Ed Advice

Aloha Ed,

I’m currently in high school and my dream is to work in the magazine industry. My all-time favorite magazine is FOAM. It’s the perfect fit for me as I would love to work for a California-based magazine. When I get to college, what should I major in if I want to work in magazines? Also, I don’t JUST want to write; I want to be involved in promotions and events. What do they look for when they hire? I always wondered if, after having an internship with a magazine, do they consider hiring you? Thanks a lot!
Stephanie, Honolulu, HI

Hi Stephanie,

Your college major matters less than the writing experience you get from your college newspaper, magazine, or yearbook. Many magazine editors majored in journalism, communications, English, creative writing, and the like, but there are many other editors who majored in subjects like history, French, and music, but they got relevant experience through their student publications and internships. So focus on getting the experience instead of picking a certain major. Of course, if you’re interested in journalism, then you should major in it!

That’s great that you have a deep interest in a particular magazine. Once you’re in college, you should find out how you can apply for an internship at FOAM by emailing an editorial assistant or other lower level editor there. Interns are typically assigned to a specific department (like editorial, art, photo, advertising, promotions, or marketing), but if you have other interests besides editorial, you may be able to gain exposure to these departments during your internship. All hiring editors look for smart, enthusiastic students with lots of writing experience and a demonstrated interest in magazine writing/editing.

And some internships turn into jobs with that same magazine; many don’t. Either way, internship experience prepares you for staff positions and introduces you to editors who may be able to help you get jobs at their magazine or their friends’ magazines after you graduate.

Love,
Ed

Sure, they’re all happily employed now, but the members of Ed’s staff were once jobless college grads trying desperately to make it in the magazine world. Read on for some inspiration:

“After interning at national magazines every summer, I flew to New York from school in Boston during my senior year to interview at Self and Glamour, in hopes of landing a job before school ended. Instead, Self said I wasn’t graduating early enough, and Glamour hired my friend from my ASME internship! I applied to every slightly relevant job I saw on Ed and Mediabistro. I scored an interview for a health EA job at Woman’s Day, even though I faint when anyone talks about blood, and that led to two more Woman’s Day EA interviews. I spent a Disney World vacation working on edit tests for those, but I wasn’t offered any. I applied for an internship at Parenting, and, even though I had interned there two summers before, I still couldn’t get hired! So I took a job as a camp counselor. An EA spot at Ladies’ Home Journal opened up and sounded perfect for me: Assisting the entertainment editor and deputy editor who worked on stories about families. I took a day off from camp to meet them, and I hit it off with both! I got called for a second interview on a day my group was taking a trip that I couldn’t miss, so I turned down the interview (how dumb was I?). Luckily, that didn’t stop them from calling my references and offering me the job. It took 10 interviews, and who knows how many cover letters, but I finally had a job three months after graduating.” —Meredith Bodgas, Features Editor

“I was an ASME intern at American Baby magazine, but unlike the rest of my ASME class, I was finishing up my journalism degree at Indiana University via correspondence so I could stay in NYC and look for a “real” job. I was applying for everything I could and nothing was working out. I was getting nervous I’d have to give up and move back to Indiana. Then, toward the end of my internship, I was at an ASME-intern lunch at Good Housekeeping and sat next to Ellen Levine, then the Editor-in-Chief (and now Editorial Director at Hearst). I told her I was looking for my first job, and she told me to set up an informational interview with Sarah Scrymser, her Managing Editor. Of course, I did, even though I’d been on a ton of informationals by then, and none had led to anything. So imagine my shock when I walked into her office and she said, “Did my assistant tell you? We have a job open?” I memorized the last 12 issues of GHs at the mid Manhattan library, went on two more interviews, took an edit test, and landed the job. They offered me $24,000. I felt like I’d won the lottery.” —Chandra Czape Turner, Founder & President

