Slick work- how to break into magazines

During this session, on Saturday morning, the sun began peaking through the shade, and I became very mad. This session was very good and I learned a lot, but it would have been better received if I wasn't steaming from anger for the weather.

Three women represented different ways to get into magazines. One started, and still works, in teen magazines. Another started as a copy editor, and the third began working for organizations with in-house magazines.

It was stressed by all three to gain as much writing experience as possible and learn many different writing styles. It was also said that it is never too early to start submitting work to potential publishers.

When creating a cover letter for your resume, it is a good idea to research the magazine and emulate their style. Also, don't oversell yourself and find your own voice.

Online resources such as Craig's List, idealist.org, journalismjobs.com, www.mediabistro.com were given for query tips and job applications.

It is important to follow the application guidelines very carefully, since some are different.

Also, if sending your resume electronically, it is best to save the cover letter as a word document so it may be opened and read easily.

I also learned that a perk of the magazine industry is its variety. One is less likely to burn out if one does not stay at a publication for very long.

Kera Simon

Easy Breezy Journalism

On Saturday morning at 9 a.m., Easy Breezy Journalism was being held to a room filled with an almost even amount of editors and advisers. This session had some important key points about how to teach journalism to not only journalism students, but also young writers on a newspaper staff.

Her first suggestion was to bring food. Where there is food, there is fun. She also suggested praising quite often for little things.

The lecturer suggested creating mini-lessons during meetings, which I've been meaning to do.
She suggested a book that was very useful to her. "Inside Reporting" by Harrower was said to have small chapters that can easily be turned into short lessons.

As a means to recruit writers, the speaker suggested talking to English teachers about announcing meetings or adding extra credit(I know that will never happen, but it would be nice...)

I asked how to target the adult learners, a group of students The Current Sauce hasn't been able to reach. She suggested having a few feature articles on outstanding adult students and distributing the newspaper during night classes.

Living the Dream

One of the sessions directed to Literary Journals was "Living the Dream" It was led by one of the co-founders of Red Morning Press, a poetry publishing press. The leader was a graduate of Poetry, having received his M.F.A. He said how afterwards he and two other friends were tired of writing, but they wanted to stay involved in the literary world. So, they began a press of their own and began attending AWP conferences and the like. He made the process sound easy, but the money very bad. (In the literary world, that's normal) He was very excited and informative. He broke down details of budget and all the legal standards that have to be met. He offered a very different possibility, and even a future, for literary magazine editors and I found the session one of the most helpful and exciting for me.

-- Andi

Finding the next campus-gate

This session was about investigative reporting, and the speaker was great. He gave me so many good ideas for investigative stories that I'm immediately going to start working on tomorrow. He also stressed accuracy, which can easily be overlooked when you get excited about a story, and giving all sides of the story the chance to respond. He showed us different Web sites and other places to look for good story ideas.

Although he stressed being polite, he also said: "If you're not pissing someone off, you're probably not doing your job." And I find that quite amusing.

Leigh