Editing, final week

Yesterday I was in the office from 1030-3 doing some reviewing and editing of pages for our February issue. I edited some of our "tech" section pieces which we hard for me to completely understand content wise, but I was able to edit them to the best of my ability. Within a publication, I have realized that there are different styles or types of writing that are appropriate for a specific article or section, and editing can be different for each of these. This has been something that I have come to realize, and now implement into my editing technique, dependent on what I am editing.

Lauren Hall story

Awhile back I interviewed a female cyclist named Lauren Hall over the phone. We had a lovely chat and I got to write a piece on her for a potential award in our annual Awards Issue. We didn't have tons of space for the magazine, but Lauren still earned Domestic breakthrough rider of the year on the web. Here is the story I wrote.

Editing and reviewing

I am in the office today working on some editing for our next edition coming out in February. I have come to really enjoy reading other people's stories because I feel like I learn a lot as both an editor and a writer through this process. We have so many great writers here at Velo, and I have learned a lot from reading their pieces. I strive to become a writer of their caliber someday with more experience and practice.

What's Inside the January issue?

Here is the link to the write up I did on Velo's annual awards issue.

Final few weeks...

After a nice Thanksgiving break, I am back in the office this week.

I handed over my interview and information to my editor on Yannick, a story I was working on for awhile. I was headed back to Connecticut and unfortunately, Yannick was out of town racing and we were unable to meet before I left. My managing editor wrote up a nice piece on him, which includes some information that I gathered from our interview. His piece is here.

I am doing a write up for the web on "What's Inside the January Issue?" now and brainstorming some more ideas for my last few weeks at my internship. It has been a great experience and I am sad it is ending soon.

Awards Issue

Yesterday I started working on a story on a young cyclist named Yannick Eckmann. I interviewed him several weeks ago, but I had a priority story on a female cyclist, and then pitched a story idea on another female cyclist that I worked on for a few days. After writing up the story on Yannick I realized that I need to meet up or contact him again to get some more information. New race results and ideas have surfaced that could make the story more compelling, so I am eager to learn more about him and try to incorporate that into a better written piece. I have written one piece for the Awards Issue (magazine) on a female cyclist (I won't give it away yet!) and I am really happy with how that turned out. The Awards Issue is developing well and I think it will be a great closure to the crazy year cycling has had.

What's Inside the December Issue?

Here is the link to the "What's inside the December Issue?" write up I did. I think I did a better job than the past two months on this one, so I am happy with the progress I have made. These write ups have been examples of pieces that I don't necessarily enjoy writing, but they are important contributions to the website to promote the magazine. I think exercises like these are important to do regularly, and they make you appreciate the assignments that you love even more.

Link to "What's Inside the November issue?" piece

I have been writing articles for the web to promote our magazine at VeloNews. Here is the one I wrote for November. Unfortunately I haven't been extremely successful at these, and I spoke to my editor about how to change my style and approach for these pieces. I have been giving away too much to the reader about what is in the magazine instead of luring them to want to buy it. I am learning new things everyday and am happy to take on the challenge. I am also glad that my editor has pointed out areas I can improve so I can contribute to the best of my ability to the company.

Meredith Miller piece online

Read my piece of Meredith Miller here.

I am really proud of how this turned out. I thought it would be much shorter than it ended up being, but my editor kept reinforcing the importance of details. So, I went back to my notes from the interview and listened to the audio again to get more details for the story. I think it turned out great! I worked on this piece on Friday in the office and it was great to have other VeloNews writers helping me through the process. Now I have a better idea of what specifically Velonews.com needs for story write ups.

Meredith Miller Interview

Today I met with Meredith Miller to discuss her Pretty in Pink campaign (for Breast Cancer awareness month), as well her as 'cross season so far. I met her earlier this week at a training session at BCSM and thought she would be a great person to interview for a story, so I pitched this to my editor and he told me it would be great for a little web story. I felt more at ease chatting with her after doing some other interviews in the past few weeks, and enjoyed learning about her career and her life outside of sport. I realized that my first triathlon coach, Kurt Perham, is her cycling coach- what a small world!

Interviews

I interviewed two cyclists this past week (one on the phone, one in person), and enjoyed the reporting process a lot. Back with Reporting 1 and Reporting 2 we did a lot of reporting for our stories, but since then I haven't done much interviewing. I definitely noticed I was a bit rusty at the start, but I generated questions to focus on before the interviews that kept me organized during the conversations. I think similar to the writing process, reporting is something that I need to practice regularly so I am able to conduct a solid interview and get good material for a story.

I am looking forward to writing pieces from the material I have now. Whenever I interview people for a story I always get really excited to see how well I can tell their story through my writing. That is what journalism is all about!

New assignments

I am excited to get started on a few projects I was recently assigned. Up to this point I have done a lot of editing and short writing of clips to promote the magazine for our website. I was assigned to contact two different cyclists and am excited for the reporting and writing process that follows! We have an editing meeting today to further discuss our December issue.

Web assistance

Today I started working on a project for the website involving taking images and text from the magazines, converting them into PDF's and Word Documents, and sending them off to our web editor for them to be placed on the internet. VeloNews often reports on testing done in the tech world of cycling, and I am providing images and text to our web editor so these articles from the magazine can be placed on the web for readers.

November edition summary

Today I worked on a summary of our November edition for the website (similar to what I did for the October edition). Pages went off to the printer for the November edition on Monday, so I wrote a summary of the content to use on the web to promote sales of the magazine. Now we are working on generating ideas, planning, and writing for our next edition coming out in December.

October Edition summary for the web

Read the summary of the October edition here:

http://velonews.competitor.com/2012/09/news/velo-magazine-july-2012-2_239057

Editing for November edition

A bulk of the Velo employees are at Interbike in Las Vegas this week, so I have been offering an extra set of eyes to edit and revise stories for our November edition. I read through several pieces today and looked for basic grammatical errors, did some fact checking, and edited to make the story more fluid and easy to understand. I did similar work with editing at my previous internship with VeloPress, so I feel like my skills as an editor have improved quite a bit from those experiences. Surely, editing for magazines and books is different, but overall, my ability to catch misspelled words or find errors has improved from practice.

October Edition summary for web

Yesterday morning I went into the office and began working on my first assignment. After the print magazine comes out each month, Velo writes a review for the website to promote the edition. I was assigned to get familiar with the October edition and write a summary of the content that a reader will find in the magazine. I flipped through the magazine, skimmed through all the articles, generated an outline and then composed a 600 word piece for the website.

First day

I had my first day at VeloNews last week on Thursday. I went into the office for an editing meeting and learned a lot about the structure of the magazine. We begin production this week which will continue into next week as well. It was great to experience an editing meeting because I was able to see how ideas formulate from within the group for story designs and content. I also got to (re) meet all the guys who work at VeloNews. I had met most of them this summer while interning at VeloPress because they share the same office.

I am excited to get started and become an asset to the production of their website and magazine. It should be a fun semester of learning!

Jessica

Internship Fall 2012

One of my final classes before graduating in December is Reporting 3, which includes an internship. I will be fulfilling mine at VeloNews this Fall. This blog will be a place for me to write about my experiences, talk about what I am learning and post any clips that I get published in the next few months. I am really excited to get started!

Jessica