COURSE: DIPLOMA IN JOURNALISM AND MEDIA STUDIES.

UNIT: MAGAZINE JOURNALISM

LECTURER: CYRUS KIPKEMEI

SESSION 1

TOPIC: THE MAGAZINE INDUSTRY

OBJECTIVES:

By the end of the session, the trainee should be able to:

• Define a magazine.

• Discuss the history and development of magazine.

MAGAZINE INDUSTRY

A magazine is a publication that is issued periodically. It generally

contains essays, stories, poems, articles, fiction, recipes, and
images. According to Collins dictionary, a magazine is a publication
with a paper cover which is issued regularly, usually every week or
every month, and which contains articles, stories, photographs, and
advertisements.

The word "magazine" is derived from Arabic word makhazin or

"storehouse," which contains a collection of facts and fiction, all
bundled together in one package. Functionally, a magazine
represents an idea of a bunch of thematically-related content put
together as one package.

A magazine can also be considered as a cabinet of curiosities; i.e. a

display case in which interesting, unusual and occasionally
'eccentric' objects are collected and displayed as a conversation
piece or an expression of the writer's wide-ranging interests or
tastes. The readers are treated with a fascinating, mind-expanding
and unique set of wonders they had never dreamt of.

History of magazine

• The 1700s ushered in a time of increased literacy and intellectual

development among the society in Europe. Thus the hunger for
knowledge enabled magazines to become a popular cultural staple.

• Early periodicals were so expensive that only the wealthy could

afford them. As a result, early publications were geared toward the
most learned, cultured and sophisticated individuals of the day. HSS
- II - Journalism 20 English printers produced three essay periodicals
that set the stage for modern magazines: Daniel Defoe's The Review
(published in 1704); Sir Richard Steele's The Tatler (published in
1709); and Addison and Steele's The Spectator (published in 1711).

• Since the periodicals were published several times a week, they

resembled our modern newspapers. However, their content was
more similar to that of modern magazines.

• In 1731, an Englishman named Edward Cave edited a periodical

called The Gentleman's Magazine. Cave's goal was to create a
magazine that the general public would be interested in.

• His publication contained everything from essays and poems to

stories and political musings. Cave achieved two noteworthy
accomplishments: he coined the term "magazine," and he was the
first publisher to successfully fashion a wide ranging publication.

• After realizing that colorful sketches and illustrations contributed

to magazine sales in 1842, British news agent Herbert Ingram
created the first illustrated magazine.

• The Illustrated London News filled with dozens of woodcut designs.

This magazine also earned the distinction of being the first to
incorporate photos.
• Magazines became incredibly popular in America by the end of the
18th century. At that time, there were more than 100 magazines in
the United States.

• Some of the most influential early American magazines were The

Pennsylvania Magazine and The Massachusetts Magazine.

• By the 1830s, however, less expensive magazines aimed at the

general public began to emerge. Rather than maintaining the
intellectual air of their predecessors, these magazines focused on
amusement and entertainment.

• The magazine market throughout the world increased

exponentially in the late 1800s, due to increased literacy. As a
result, magazines became more specialized.

• Periodicals were created specifically for lawyers, artists, musicians

and other professionals. Literary review magazines became popular
during the 1800s.

• In 1888, National Geographic Magazine was founded. The

publication was filled with scientific content and colorful photos.
Some of the magazine's early revenue was used to fund scientific
expeditions and endeavors. Today, the magazine is a highly
respected publication that covers science, geology and world
events.

• In 1922, William Roy DeWitt Wallace founded Reader's Digest. The

magazine contained articles about American culture, humorous bits,
cartoons and heartwarming stories. Reader's Digest was the best-
selling magazine in America for several years. Today, the beloved
publication is filled with health tips, recipes, inspiring true stories
and funny blurbs.

• Better Homes and Gardens, now the fifth largest magazine in

America, was founded in 1923. The magazine was filled with
decorating tips, entertaining ideas and gardening suggestions.
Today, Better Homes and Gardens is beloved for its recipes and
design ideas.

• America's first weekly news magazine was founded in 1923. The

publication covered the top national and international stories.
Today, TIME magazine is a leading source for factual, in-depth news
articles.

