This article is a follow up of Into magazines.

I already talked about some common mistakes done with two important sections. Now I’m going to describe a bit in what should editors be focused.

Unique

Magazines can’t beat other media formats in time, and you can’t have a voice in your subject community, if you’re just repeating what everyone just said. They have to be unique, whether we’re talking about the magazine’s design, content or focus. That’s what makes readers desire and collect them. Subjectiveness is also an important matter if you’re trying to have a distinctive voice among other publications. And the more subjective they get, the stronger are the feeling fans nourish (and probably the critics too).

By whitneybee at Flickr.

The editorial staff has to take advantage of their publication cycle, monthly in most cases, and work where others don’t. Newspaper journalists need to write direct articles in a short amount of time, bloggers don’t take much more that a couple of days to compose their articles and book writers think through the same theme for months. Magazines enjoy one of the best working cycles, enough to do a good research, write a deep through article and carefully revise it, without loosing focus overtime. And when readers find an interesting title on the front page or the index, they don’t want to find a couple of paragraphs devoted to it, they want to read a passionate work and feel that the writer was really inside the story. I prefer finding a few good articles than read an hole magazine and end up with the same level of culture, inspiration and knowledge.

One of the best things a publication can have is some known and well reputed writers. I know people who only subscribe magazines for their chronicle, as they love to read a bit about their experiences and thoughts. Not all can get this kinds of assets, but if creativity and inspiration is fomented inside a the editorial group, letting writers research also about their interests, and you’ll get a team full of interesting stories to share. Make sure these articles keep their personal voice. Consumers like to hear from higher perspectives, as long as writers avoid arrogance. The uniqueness of a magazine is frequently measured by the amount of personal voice it has, while keeping high relevance.

Collaboration

From my personal experience, there are some kinds of magazines that can only be made properly with collaboration. It means that keeping a team of writers closed inside an office, wouldn’t work. For example, I lead an online free publication about computer programming and articles were written by an almost entirely different group in each edition, voluntarily. Programming is one of those themes that you can’t just select an handful of programmers and expect them to cover the hole set of languages and techniques. So we just asked for help and gave preference to new subjects from volunteers. The same happens if you’re trying to cover a large geographical region or even an worldwide. In my case we were working for free, but in most cases you’ll need a large contact book and a good budget for freelancer work.

The magazine world is a great place to work at, specially if you have the opportunity to make a living out of it. And even when it seems over-explored, there are still many details to explore. I just gave some pointers, but I’m sure I’ve missed many things. Meanwhile I’ll try to get my hands on some more interesting magazines.

If you enjoyed this post, consider subscribing to my RSS Feed