“After months of job applications, cold emails, and interviews, I decided it was time to make the big (and as it turns out, very important) move to NYC in pursuit of a magazine job. Eager to meet other job-hunters, I headed to an Ed happy hour, where I met a fellow Ed staffer who was kind enough to let me pick her brain about the industry. I must have played my networking cards right, because she informed me of a Maxim.com internship, which I giddily started a week later. After months of HTML-ing and transcribing my heart out, asking editors what I could do to help, and making myself useful when editors were too busy to assign projects, I was offered my first gig as an editorial assistant at Blender.com!” —Melissa Ward, Ed Assistant/Researcher

“I studied magazine journalism at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. I knew from the start I wanted to work for a magazine, so I did as many summer internships as I could. I interned at a small Philadelphia newspaper, Details, and Travel + Leisure through the ASME internship program. ASME holds weekly panels with various magazine editors, and one week, Chandra was the featured speaker. She told us about Ed2010, and I was very excited about it. So a few of us met with Chandra and decided to start Ed chapters at our schools, creating Ed on Campus. When I graduated, I moved back to Philadelphia to job-hunt from home. I’d take the train to New York whenever I heard about job leads through former intern supervisors and Ed staffers. After a few months of interviewing (and apartment-hunting), I got a call from someone I worked with for Ed saying that their friend at JANE was looking for an editorial assistant. I sent in my resume and cover letter the same week that I was applying for an apartment—talk about stressful! But within two weeks, I had both an apartment and a job. It took me four months and a total of eight different magazine job interviews. Even though I was disappointed each time I didn’t get the other jobs I applied for throughout the summer, I ended up with the perfect first job for me because I was patient.” —Cheryl Brody, Vice President

“I interned at CosmoGIRL! right after I graduated from college. I literally moved to the city—a college grad living in a freshman NYU dorm!—about five days after graduation. I loved CosmoGIRL! so much and knew it was my dream magazine. But, alas, there were no openings at the end of my internship. I freelanced for several Web sites, including working for fellow Ed staffer Christie Griffin at Cosmopolitan.com during the site’s re-launch, for almost a year. That’s a long time to go without a steady job! Then, Chandra, the president of Ed, called me to say that she had an editorial assistant opening at CG!. She asked if I’d like to interview for it, and I was ecstatic. I interviewed, poured over the edit test, and here I am today. Every day that I come to work, I still feel so lucky to have landed this job. I love every second of it. How many people can say that?” —Jessica Strul, Special Projects Director

“I knew going into the job hunt it’d be a long road (I heard six months was the norm and that’s how long it took me). I spent the summer not actively looking—I had a few informationals, but I was working at an admin job at Barnard that provided housing and a good salary, so I was saving money for the job hunt. Starting in September, I hit the ground running—In addition to checking Mediabistro and Ed, I sent e-mails to executive editors at all the magazines I wanted to work at, including my clips and my resume. This resulted in two interviews and one national magazine assignment! In addition, I set up informationals with a bunch of editors—which I really recommend, because it expands your network, gives you the opportunity to go into the magazine office, and can provide valuable, ear-to-the-ground info. But then I saw a posting for an editorial assistant position at Family Circle through Mediabistro (proof that their listings DO work!). Once I went on that interview, I knew I really, really wanted to work there, so I finished the edit test that night and sent it back the next day. I always recommend getting the edit test in early—it can’t hurt, and it might help! It did for me—I got the job!” —Anna Davies, Deputy City Chapters Director

“I got home from my internship at CosmoGIRL! and started my job-hunting routine: Checking Ed2010’s Whispers and message board and Mediabistro’s listings. One day, something caught my eye on the Ed message board—everyone was talking about this multimedia assistant position at Good Housekeeping. I immediately checked out the listing, and it sounded like an absolutely perfect job for me. I stayed up half the night writing my cover letter and going over every single line of my resume, then sent off everything first thing in the morning. Within hours, I had an interview scheduled. After three interviews and two edit tests, I was offered the job! I started two days later—exactly one week before my college graduation.” —Kristen O’Gorman, Ed reporter

