If you're planning to hire a j-school grad…

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, April 1, 1996 by Eric Freedman

They're enthusiastic. They're energetic. They're smart. They're creative. But too often, they're not ready for their first jobs in magazine publishing. Who are they? They're new journalism-school graduates with diplomas in hand, eager to knock off a 5,000-word expose to change the lives of millions of your readers.

Most j-school grads have a solid sense of what makes a good article and have mastered the basics of writing and copy editing. But the editors who hire them often all too quickly realize that many of these bright and enthusiastic employees have little understanding of the real world of magazine publishing.

Employees are long-term investments, so if you plan to hire a recent grad, recognize that you might have to act as teacher and adviser, at least temporarily. Taking the time to broaden and polish the skills of an otherwise outstanding new grad may feel like an imposition, but your new employee's expanded abilities should make the effort pay off.

How realistic are their expectations? Realistic expectations include understanding and accepting the duties of entry-level jobs, the power of editors to manage, channel and change copy, and the low pay and lack of glory--especially at the beginning of a career. Stardom isn't earned in a day.

"Many students come to magazines thinking of it as a wonderful, artistic and creative process. It can be, but it's also a business," says Caroline Kitch, a former senior articles editor at Good Housekeeping. She is now working on her doctorate at Temple University in Philadelphia.

Even students with many writing courses receive little instruction on how to be an editorial assistant, how to evaluate manuscripts, how to write captions and titles, how to research photos, how to conduct phone interviews and how to do fact-checking. They can write 7,000-word features, but are generally untrained in how to write short features for front-of-the-book sections, according to Kitch, who supervised interns and interviewed job applicants during her nine years at Good Housekeeping. "They are always shocked to learn it's harder to write short than long, and many are surprised when told to do rewrites."

Do they know what makes your magazine unique? Another component of realistic expectations is recognizing and acknowledging each magazine's distinct personality. "They need to understand that they will be writing for a specific market, a magazine with specific problems and length and tone and style," Kitch says.

That each magazine has an individual personality and unique voice is a difficult concept for many students, especially those who are comfortable with the stylistic near-homogeneity of daily newspapers, The Associated Press, syndicates and secondary wire services.

"They need to realize that tone, depth and style are so different," explains professor Ruth Bayard Smith, coordinator of the journalism program at Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey. "It sounds so obvious, but students need to read everything they can get their hands on, to read the range of magazines out there."

In Smith's writing class at Montclair State, students carefully analyze a variety of trade, consumer and association magazines to fathom out each market, including the target readership, article mixes and styles, title styles, graphic and photo needs, freelance usage and layout. Students also learn to use writers' guidelines and ad department demographic information as road maps for understanding a magazine.

Teaching students to analyze tone in feature articles is particularly challenging. For one thing, they are most familiar with the ostensible objectivity of newspaper writing. As a result, Smith says, "We talk a lot about the role of the writer and the role of the narrator, keeping the `I' out."

Can they think like an editor? Too many young writers treat editors like professors, "as if the editor always knows what the answer is," observes Mariette Dichristina, a senior editor at Popular Science, where she runs the intern program for undergrads and graduate students. "It would help if they learned how to act like an editor--`You tell me, you're the expert. I have veto power, but you know the topic.'"

Just as an editor needs a sense of what the final product will look like in print, explains DiChristina, so does the writer, right from the start: "The best writers know how to focus a story and suggest graphics. They know who they should to talk to, what illustrations will be needed, whether it will be a long or a short story. It's their story pitch, and they need to learn how to characterize their projects."

Do they know how a magazine works? There is a corporate atmosphere in magazine publishing, so Departures editor Connie McCabe says it's important for grads to have learned the business and operational aspects of publishing. Essential elements range from "learning how much it costs to do a magazine, to how many times you read a story, to what it takes to get from a story concept through the whole process to publication."