Friday, Sep 05, 2008

What's An Editor Do?

Somebody asked me the other day, "So you're the managing editor, eh? What exactly does an editor do?" Good question! Although a large part of my job involves sorting through submissions and selecting articles for each issue, that's not all there is to it, not by a long shot. In fact, finding articles is the easy part. Each issue of the magazine has an issue budget. It's my job to fill the issue with good content while remaining within the budget. I'm the one responsible for making sure our deadlines are all met and that our copy editor and art director each receives the pieces they need when they need them. And I'm responsible for the overall mood of the magazine. There are always a certain number of article slots which are filled by our regular columnists, and a certain number which are available for features. For the most part, the columns hum along with only a little nudging from me. Sometimes I'll suggest a special topic to one columnist or another, but other than that and an occasional deadline reminder, that's really about it. Features are a different question. Part of my job is simply to make sure that there's an overall balance to the magazine which is pleasing, and which provides something for everyone. Input from our readers helps me track this. For example, a few weeks ago, I received an email from a reader who really wanted more "meat", more articles directed toward the highly trained citizen. Whenever I get such a letter, I always take a moment to glance through the tables of contents for the past few issues, and then look at the planned tables of contents for a few issues ahead. With that as a memory jog, I can usually point the reader to the many articles we've run that have fit the need they're wanting us to fill. That's what I did in this case; the reader simply gave me a chance to confirm that his favorite area was still being covered well. But sometimes a letter or a phone call like that will come in and when I look over the tables of contents, I realize that readers who want ____ may have come up a little short recently. When something like that comes to my attention, it will probably influence my feature choices during the next few issue cycles. Some issues have a special focus. I typically don't announce this focus or make a big deal of it anywhere, but as the articles come in and I schedule them, I'll deliberately pair them up so that the issue will have that as a minor theme. Some themes I've put together included physical challenges, ammunition and target choices, and family defense plans. Sometimes I'll get a columnist or two in on this plan, sometimes not. Whether or not the issue has a special focus, I do work to be sure that each of the articles in an issue work together to create a solid overall effect. Although each writer works completely independently from any other and each writer has a unique voice, part of my job is to arrange the different articles so that each entire issue flows well and has an overall cohesiveness to it. When a new writer sends me a query letter for an article idea they had, I write back to them and get details. If necessary, I help them focus their idea from a hazy generality into a sharp, crisp, concrete plan. We negotiate about article length and purchase price. We discuss photos. During this email conversation, my planning calendar will be open on my desk so I can slot the article into an appropriate issue, and let the writer know what the deadline for that issue will be. Some articles aren't really a good fit for the print magazine, but deserve to be published anyway. These, I accept for publication on the USCCA website, scheduling one or two fresh articles to go on the site every week. These articles go through the same oversight process that the print articles go through, but I do all the copy editing on these myself, and am also usually the one who codes them and gets them up on the site. Regardless of where the article comes from, whether it's a regular column or a feature from an outside writer, once an article has come in, the real editing work begins. I first give the article a quick read-through to see if it says what the writer told me it would say. Sometimes on this first read-through I'll find typos that need to be corrected, or awkward sentences that should be reworded. I note those down and fix them, but that's not really my focus here: what I'm mainly focusing on, in this first read-through, is the cohesion and flow of the piece. Does it sound professional? Are there any glaring errors? Would the article be stronger with a different introduction, or are there any paragraphs that could be eliminated? Are there any details missing that should be present? These are the types of questions in my mind during the first read-through. In addition to preserving the overall balance of each issue, I also need to keep track of big-picture questions for each article. I need to consider questions such as how recently we covered this topic or a similar one; whether the article would benefit from being paired with a companion piece on a related topic; whether the article is too long or too short for its planned spot; whether the technique being advocated or the gear being reviewed is solid and trustworthy; whether there are any legal issues we might need to consider when we run this piece -- and a million other things. It's important for me to remember to step back and ask these kinds of questions early in the article's trip through the system. If I'm not satisfied with the article on first read-through, I'll send it back to the writer with suggested changes. If I am satisfied with it, I enter the article's title into our tracking system and send it along to our copy editor along with any notes I might have for him. I might ask the copy editor to watch the writer's verb tenses, for example, or I might ask him to shorten the article by a certain number of words so it will fit within its planned slot. The copy editor's job is to catch typos, rework awkward passages, ask for clarification when the wording is fuzzy, and just generally make the writers look the absolute best they can look. He makes sure that all articles in CCM are spelled consistently and use the same basic punctuation and capitalization style. And he alerts me to any concerns he might have about the piece -- everything from safety issues with a suggested technique to questions about our legal position if we run a first-person account of a stalking incident. While the article is on the copy editor's desk, I'm still working on the article too. Part of my job is to make sure that all the little pieces are in place so that the article can run. The article will need to be illustrated: did it come with photos? How many photos? Are the photos large enough and of sufficient quality to run in the print magazine? Are they in focus? Do they adequately