I for one am excited for Charlene Rooke's encore presentation at the upcoming Alberta Magazines Conference. She was kind enough to share her wisdom a few years back, and we're thrilled to have her return. Charlene knows a lot about magazines of course, but she also knows a lot about Alberta magazines specifically. She grew up in Edmonton and spent several years in Calgary editing the U of C's magazine, as well as Avenue. In other words, she "gets" it. I learned alot from her back then, and am keen to learn more in a couple of weeks' time.
So what can you expect from her sessions? Her first is called STET: A Return to Good, Old-Fashioned Editing. I asked her what she considered "good, old-fashioned editing." She tells me, "Good editing puts the reader first and respects the writer's voice. Bad editing is creating an article that is subject to the editor's whims!"
She'll offer practical advice that will help you develop what she considers the most important job of editing: creating "reader-friendly magazines. Do the story, photos, packaging elements, display writing, work together to draw the reader in? Sometimes, as editors, we get too obsessed with an insider's view of what we do." She'll also help you keep your editing reader-focused and you'll walk away with "insider information and advice from both sides of the desk (writer and editor), plus concrete tools and tips for editing long-form journalism, a craft most often learned intuitively rather than taught."
Her second session focuses on keeping your editorial spreads varied and appealing. She'll walk you through "tons of examples and inspiration for different story formats to wake up tired magazine pages."
This will be Charlene's first visit back to Alberta in a while and she "can't wait to see that airplane-window view of the Prairies! Praying for a Chinook..."
--- Colleen Seto
AMPA Blogger-in-Residence
AMPA Blogger-in-Residence
