Editorial process of a Magazine

In order for you to understand how the editorial process of a regular magazine works, first I have to explain what a magazine is.  Yes, I know, it probably sounds a little bit obvious, and maybe everyone has a stack of old magazines lying around their houses somewhere, and whether you are walking past a newsstand in the streets or sitting in the doctor´s consulting room, you are going to be tempted to pick up a magazine and look through the pages.  Magazines are everywhere, but what are they exactly?  That´s the question I want to explain.

A magazine is a periodical (usually monthly or weekly) and popular publication (in some cases without a non-academic audience), that provides people with current information on a broad range of topics like articles, stories, reviews, pictures, etc.  The paper used in almost every magazines is glossy and with photographs and advertising printed on it.  The themes included can be:  sports, fashion, tourism, sex, humor, politics, cultural, etc.  Magazines are published for a general or mass market to promote those groups services or products.

Magazines are different from newspapers in some many aspects and characteristics:

àSize: Newspapers are larger than magazines.  A magazine tends to have a book type size.

àAppearance: Newspapers tend to appear colorless than magazines.  Magazine´s appearances or looks tend to give light or emphasis to the given subject matter.

àStyle: The newspaper focuses more of what is needed:  fixed and straight to the point, while magazines on the other hand, tend to have freestyle in the sense.

àReadability: A newspapers reader is mostly exposed on facts and figures that are delivered or written in a straight manner and a magazine reader is inclined to a more relaxed, free, artistic and personalized flow of information. 

àContent: The information given in a newspaper is based on facts that are fresh and written as it happens and where it happens.  Magazine´s content is different in the sense that those touches on just a specific subject matter.

            However, magazines are not just limited to the concept of printing them, they also involve a tedious process before it even reaches the newsstands, and after knowing all that I have mentioned before, know we can delve in the function and work of the editorial process.

            The first step you have to acquire is to identify and establish your target profile (consumer).  With this, you are surely going to define your audience in order to give your magazine a very specific style that communicates what you are demanding to reach.  If it helps, you can begin by trying to imagine and describe a person who fits in your ideal profile of consumer:  gender, age, socioeconomic level, education, purchasing power, the car that the person owns and his personality.

            Then, the second step is to define the style of the magazine (editorial line).  I consider that this is the most important step of the process, because with this factor, the magazine is going to start taking a definition and a status.  This, basically, is going to represent and reflect the ideas, observations, points of view and opinions of the editor/editors of the magazine.

            When you have passed by the two steps mentioned before, there comes the third step.  Creating and forming your working team.  Delegating responsibilities is very important in order to have efficiency.  It is important that your work team is constituted with specialized and skilled people because it will make your magazine works better.

            à Editor in chief: They are the head of the whole magazine.  The editor in chief is most likely to be concerned with the overall product that the magazine presents, and may also be focused on the business dealings of the magazine.  Therefore, they are not likely to work with queries.  Every other member of the magazine have to report him/her everything and the editor in chief is the one who takes the final decisions.

àArticles editor:  This person is directly in charge of content, and may be one to field queries.

àReporters:  They are the persons who wrote the articles, columns, chronicles, reviews, etc.

àPhotographers:  They took the pictures that correspond to each written publication.

àLayout:  They are in charge of the whole aesthetic visual design of the magazine.  They make the magazine look pretty and with order.

            Also is very important for magazine publishers to adopt a style, oftentimes a format which makes the magazine unique for a specific publishing company, it may be for the writing style of the reporters or for the layout design and the editorial staff will copy edit to ensure that the work matches the style and grammatical requirements of the market. 

And the last step in the editorial process is the marketing and distribution;  this releases the magazine to our main and objective market (consumer).  So every time you pick up a magazine that catches your attention, keep in mind that behind it there is a whole big group of people who make it possible.