Beating The Fear of Striking Out

Hey Edsters!

I'll be the first to admit it, I am extremely shy and sometimes do not advocate enough for myself, whether it be in the office or outside of work. As I continue through my internship I am realizing it is extremely important to take chances, connect with whoever comes your way, and always be thinking about how you can help you boss. Over the past few weeks our web staff and other departments have met with groups of interns to give us workshops on success in the magazine industry that are also relevant to other fields. The pattern and theme of all of these meetings seemed to be the importance of reaching out to editors and making connections. Growingly I am realizing how important knowing people in your industry is. 

The Importantance of Voice In Pitching

Hello Edsters!

This past week at the magazine we were given the task to find trends happening that the readers should know about. The ideas we later discussed were then turned into possible pitch ideas for the other editors or web blog posts. My boss gave me and the other features interns great tips about finding stories and the importance of making sure the voice is tailored to the publication and a story the readers would read. A got a lot of tips from the meeting and later found one of my ideas was added to a pitch made by the editor, which was extremely exciting. One fun part of interning at magazine is that you get to see your ideas and hard work in print a few months after the magazine is released. I took away a lot of information and included below some of the highlights. Writing for each magazine is completely different but hopefully these tools and tips are relatable for any publication. 

Timing - Because magazines articles are written long before they are published, make sure the story will be relevant in a few months. Ensure that the readers will care about the issues you're writing about and even topics tied to the months of publication, like a new development in cancer research for October breast cancer month. Although you can't publish breaking news, writing long form gives you the time to dig deep in research. 

5 Tips on Pitching Magazine Stories

Hey fellow Edsters!

Another day at the magazine, another few lessons in pitching story ideas! Basically today, one of the EAs asked us to help her pitch story ideas for the “news-y” section of the January Issue. While she prefaced that it was rare for interns to write for the print edition of The Mag so early on, she did say that if our ideas impressed the Editor-At-Large, we’d have a shot. Too cool, right!?

And so the heat was on, and for the entire day I sifted through almost every newspaper website (both American and international) on the hunt for the best ideas ever. Ha. Wayyyy easier said than done. Especially when pitching for print, which (unlike a quick web story) would need to be relevant, interesting and totally new — 3 months from now!! Ugh.

So I started up a list of ideas that I thought were interesting and after four or five hours of researching, I met with my editor, enthusiastic about what I’d found and hoping for the best.

So here’s some advice for pitching story ideas that I gathered today:

Feeling the Competition

Hey fellow Edsters!

So last time I blogged to you from cloud nine, totally enthusiastic about the future of magazines and their digital platforms. But reality checked back in today when I found that my fellow intern was working on her second web clip! Just three weeks into the internship! And worst of all, they were both ideas she had pitched herself! (Okay, fine, that’s actually fantastic news, but I just realized that I need to step up my game and start pitching my own ideas!)

I want to preface that I really like my co-intern. I think we work super well together and have taught each other a lot over the course of the last few weeks, plus she’s a hysterical — we actually laugh all day. But sometimes, she absolutely baffles me. She sits at her desk doing homework or checking Facebook, and yet somehow she’s racking up all these clips! I just didn’t get it!