• Sports Illustrated was first published in 1954. Initially, Sports

Illustrated covered activities geared towards wealthy Americans,
such as boating and playing polo. In the 1960s, journalist Andre
Laguerre became the assistant managing editor of the fledging
publication. Thanks to his leadership, the magazine began focusing
on all major sports. Today, Sports Illustrated is famous for its sharp
sports coverage.

• Today, there are thousands of magazines worldwide. Magazines

inspire, inform, educate and entertain audiences across the globe.
Nearly 600 years after the advent of the printing press, magazines
continue to change the nature of things throughout the world.

DISCUSSION QUESTION.

Discuss the history and development of magazines.

LINKS TO FURTHER READING.

http://www.magazinedesigning.com/history-of-the-magazines/

https://open.lib.umn.edu/mediaandculture/chapter/5-2-history-of-
magazine-publishing/

COURSE: DIPLOMA IN JOURNALISM

UNIT: MAGAZINE JOURNALISM

LECTURE: CYRUS KIPKEMEI

TOPIC: THE MAGAZINE INDUSTRY.

SESSION 2.

OBJECTIVE

By the end of the session, the trainee should be able to:

• Discuss the characteristic of a magazine.

• Differentiate between a newspaper and a magazine.

• Discuss consumer magazines.

• Discuss business to business magazines.

CHARACTERISTICS OF MAGAZINE

 While popular magazines provide broad overviews of topics,

scholarly journals provide in-depth analysis of topics and report the
findings of research, and trade magazines report on industry trends,
new products or techniques.

 A popular magazine which caters to the general public uses non-

technical language. The contents of these magazines include
interviews, general interest articles and various types of features.

 They usually cover a wide range of topics based on research,

source comments and generalizations. Articles are usually written
by a staff writer or a journalist; in some cases, interesting articles of
freelancers are also encouraged.

 Magazine articles are easy to read, fairly brief in length, and may
include illustrations or photographs.
 Magazines don't necessarily follow a specific format or structure in
writing the articles.

 Its attractive appearance, eye-catching cover pictures and

illustrations on quality paper make it more appealing to the reading
public.

 Magazines also contain many colorful and impressive

advertisements.

Difference between newspaper and magazine

Newspapers and magazines are two important forms of print media

that are read by millions of people around the world. Some of the
most common differences between newspapers and magazines can
be seen through their size and appearance, content, style, target
audience, design and layout, readability and advertisements. Let us
have a glance through these factors:

Size and appearance

Newspapers are bigger in size and they can be folded. A story above
the middle fold in the front page of a newspaper is considered as
the most important story and one that appears just below the fold is
generally the second most important story. If there are many
important stories on a newspaper page, then the treatment given to
a story will decide its importance: such as, photos/graphics with a
more important story and with no visual elements in other stories.
The eyes of a reader can scan an entire page without a fold. A
magazine tends to have a "book-type" size while the newspaper is
really meant to be spread arms length for the reader to grasp its
contents.

Content

Newspapers deal with reports clearly, briefly and objectively. A

magazine writer focuses on specialized topics and current issues of
public interest.
Newspapers remain the primary source of authentic, reliable and
latest information about what is happening around the world and
even in one's own locality. But magazines are not sources of fresh
content to the extent of publishing breaking news. However, its
content is specialized and recent in nature. Thus, we have various
magazines such as entertainment, science, share markets, sports,
glamour and movies. Newspapers are more versatile in content and
hence they never fall short of content as there is always

something happening in different parts of the world. On the other

hand, magazine content is always based on the liking of the readers
of diverse backgrounds. Style

Newspapers focus on catchy headlines to create interest in the

reader. Many reporters and editors are employed in newspapers to
prepare specialized reports and interpretative articles. But
magazines have lesser staff. A magazine writer has more freedom to
express or has more room for subjectivity. S/he has the tenacity and
freedom to express things in a creative manner. It further enhances
the writer's mastery of the expression by imploring these seemingly
circular methods of self expression. The newspaper writer on the
other hand is compounded to a somewhat strict, strong and straight
writing mostly based on facts and figures. Design and layout

Newspapers are known for their simple layout and design. While the
content is usually in black and white, the style and font are fairly
consistent throughout. Magazines have much more visual
expression than newspapers because magazines are not subject to
one consistent layout. Magazines use lots of colour, different types
and sizes of fonts and break up their articles with images and
colour.

