A website offers practical tips for magazine editor wannabes and other new journalists
By: Jaclyn Greenberg
Date: Nov. 24, 2006
Carrie Bradshaw is not real, and neither is her job. You will never be her or have that job, and sadly, neither will I. Oh yeah, and the opportunity to raid the wardrobe closet at VOGUE — that’s not real either (at least, not as an intern). Not long after these startling realizations sank in, a pre-graduation panic set up camp in my head.
How do I find a job? Should I go to graduate school? Should I do another internship? When will I finally be paid? How much will I be paid? Where will I work? What city should I live in? The list goes on.
The kicker is that every worry I have, someone else has too. Every cover letter I send out is only one in a stack. And to boot, my parents are just two of the bazillions of baby-boomers who are salivating over what the tuition cheques will buy them next year.
Plus, the reality is, I can’t neatly edit my anxieties into a half hour show on HBO, like Carrie did in Sex and the City.
So, it’s not a very original problem. Nevertheless, a problem it remains: How do you find a job after you graduate? More specifically, how do you find one in the magazine industry?
"When you’re still in college, the best thing to do is get internships," says the assistant editor of JANE magazine, Cheryl Brody. "It’s so important to do intern placements so you can get as much experience and meet as many people as possible."
Meeting people (also known as networking) and gaining experience go hand in hand. One does not necessarily come before the other, but guaranteed, both will sprout from whatever your first experience is. I got my internship through a friend, who mentioned that his mother worked at a publishing company.
"Could I get her email?" I asked harmlessly enough. Six months later, after email correspondence and a conference-call interview, I was being introduced to my cubicle for the summer. There wasn’t a day that went by where I didn’t talk with someone new, make a new connection or strengthen one I already had. But it was, ironically, my last day there that I was given the best tip of all.
"There’s a website you should look at called www.ed2010.com," my boss, the senior managing editor told me during my exit interview. "It was started by a group of young editorial wannabes back in the late nineties, whose goal it was to get their dream editorial jobs by the year 2010."
The website, run by a community of young, ambitious editors, is filled with insider tips, panel transcripts of how-to’s, job postings for days, and it even has an entire section for college students called Ed on Campus. Clicking through it felt like Christmas morning, New Year’s and my birthday, all rolled into one.
"There wasn’t any information out there about how to get started in the magazine industry," says Ed2010’s founder and president, Chandra Czape Turner. "It was all very mysterious — oh you have to know someone, have to have friends in the industry — and that isn’t the case at all."
Czape Turner is the anti-Meryl Streep-style editor with her candid, no-nonsense way of imparting industry wisdom. When she started Ed (as regulars call it), it was an informal thing, trading tips over drinks with friends. What developed is the well-oiled website and network you see now, something Czape Turner says grew organically.
"We just want to have as much information out there as we can get for everybody."
Part of the reason Czape Turner, whose day job is as the Deputy Editor of the under-legal-drinking-age bible CosmoGIRL!, believes the industry has maintained its mysteriousness for so long is because college journalism and communication programs pay too little attention to the editorial industry in classes.
"It’s hard for schools to give advice because they’re detached from the industry. They’re not in New York, and they just don’t have the connections or knowledge that comes with being a magazine editor."
Another element that reinforces the dark veil over industry information and know-how, is, as Canada’s editorial industry watchdog website Masthead Online calls it, "the utter death of data."
Statistics Canada hasn’t reported on the magazine industry since 1999. The 2005 Annual Survey of Journalism and Mass Communication Graduates conducted by the James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research neglected to distinguish the editorial industry in its report (despite giving substantial space to advertising and PR). And despite the industry’s slow but steady return from the 2000 economic downfall, the newspapers’ struggle against new media has garnered all the journalistic-related headlines.
Yet, you don’t want to totally dismiss the Cox Center’s survey, which is put together at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, since it has some pretty positive numbers in it.
The survey’s most inspiring stats conclude that nearly all of the graduates had at least one in-person interview; and of those who looked for work, 73 percent found jobs. Both stats considerably improved from the 2004 survey.
Complementing the Cox Center’s survey, Masthead Online’s latest annual salary survey (2004) also had positive numbers to report. Most notable was that editorial jobs had an average salary increase of 4.7 percent, since 2002.
Make yourself known, at any cost
With more graduates getting jobs and people with jobs making more money, what does that mean for those trying to break-in? How do I get to be part of the statistic that gets at least one in-person interview?
"If you’re able to get someone who’s willing to go for coffee or lunch, or invites you to come to the office for five minutes, that’s a great opportunity," says Brody, who aside from JANE, is the Ed on Campus coordinator.
"Ask editors out to lunch. They’ll accept, trust me," advises Masthead’s editor Bill Shields. "Pick their brains, ask them to talk about their jobs, how they got into the business, and if they still like it.
"And don’t forget," he tells me. "You pay. What will cost you a night in partying will become a contact, friend, hopefully a mentor."
The lunch thing is something I hadn’t heard before and neither was one of Brody’s biggest pieces of advice, the informational interview.
Often times, a magazine, let’s say the one you want a job at, isn’t hiring (isn’t that just your luck), making a job interview an unlikely occurrence. Your best bet is to call up the person you know at the magazine (assuming you know someone there, if not, ask to speak with the editorial assistant or assistant editor. The general rule of thumb is: the lower on the masthead, the more likely you are to get past voicemail) and say you’d like to have a 15 minute informational interview.
This is where someone like Brody will tell you all about the magazine, how it works and what they want in someone on staff. It’s also where you get to tell them about you, what kind of magazine you want to work for and why.