illustrate the writer's points? Did the writer get model releases for each of the people who are identifiable in the photos? If the article didn't come with photos, I'll need to either hire a photographer (hard on the issue budget) or suggest some other illustrative solution to our Art Director. I also make sure there are captions for each photo submitted, and that the captions are appropriate to the photos. Each photo should be properly attributed; many of our writers have other people take photos and we need to be sure each of those people is recognized in the fine print somewhere. Photos are a non-trivial part of the strength of an article. An otherwise great article can really fall flat without good illustrations, and a good article can be turned into a great one with a few eye-popping photos. In addition to captions and photos, I make sure that if the article needs a data table, it is supplied and is accurate. I make sure there's contact information for every company or product mentioned in the article so our readers know where to find products the writer recommends. If the writer wanted to thank a specific person or group of people, I make sure the thank-you is appropriately worded and concise. I double check to be sure that the writer's bio-blurb at the end of the article is intact and accurate. Other details to track include fact-checking and related concerns. At this stage I'm likely to Google one or two memorable phrases in the article to be sure it hasn't been published elsewhere already under someone else's name. If the article mentions a product, I'll surf to the company's website and make sure the product name is spelled correctly and is available at the price the writer said it was. If the article talks about a political issue such as recent legislation in a specific state, I'll look up the statute and make sure it says what the writer said it did. While I cannot possibly check every single fact in every single article, I do randomly spot-check something in every article that comes in. I also detail-check an entire article whenever my intuition twitches, or if I find something factually wrong during the initial spot-check. After the article returns to me from the copy editor, I read over it again. This time I read it very slowly and very carefully, looking for grammatical errors, misused words, spelling errors, punctuation mistakes, and inconsistency. These are all things the copy editor can and does catch, but it's been my experience that new errors somehow sneak into an article every time it moves from one desk to another. The next step is to send the article back to the writer for approval. Not all magazines perform this step, but we do. Especially in cases where rewording was necessary to untangle an awkward sentence, we like to be sure that the article still says what the writer intended it to say. Once we have the writer's go-ahead, I send the article and all its related bits and pieces along to our art director who begins the layout process. After she has a good layout, she sends me the original issue draft as a .pdf document. At this point, there will still be several small items missing: typically, we'll still be waiting for an ad or two to come in, I won't yet have selected which letters to the editor are running, and we'll still be needing Tim's Thoughts from our publisher, Tim Schmidt. When the first draft of the .pdf comes to me, I go over it with a fine-toothed comb. Is the table of contents accurate? Is each article actually on the page the TOC points to? Are my writers' names spelled correctly in the masthead? Are there any typos or other proofreading errors anywhere in the document? Are there captions with each photo, and are the captions the correct ones for each photo? Is there a writer's bio at the end of each article? This final reading is a very slow process, and I'll typically take a day or two to get it done, with frequent breaks so that my eyes fall fresh on each page. Here's another big-picture question: what goes on the cover? It's my job to find someone to be featured on the cover each issue. That's a non-trivial problem. While a lot of people would probably love to be on the cover, it is not easy to find these people. Sometimes we'll get photos from someone who is very eager, but the photo quality just isn't there. Sometimes we get six great photos all featuring the same person, but we can only use one of them. It's just an ongoing challenge. If you know someone who'd like to be our cover model (or if you would like to be one yourself), please drop me a note at editor@concealedcarry.com. This brings us to the special profile we run in each issue. The profiles are typically penned by the subjects themselves, and then I go over their work, expanding where necessary, asking clarifying questions, and eliminating redundancies between the Q&A section and the introductory piece. Sometimes it will take several weeks of email and phone conversations before these pieces are ready to be inserted into our article stream. Notice that in all this I've said very little about advertising. That's because I rarely deal with advertisers myself. We have our advertising sales manager, Bob Cole. He sells the ads and then he tells our layout person which ads will be going into the issue. Although I usually know which companies are advertising in each issue, I typically don't even see the ads until we are at the layout stage, and -- with rare exceptions -- our writers never know whether a company has purchased ad space. Our publisher, Tim Schmidt, is nearly unique in the firearms publishing business because he has deliberately built a magazine which is not revenue-dependent upon its ads. This means that even though CCM does run ads and gets paid for doing so, if every single advertiser yanked their ads out of CCM tomorrow, CCM would still be in business and still be going strong. That's a precious, precious freedom for me as the editor, because it means I am absolutely free to run only the articles that I think are best for our readers without having to pander to the advertisers or otherwise sacrifice my integrity when I make editorial choices about the direction of the magazine. Around the time the issue goes to print, I instruct the accounting department to pay the writers, the photographers, and the copy editor for their work (crossing my fingers that the bottom line is still black and not red). Sometimes a writer will ask for USCCA goodies in lieu of payment, and I'll make sure that happens. I'll also be sure that each of our writers receives a few extra copies of the magazine to pass around and to give away to people who helped them produce their articles. Finally, we "put the issue to bed," sending it to the printers. It goes to print and then gets mailed out to our subscribers. And then we turn around and do it all over again.

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