Panel
Magazines and Periodicals — Digital and Print: How to Get Editors’ Attention
Monday, March 31, 2014
As with all phase of publishing, the magazine is in flux, switching from print to online and back to both. It’s almost a brand-new field.
Magazines are plentiful. It always seems as if they are starving for content but not eager to receive content, or are secretive about the process. We will draw back the curtain a bit and offer insight into the sometimes mystical but actually very practical art of magazine and newspaper submission.
Not all magazines and papers pay well; some do not all pay at all. But sometimes the article practically writes itself, and other times the resume credit is worth the effort, even if the money does not fit. And sometimes there are other valuable perks that you might not have considered.
Several magazine and newspaper editors and representatives will tell you:
- How to get the attention of magazines and newspapers
- How to contact the magazines and papers
- What they look for
- A calendar of upcoming topics
- What to submit
- What not to do
- How to protect your work
- Perks associated with magazine and newspaper writing
- Answers to your own questions
If you have ideas, here’s where they can find a home.
Our Panel:
LAWRENCE DAVIS started his first business at age 17 and has been
self-employed since that time. He founded and has been publishing Splash Magazines Worldwide for over 12 years. Splash Magazines is a group of 21 online worldwide city magazines specializing in lifestyle entertainment, offering 10 main sections and 75 subsections including Style & Fashion, Travel Leisure, Entertainment and Food & Beverage, and more. His magazines have covered fashion shows in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Milan, Sydney, Dubai and other cities around the world. They have allowed him to travel around the world, including Machu Picchu in Peru. As well as covering well-known celebrities in his Entertainment & Culture sections, Davis enjoys giving undiscovered new upcoming talent opportunities to expose their work to his readers. Splash offers freelance opportunities to hundreds of journalists not only in LA but all over the world. The biggest editions are Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York.
LINDA GRASSO is a well-known digital, print and TV journalist. She co-founded and currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Ventura Blvd magazine. The publication, published every six weeks, covers lifestyle in the San Fernando Valley. Linda is also a well-respected media consultant, providing customized on-air training and media strategy services for TV and digital. In her early career, Linda worked for seven years as a correspondent/host for E! Entertainment Television and, before that, as a news reporter for KTTV and WNBC here in LA.
ABIGAIL LEWIS Following a lukewarm acting career in which she mostly purveyed grocery items that would never darken the door of Whole Foods to a TV-watching audience she would have preferred to serve by encouraging them to get off the couch and exercise, Abigail became editor of a flailing publication that remedied those errors. More than a decade later, having acquired, restored and sold the by-then-flourishing holistic magazine Whole Life Times, she discovered the challenges of freelancing. Now back happily editing at WLT, she is thrilled to be able to brainstorm, assign and edit compelling narrative stories about sustainability, alternative health and evolving spirituality.
MENDE SMITH is a freelance editor, published author and widely published poet, living and working in Los Angeles. Smith is taking up the reins of the LA FreeP where publisher Steven M. Finger has placed them into cyberspace. A virtual newsroom of staff writers, contributors, creatives, and techies has assembled to restore the mission and the Los Angeles Free Press. The LA FreeP is the iconic counterculture newspaper that originated in the 1960s, and the new prime push for the “free press” movement in America.
Moderator:
LAURA MEYERS, is a longtime journalist who has written for many national and local magazines, including Money, Parade, Playgirl, Art Business News, Town & Country, Los Angeles Magazine, Angeleno, and Variety’s “V Life.” She got her start as a “stringer” (reporter) for Time Magazine. She is an TheWGroup co-founder and past president.