Reasons to Love Your Job

A fresh batch of the new issue arrived last week. I immediately flipped to the masthead at the front, and I’ve got to say—there’s nothing like seeing your name in print! It was pretty satisfying to flip through the magazine and see all of the pages I had worked on in the past few weeks. I had gotten to know each word on that page so well, and now it was on newsstands for everyone to see!

So much work goes into creating a magazine, and visually they’re amazing.  After the past few weeks working at the Mag, I can now appreciate all the work that goes into making that happen.

Each word is meticulously chosen by the writer, and then spell-checked and fact-checked by us interns. That takes a lot of careful reading, organization and communication.

The photos that make the words come to life don’t appear magically. It’s a complicated process, either involving our own photographers or communication with publicists. Each photo has to be a certain size and resolution, and we have to know who took the picture so we can give credit where it’s due.

Then someone else has to lay everything out on a page, and we get to read and reread everything again. We stay late, we work through lunch. As much as we may fall into complaining about stuff sometimes, so far that work has truly been rewarding.  

For the past few weeks, the interns have been in charge of fact-checking listings that run in every issue of the magazine. This means that we had to call up each one of the stores and restaurants and make sure that everything we had written about them was still correct. We grumbled at the task—it is pretty tedious and time-consuming after all. When I found a place that had recently undergone a big renovation, I got to rewrite the listing! Now every issue of the Mag that comes out will carry a blurb that I wrote. How cool is that?

And once the next issue comes out in a few weeks, I’ll actually get my very own byline in the magazine.

To be a part of that is an amazing thing. There are times when our work can be stressful and difficult. But seeing my name on that masthead was just the icing on the cake.

  

What do you love about magazines? Let me know in the comments below!

See ya next week,

Ed's Regional Intern