“When I was a freshman at Indiana University, my mom read an article about Chandra, Ed’s president, in IU’s journalism school newsletter (Chandra went to IU, too). We happened to be going to NYC for spring break that year, and my mom e-mailed Chandra to see if we could come by her office to learn more about her job at Cosmo. She told me about the ASME internship and said I should get campus publication experience and then apply for ASME my junior year. So I did, and ended up interning for Chandra as an ASME intern at Ladies’ Home Journal. Luckily, when I was getting close to graduation, Chandra’s friend was looking for an editorial assistant at the Time Inc. start-up, All You. Chandra gave her my name, and they e-mailed me. At first, they wanted to find someone sooner than I was available (I couldn’t get there until after I graduated in May), but then we did a phone interview. A few weeks later, they told me I was a finalist and to come to New York for a final/in-person interview! Of course, I had to pay for my flight and hotel, and there was a chance I wouldn’t get the job, but this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. So the Monday after graduation, I flew to New York. Three weeks later, they offered me the job.” —Emily Hendricks, City Chapters Director

For the subway-riding, cocktail-drinking among us, it can be tough to remember that magazine journalism exists—and thrives—outside of New York City. But it does and, as it turns out, there are lots of advantages to magazine life outside of the Big Apple. Ed’s recent survey reveals how the other half lives.

So where do the survey-takers live? Most hail from sunny California, while Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey round out the other popular home bases of respondents. About 60 percent of the survey-takers work for regional or national consumer mags, while 15 percent work for websites, 14 percent work for trade mags, and 9 percent work for newspapers. The major difference between these staffs and NYC magazine staffs: More than half of the respondents’ offices have less than 20 people in it!

But some things, like not getting paid a ton (see Ed’s salary survey revealed: http://www.ed2010.com/2007/11/ed-s-salary-survey-revealed), stay the same across state borders. The majority of you are working for under 20K, while 28 percent are making 31-40K, and a measly 3% making over 61K. But if you’re thinking of making your magazine career outside of New York, don’t despair. Most survey-takers are recent graduates or still in college, which could account for the low salaries.

Still, a whopping 74 percent of respondents have considered relocating to New York, while nearly 10 percent of you have previously worked there. Their reasons for working outside of the Big Apple are split between the expensive lifestyle New Yorkers lead and survey-takers’ love for their current location, but their reason for wanting to work in NYC is clear: 85 percent think there are more opportunities.

Carla Jean Whitley loves Manhattan, “You never know where your career path will lead!” she says, but feels at home only in Birmingham. The hostess and associate editor at Birmingham magazine meets monthly with Edsters for events ranging from magazine swaps to happy hours.

“Birmingham is a large enough city that we attract many of the bands I want to see, plenty of theater, and enough nightlife to keep most people happy. But we’re small enough that you’ll quickly find that you have a friend in common with nearly everyone you meet,” Whitley says.

Courtney McClellan, assistant editor of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, restarted the idle Boston chapter last November and they’ve already had three happy hours (including one last week!). “The publishing world here is small, so it’s easy to be linked to others in the field by just one mutual friend or co-worker,” she says. More reasons McClellan loves Boston: “It may not have all the glossies that New York publishes, but if the goal is to get experience, then this city has a lot to offer, especially from university publications and academic journals.”

Suzanne Kayes Oliver, Atlanta hostess and Senior Editor of Atlanta Magazine’s HOME, Suzanne Kayes Oliver, feels similarly about her town. “[Since it’s small], you see a lot of the same faces, which is great for networking.”

Are you working in mags outside of New York? Ed is proud to have 18 active city chapters, ranging from Austin to Portland to Toronto, so get connected with your neighbors! If you’re interested in becoming a city chapter host, Ed’s looking for editors on staff at magazines in Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and several other cities. E-mail Emily@ed2010.com to start a chapter.
-Yelena Shuster, Ed Reporter