Essentially, it’s an opportunity to get your name and face put into the magazine’s memory bank for when something does inevitably open up. It’s also a fantastic opportunity to find out what other magazines are hiring because, as Ed2010’s staff prove with their glowing group photo, editors are friends with other editors.
"It’s like a date," Czape Turner says of when an editor sits down to interview a potential new assistant. She adds that a lot of the interview process is not what you say or don’t say, but how you click with the editor.
One unavoidable hurdle, especially for those who want to break in by being a copy editor, is doing an edit test. Fail that, and being like long lost sisters with the managing editor won’t make a bit of difference.
"Frankly, it is a very competitive industry," Czape Turner says. "There are less and less editorial assistant positions now than there ever has been."
So how about I just skip being someone’s assistant altogether? Can I bypass the undesirables and start at the top, or even in the middle?
"Launching your own magazine will get you a lot of credibility," Shields says, adding that even if the rag flops, the experience you’ll gain will be almost incomparable. "Other than that, I think we all have to pay our dues."
Along with the inevitable low-on-the-masthead position, comes the inevitable low-on-the-masthead salary. And you can’t forget the biggest stepping stone of all, the unpaid internship.
"You can regard them as a form of legitimized slavery, or you can regard them as a tuition-free educational experience," Shields says, adding that internships can be the best way to land your first paid job.
"That’s the worst part," Czape Turner says of the financially unthankful life of an intern. "But that’s where you have to decide, am I going to wait tables at night or work at Starbucks in the morning so that I can gain the experience I need?"
Sadly, Starbucks may be something to consider even after you score your first salaried job. Even though the Cox Center’s survey shows an increase in the average bachelor recipient’s salary to $29,000 (US), which is up $1,200 from 2004, that’s still nearly $2,000 below the average salary liberal arts graduates as a group earned.
Massively more depressing still, is that the study shows what Canadians would define as commerce graduates, had average salaries between $40,000 and $50,000 with their post-graduation jobs.
I can testify to the $40,000 part. Two of my best friends from high school, both Dalhousie University Commerce students (both accounting majors) have accepted matching $40,000 (CDN, but still) plus benefits, plus perks job offers from accounting giant KPMG in Canada’s version of Dallas: Calgary.
Ed2010 does its part about salaries. Their salary report, while anonymously submitted and technically unverified, is fantastically job, title, and publication specific.
However, Ed’s most impressive salary-related aid is their scholarship program. Every semester Ed gives out one $1000 scholarship, and during the most competitive intern-season, the summer, they dole out two. The one thing Ed doesn’t do is focus on grad school, other than to steer people from going.
"Go to grad school if you did your undergrad in something completely unrelated to journalism," Czape Turner says. "Otherwise, there’s no reason to go unless you just want to waste your parents’ money and avoid entering the real-world.
"And there’s a case for not wanting to enter the real world, but not if you know what you want and if what you want is to work in magazines."
"Getting two degrees in journalism is a waste of time because you likely won’t learn anything new," echoes Brody.
Despite compiling numbers for graduate school grads, even the Cox Center’s survey weighs in, calling journalism a largely undergraduate profession.
"I’ve seen people from graduate school, hired at entry level positions and then the interns run circles around them because they’ve had two internships before," Czape Turner says.
Shields provides an alternative answer about whether to do your Master’s, but for what is really an alternative industry choice.
"If one has aspirations to teach journalism later on, one typically needs at least an MA," he says. Although, Shields makes sure to add, "internships are still most valuable, because they yield both clips and references."
The value of thinking small
Hollywood’s latest incarnation of the magazine industry, The Devil Wears Prada, may have set up one falsity with the dowdy assistant being re-done in the afore-mentioned couture closet, but its setting rings most true.
In the magazine world, the ultimate locale is New York City.
"There just aren’t that many opportunities in other places," Czape Turner says of why she moved to the home turf of editorial institutions Conde Nast and Hearst, all the way from Indiana. "It’s like if you were in finance, you’d move here too. You need to be in a hub."
Shields agrees that the Big Apple has the most opportunities but reminds me it’s also the most competitive, not to mention the most expensive. As far as editorial hubs in Canada goes, Shields says Toronto has the biggest market. It is also the third largest in North America. Who knew?
"I don’t like New York that much," admits Gwyn Driskill, an editorial assistant at The Pohly Company, a custom publishing company in downtown Boston. Driskill interned at Pohly while working on her Masters in publishing and writing at Emerson College. Six weeks into her internship she was hired as the editorial assistant.
"They obviously interviewed other people, so it was really strange to interview one day and then go back and intern the next, only to see other people come and interview for the same job."
Clearly, it worked out. Any tips to pass on?
"I started a week or two before the other summer interns, which is kind of cheesy but it was a good step."
Anything else?
"People often overlook the smaller publications," she says of regional magazines or the quiet cousin of the editorial family, custom publishing. "People go straight to the Conde Nast and the Hearst publications. While some of them are really good and would definitely be great experiences to have, sometimes starting in a smaller place is a lot better, you can get more hands-on."
She pauses. She’s got one clincher, I can feel it.
"My favourite resource, and I’m very careful who I tell this to" she says, winding me up, "is this website called ed2010, that’s E-d-2-0-1-0 dot com. I love it."
Look, there isn’t one golden secret, no one solves-all answer. I can’t tell you how to get a job better than I can get one for myself. All I know for sure is, if you get a job, please don’t forget to call me when you hear about an opening.
