My first week at WV Living was an a real eye opener. I had no idea what to expect because I had never worked for a magazine or been in that type of environment. Now, to me, it seemed like a slow week, but everyone else kept referring to it as being busy. I guess it's just because I'm still new and they're easing me into the process. But, so far, I really like what I'm doing.
Monday I was there for about two and a half hours and I was given the task of finding different places around
Yesterday, Wednesday, I was there for two hours and I was cross checking the lists of where WV Living and WV Weddings was sold. I had the correct list of places and I had the list that was on the web. I had to check to see which ones weren't on each list and make a note of it. I also was given a list of phone numbers from certain vendors that sell our Morgantown Magazine. I didn't get to that yesterday though.
That's what I was doing today, well still am doing. I called down the list and am now waiting for about three vendors to call me back with the numbers of copies sold. I've also been given my first story assignment. I'm going to be setting up an interview with one of the founders of Choosy Kids, which is a program for kids and parents and educators to help fight against childhood obesity and to just get the kids moving and having their parents help them as well. My job is to set up an interview with one of the founders and ask them simple questions about Choosy Kids, like what exactly the program is, why/how it got started, how it's making a difference, and how people can get involved. This story is for the June/July issue of Morgantown Magazine and it only needs to be 800 words.
I'm really excited about this but I'm also extremely apprehensive about it because it is my first story assignment and I'm still getting used to the style of the magazine but I'm still excited about getting my feet wet with the magazine.
Yeah! Your first article assignment! Super exciting. How are you going to go about starting it? Who are you going to interview? Where/how are you going to research? If it is to be published in the June/July issue, when is the draft due to your editors and designer? The time-frame for magazine articles is always longer than outsiders think it might be; were you surprised by this? Or is it what you expected?
ReplyDeleteIn regards to the other office duties you are taking on, is it clear to you why you are doing them? Who uses the information about how many magazines have sold at a particular store? And how? How will the list of kid friendly sites/venues be used? When? Where? How are you conducting your research? Are there other types of research you could conduct to round it out and maybe find some hidden gems?