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by Bunny Smith, |
Inside game
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Here at GCM, we’re fortunate to have rich, personal relationships with quite a few of our reader/members. We meet you at the GCM booth at the Golf Industry Show, and we talk to you on the phone or at your facilities as we gather stories for the magazine.
And you know us, too, especially our veteran writers for the pages of GCM and GCM’s online blog: Editor Scott Hollister, Senior Staff Writer Terry Ostmeyer, Senior Associate Editor Seth Jones. Even the “newbie,” Associate Editor Darcy DeVictor, has become a familiar face and byline to many of you over the past year. Editor-in-Chief Ed Hiscock has met numerous members over the past decade plus in the course of his work with the Strategic Communications Committee and other groups. Senior Science Editor Teresa Carson is perhaps the most-traveled of us all — darting from one turf science-related event to the next — plus, she writes her popular monthly column, “Inside your turf.”
And then there are the rest of us. Just in case you thought your association magazine was just the sum of its various bylines, I’m here to tell you that each issue is, uh, lovingly pushed, prodded and cajoled by about a dozen other professionals into this glossy book that hits your mailbox every month. Take a quick look to the left of this column to find out who and how many are involved in selling advertising — without which your magazine would be vastly smaller.
What else do we “insiders” do? I’ve organized the following step-by-step description of how GCM gets pulled together and pushed out the door to the printer. Why? Because that’s what the managing editor does — keeps things organized and flowing.
• Every word that goes into the magazine is edited three times. Every fact is checked to the best of our ability. This is an ongoing duty, as we are preparing content for the magazine pretty much day in and day out.
• The edited features, columns and departments, along with their corresponding photos or other graphics, get the “beauty treatment” from our staff of three graphic designers — Roger Billings, Becky Drager and Kelly Neis. They are responsible for how GCM looks every month.
• Each of those layouts then has to be proofed three times. Mistakes are corrected, and the pages are checked again — more quickly this time — three more times because our goal is to bring you an error-free magazine. Another goal is to get your magazine to you on time, so everything barrels to a conclusion somewhere around the 16th or 17th of the month before heading off to the printer.
• Meanwhile, our department’s “traffic” specialist, Shelly Howard, is riding herd on a million bill-paying and circulation details, including which version of GCM goes to which subscriber. (You may have thought there was just one GCM every month, but chemical usage regulations mean some of our advertisers don’t want the same ads to be seen by every reader; growers don’t want to market bermudagrass in Minnesota.)
Putting out a magazine is a lot like putting together a huge puzzle: lots of little pieces that have to come together in just the right way at just the right time to form a beautiful picture — at least, we like to think it’s beautiful. Speaking from “Inside GCM,” I hope you think it’s beautiful, too.
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