This Gig is not at all What I thought

EDITOR’S COLUMN
This Gig Is Not at All What I Thought
But it’s turned out better than I hoped

Being a magazine editor is an odd job, neither fish nor foul, as they say – an expression I’ve never understood. I’ve just completed a full year at the job – this is my sixth issue – and have found myself drawing a bit from both 33 years at a newspaper and my continuing career writing books. At the paper, there were many people working quickly and the results showed up the next morning on your doorstep. Writing books, I plan and work on something for a year, largely in isolation, and then wait months more for the finished product.

This is in between, the best and worst of both worlds.

Neither fish nor foul, you might say.

One obvious difference is that I don’t focus on my writing. My job is to get the best stories matched up with the best people – and get their best work. The job’s made easier by having talented writers, many of whom recently left the Richmond Times-Dispatch. They and a number of others write well and interestingly and don’t need what one newspaper editor used to call, derisively, “hand-holding.”

By the way, we’re not all together in an office. That’s a common misperception. Somebody’s always telling me “Say hello to Randy” or “Say hi to Bill.” The writers are freelancers and I rarely see them. We deal by e-mail.

I meet in person with only half a dozen people and most often just with Scott Harris, the art director, and Lori Ross, the publisher. They’re both full-time and I’m part-time, so sometimes decisions get made in my absence. That could be a problem. But Lori has great instincts and Scott is brilliant with layout. Each of us brings something different. The inside joke is that, if Scott had his way, the magazine would be all photos. If I did, it would be all words – and look like the phone book. Lori? She’d have it full of ads.

Somehow it’s worked. Other publications have retrenched during the recession, or gone under, but Boomer Life has grown. The number of pages, advertisers and Web hits all are up from last year. So, with this issue, is the number of copies we print. One way I measure is that when we pick up the phone to interview people, now they’ve actually heard of us. In fact, Daphne and Tim Reid, last issue’s cover subjects, say they never got anywhere near the feedback from all their other local stories as they did from the Boomer Life one.

The growth is your doing. It comes from your picking us up. So thank you. And thanks for the very nice things you keep saying about what draws you to the magazine.

I’m sure the fact that we’re free has nothing to do with it.

..................................................
Contact Ray at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . For more on his books, visit www.RayMcAllister.com. For a review of his latest book see our Must Reads article in Boom!