wire service fodder and not worth a 3,000-word piece.
A word about statistics: Editors get hung up on stats, sometimes unrealistically. Writers need to cultivate a good bullshit detector. Ask yourself: In the real world, does this information really exist? And if so, who would have it? It’s your job to set the editor and reader straight. If no good stats exist to prove what you’re saying, say so in the story, loudly, and move on. If you try to beat around the bush, you’ll look like a quisling. My wife had an editor who wanted stats on how many Americans were buying houses overseas, in places like Italy, and how many were forced out by the rising euro. If the editor had thought about it carefully for five minutes, she would have realized that such statistics would be impossible to find. Do you honestly think there’s an organization in the U.S. or in Italy that would keep such stats?
The Web makes research look easy. It isn’t. You will learn more by phoning around and talking to people than you ever will online. Never give up if your Google search is not fruitful. Any information found online must be checked and rechecked. People routinely copy (wrong) information from one site to the other.
Write as soon as you can. You may already have enough to write your piece. You won’t know what you need until you start writing. Too often, writers over-report. They spend 90 percent of their time reporting, 10 percent writing. In other words, they start writing too late. The true breakdown on a piece should be more like 25 percent reporting, 25 percent researching, compiling, organizing, 25 percent writing, and 25 percent rewriting. David Remnick, current editor of The New Yorker, is still admired by his former editors because he always seemed to know just how many people he needed to interview to get the story written. This is a good skill for any staff person to have, but absolutely critical when you’re a full-time freelancer.
Download your brain as soon as possible: It’s fine to take notes and tape-record interviews, but as soon as possible after those important interviews, you should sit down and transcribe everything you remember into a single document. What your notebook rarely captures and your tape recorder will never record are all the little things that happened during your interview. I’m referring to the tone, atmosphere, and nuances that only your eyes and brain noticed. Little things can speak volumes, but only if you spot them and record them somehow. You may only have a window of opportunity of a few hours or a few days on this material. So don’t wait to write it all down.
Make an outline. It’s not fiction. It’s journalism. It’s a craft. No surprises. No magic. No inspiration involved. No spontaneity. Put down what you think the piece will be about, and stick to the outline. Later, use your outline to help you edit. The trend these days is to send out an “assignment letter” with a freelance contract or in lieu of that contract. In these letters, editors practically outline the story for you. My advice: stick to the letter. If you cannot stick to the letter, you need to be able to tell the editor why.
The magic happens when you least expect it. Only a few writers are great stylists. Every line of theirs is a work of art. The rest of us need to write and rewrite and rewrite again. Good writers will tell you that the best lines come when you bang something out and later discover it’s a gem.
Be prepared to have others break the rules on you: Never start a story with a quote. Never put your most important point in the last graf of a story. Never alter quotes. These are the rules you learned in school. They are fine rules, but some daft editor will break them all in your first month on the job, probably while editing your story. You must learn when to stick up for yourself, and when to let it slide. And remember: When you become a senior editor, don’t alter quotes!
IN THE OFFICE:
Unfortunately, much of magazine office work is trivial and unimportant—yet urgent. Much of it has little to do with writing or even editing. You will chase down lost images, file paperwork, send packages, pick samples for photo shoots, and attend meetings that go nowhere. Sadly, no one gets bonuses or is promoted for this bullshit. You are judged by the quality of your writing, editing, capacity to generate ideas, and your ability to work well with others. That means you must learn the difference between important work and unimportant work. Here’s some advice for working in magazine offices.
Fight for your right to write/edit 8 hours a day: Yes, you will lose entire afternoons to lost images, poorly written captions, endless meetings, and unavoidable chaos. You must learn to stand up for your couple of hours a day working in your core genius, whatever that is, writing or editing.
Always check your priorities: If you’re an editorial assistant, everything feels unimportant and urgent. You need to identify your priorities every day, as soon as you get to your desk. When you start a job, you should be checking your priorities with your boss for the first few months, until you get your feet wet. If you don’t ask them to help you with this, they’ll assume you know what the priorities are. And assumptions are the mother of all screw-ups.
Cultivate and protect your ideas: A journalist friend once commented that in other businesses, people backstab each over money and promotions, but in magazines they backstab each other over ideas. Ideas are precious. They will make or break you. If you have great ideas, document them with memos or emails to more than one editor, or announce them in idea meetings where everyone can plainly see that you came up with them.
Live deeply in the world outside magazines: The magazine world is incestuous. It’s based largely in New York City, and everyone knows everyone else. If all your ideas are drawn out of that world, they will quickly become derivative and tired. To feed your creativity, you must stay in touch with the rest of America, and the rest of the world. Talk to far-flung friends. Stay in touch with your family. Surf the web. Read unpopular books. Travel to places no one in the office has been to. Attend wacky food festivals and hobby shows. Take a pass on the Hamptons. In short, don’t be a New Yorker. Be yourself.
Learn the difference between “feeling” vs. “thinking” stories: The former editor of The Washington Post magazine and LIFE once told me that the biggest problem in magazines today was a dearth of “feeling” stories. He feels that the big books—the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, Atlantic, and Harper’s—are more interested with looking smart, sophisticated, and prescient than honestly reporting how ordinary humans experience their lives. It has become fashionable to run essays that “deconstruct” issues, ideas, and events to get at their “real” meaning. Why is this happening? It may be that emotion is regarded as maudlin, manipulative, and sensational, and more appropriate for the local TV news. It may be that portraying emotions just isn’t hip. It may also be that such stories are cheaper; one smart-aleck can write a clever essay without doing much reporting. Mark my words: the stories that resonate most with readers are the ones filled with powerful emotions. If you can learn the difference between thinking and feeling—and if you give preference to feeling—you will succeed where others fail.
ONE LAST PIECE OF ADVICE:
Don’t date coworkers. Period. Don’t take my advice on this. I dated lots of them, yet ended up marrying a coworker that I never really dated. Go figure.