Today I visited Our State Magazine in Greensboro. Our State is a lifestyle and culture magazine solely about the state of North Carolina. Today I met with Katie King the Editorial Assistant. She is in charge of editing the “Back in the Day”, “Primer”, “Departments”, and the “Quiz” page. She writes a few articles but mostly prefers to edit. I learned that the editing process begins with the writer sending the article to the editor. The editor then checks to see if there needs to major revisions and if there are it is sent back to the writer. Next they print out copies of the article and all the editors look over all the articles. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that they edit on paper because one of my reservations with this sort of job and advertising is that it would all be done on the computer. We started with an info session and I learned that the magazine puts a lot of emphasis on photography and always includes a photo essay in every issue. The most surprising thing I learned is that they plan the magazine’s theme and articles 6 months to year in advance and they finish an issue about 2 months before it is released. That means that they have already almost finalized the 2019 issue and they have already commissioned the January 2019 articles. Right now they are finalizing the August issue. This timeline of planning and completing stuff so far in advanced is because the the articles are “evergreen” as they like to say. They talk about food, places, people not current events so its okay to plan so far in advanced. I finished my time with Our State with a tour and I got to see some of their magazine issues from the 1950s. The magazine has been around since 1933 and it was so cool to see the progression of the magazine. Overall it was an awesome experience and I learned a lot about magazines, their timelines and how all the departments work together. I definitely will look more into working for a publication as a job.
