What I learned during my time as a magazine editor

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of July 2009, the unemployment rate in the U.S. is 9.4%. (14.5 million people) Of that, almost tens of thousands of print journalists have found themselves out of work in 2009; well…add one more to that number.

In light of all this, it is of course it’s spectacular thing that I was laid off on last month. To me however, it is. I’m now competing for work with more talented and experienced journalists than the population of the town I grew up in, in what is probably the absolute worst time to be an unemployed print journalist.

Losing a job you love is like a bad break up. Except I was at this job longer than I’ve ever managed to hold onto any boyfriend I’ve had, and unlike after a break-up I can’t just swear off working for awhile.

Much like a relationship gone sour however, I’m looking for a lesson to be learned from all this. Is it, as so many are prone to say, a blessing in disguise? Should I serve as a cautionary tale for hopeful young journalism students? I worked extremely hard to get where I was, and worked extremely hard while I was there, to the praise of my bosses and co-workers. So what is this other than another unremarkable sob story? What did I learn during my nearly three years as a magazine editor?

1) I 1)It’s at all not as glamorous as TV and movies make it out to be, and that’s a good thing. And newsflash, living in NYC is nothing like Sex in the City or Friends. Maybe it is for some people, and it can have glamorous moments, sure. The swag is nice, press conferences and events can range from fun to unbearable. There’s a lot of smoozing and contact/relationship building, but really it’s not that much different from a million other offices. And really at the end of the day, I wouldn't want to work in an enviorment of impossible standards, lies, and snobery.

2) 2)Despite it all I refuse to believe that print dead or dying. Just like a tween, it’s in an awkward in-between phase. It’s not news that print media has been woefully behind on getting online, and still very few are doing it well. But they will, they have to, and even though a lot of magazines are folding their print publications and going online only, I don’t think people are ever going to stop reading things on paper.

3) 3)I don’t want to work in PR. Not that I ever thought I did, but man does the job suck. It’s like asking someone on a date and they keep saying no, but you have to keep asking. And the person you are asking out keeps wanting free stuff. That and I've never been able to just bestow the virutes of a product while overlooking its fallacies.

4) 4)Freelancing is harder than working full time. Now that trying my hand at freelancing more seriously than I ever had before I’m realizing how much effort it takes, writing, pitching, and still getting turned down (and most of the time it doesn't pay as well as having a full time job). As with almost everything it seems a lot more who you know rather what you know. As a magazine editor I know how many random pitches publications receive and how many they reject, sometimes with any acknowledgement. That and you never know when you’ll see the check once you do get work.

So I’ve been out of a job for a month now (for the first time in my life) and I’ve learned that it’s a bigger blow than I would have expected. And I’ve learned that I have to do all the things I’ve always hated: networking, asking for help and favors, shameless self promotion. I’ve yet to sleep in on a weekday, I’ve been working harder than I was when I had a full time job, but I’ve been also been taking one day a week to enjoy life, go to museums, parks, not be in my apartment in front of my laptop all the time. I’m not doing as poorly as I thought I would.

So what’s next? I’m really not sure, I know I’m not ready to give up on this print journalism thing. I know, at least I should start blogging more and maybe make this thing more cohesive. So there’s that upswing….

In good company

Part of what made me decide to be a writer was winning a $50 savings bond for an essay on Children's rights when I was 6-years-old. It was also about this time it became clear just how awful I am at spelling.

Over the following 20+ years I’ve struggled almost daily-- try as I might, I still have the spelling ability of a slightly dim-witted child. Ironically, I make a living as a writer and editor, and even for a time as a copy editor. Practice and study has made my grammar and vocabulary skills passable and maybe even a little above average.

But nothing has made more than incremental improvements in my spelling. My childhood friend Jessie taught me mnemonic devices to for words I couldn’t spell (it says something about my brain that I still recite “Silly Cats in Egypt Never Catch Elephants” every time I write the word “science”). After a substitute teacher sent my mom a spelling test in which I’d missed every single word, my mom and I tired everything we could think of to drill the correct sequence of letters for my weekly list of words into my brain (I finally settled on conditioning myself by listening to tape recordings of the spellings over and over before the test). As an adult I’ve managed to mostly cover my affliction at work, but not at all from my friends. Between IM conversations, the spelling bee I subject my roommate to whenever she’s nearby when I’m writing, or my un-natural anxiety when someone suggests a game of scrabble, my lack of spelling ability is a kind of running joke.

But, like some of the other things about myself that I’ve spent years being self-conscious of, I’ve come to accept it as just part of who I am. The best part? I’m not alone. Today I found this fantastic list of six wordsmiths who couldn’t spell. The list is comprised of mostly famous writers...and the inventor of Scrabble. Proving that a love a words and the ability to spell don’t have to go hand in hand.

My New Favorite Blog

I'm not sure how he would feel about this, probably he would not approve, but seeing as I have had a growing Orwell obsession over the past few years, I'm still excited at the prospect of reading his previously unpublished writings, every day.

For Your Listening Pleasure

I read a quote years ago that being a good writer is 3% talent and 98% not getting distracted by the internet. So in my quest to keep myself more focused (and because my MP3 player is dying a very slow death) I’m mildly obsessed with free music listening methods.

• Pandora: It’s the old standby, and honestly the one I go back to the most because I have rated enough songs and given enough “seeds” that they get what I like generally. I can also listen to it the most passively. The problem? It’s kind of like my bed, still nice and all, but there’s a dent in the mattress in the shape of my body that I keep falling in even when I try to sleep in a different spot (i.e. it’s getting a bit old, and while sometimes they are right on with suggestions of new music I might like other times they are very hopelessly off, and won’t take the hint that I don’t like the red hot chili peppers)

• Songza: I was obsessed with songza a few weeks ago, and it’s great for what it is (basically a music search engine). Finding and listening to bootlegs covers from concerts and half forgotten songs from your youth is pretty cool, and it’s handy for testing out a new band before investing in an actual CD. The drawback? It’s high maintenance, you can’t just sit and listen, you have to feed it all the time.

• Muxtape : I just discovered this one today, so it’s my current obsession. It’s totally web 3.0 user generatedness, so it’s of course hit or miss, but the basic idea is that you can sign up and make your own “mixtape” of songs that other peeps can listen to (and of course buy the songs from Amazon). But without signing up you can just listen to random mixes, and once you find someone with decent taste you got an hour or so of good listening. The drawback seems to be the unsearchability of the site, either for artists or users, so the mix I’m currently listening to that’s pretty cool I may never be able to find again. (Correction: It looks like each has it’s own address, so I guess you can remember that to get back to it, still not that convenient)

ps. I officially enter my late 20s in one week, and my birthday always makes me get all retrospective about my life, which may explain why this song seemed to fit my mood so perfectly today

And so it Goes

Kurt Vonnegut died.

I read Cat's Cradle when I was too young to really get it, and Man Without a Country last year. He was an interesting man, with a lot of interesting things to say:

"If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind."
Kurt Vonnegut