Target audience

The main difference between a newspaper and a magazine is that

newspapers are written for a general audience, while magazines are
for specific types of audiences.

A magazine attracts varied target audience. A newspaper's target

audience is determined by its geography and its focus is broad.
Here, the editor determines what the people should read, what they
want and desire. In contrast, a magazine' target audience is
determined by demographics and interests. ('Demographics' mean
the physical characteristics of the individual such as race, gender,
interest, education level etc.). Hence the target audience of a
magazine is usually separated geographically, but they share
common interests; for example, a common interest in sports,
fashion or beauty. A magazine editor should understand the nature
of the target audience.

Readability

News stories are usually written in a matter of fact style. But

magazines employ colourful language so as to make the content
enjoyable. The newspaper readability level corresponds to a difficult
classification built around tight grammatical and syntactical rules.
Linguistic subjectivity which relies on expressive adjectives
enhances the readability of magazines.

Display ads

Though magazines and newspapers both provide readers with

information, their format and appeal differ considerably. Magazines
are more advertiser-driven than newspapers. Newspapers are
slightly different in this regard. Newspapers are driven more by
readership than by advertisers. They focus more on catchy
headlines in an effort to capture the reader's interest and get him to
read the entire story. Part of the reason for this is that people often
associate what they read with an ad they see near the piece. Our
minds just naturally attach and group objects and associations
together. Advertising giants know this and place their ads exactly in
proper alignment with stories and articles they want to associate
with their products on those specialized magazines.

Visual strength
The visual strength of magazine is enhanced with the effective use
of colour in magazines. In magazines, we can also use a colour
background whereas newspapers normally have only a white
background. This means you can present more attractive colour
contrasts in your magazine visuals.

Shelf life

Another strength of magazine is longer life. Newspapers are read

only once and then discarded. In contrast, magazines are commonly
kept for several days, weeks or months in magazine racks which
provides for possible repeat reading.

Magazines use some of the highest-quality paper and ink to produce

a visually appealing product meant to be kept and read longer than
a newspaper. Magazines tend to focus on entertainment pieces,
provide how-to-do articles and features about certain subjects within
their chosen marketing niche. Magazines also have advertisements
taking up large amounts of page space to balance the cost of
production.

CONSUMER MAGAZINES

A consumer magazine, often referred to as a "periodical", is sold to

the general population. Consumer magazines are also called
"glossies" (especially by those in the publishing world) because
these magazines are usually printed on glossy paper. That's
because advertisers pay hefty fees to showcase their products and
they want ads to "jump off the page." You'll find these general
interest publications in shops and outlets.Consumer magazines
include both general and specialist titles.

Consumer magazines have a wide audience and a wide viewpoint.

For example, Time magazine can be read by young people, the
elderly and men, and women with equal interest because it is not a
niche publication. Good Housekeeping (one of the oldest consumer
publications which have been around for 138 years) reaches a huge
audience, clocking in at 30+million each month. It's worth noting
that while it falls in the consumer product category it relates
specifically to the home and is therefore considered a "specialized"
consumer magazine.

People magazine (which also has a wide audience) specifically

focuses on newsmakers (from celebrities to politicians) and is
another example of a "specialized" consumer magazine.

Most people are familiar with consumer magazines. These include:

• General Interest

• News Magazines

• Sunday Supplements

• Women’s magazines

• Men’s magazines

• Sports Entertainment/Celebrity “Intellectual” magazines

• Health magazines Literary/arts Consumer product

• Teen/Youth

• Ethnic /Regional

BUSINESS TO BUSINESS MAGAZINE

Business to business magazines, commonly referred to as B2B are

professional magazines that target a specific niche. They are similar
with consumer magazines as they focus on adverts but different on
the target audience.

B2B magazine have flourished with the coming of digital publishing.

An example of a business to business magazine is The Jama,
American magazine established in 1883.

SPECIAL INTEREST MAGAZINE

Special interest magazines focus on specific topics that are
specialized to audiences. They serve readers everywhere, whether
they are interested in entertainment or professional sciences. What
makes special interest magazines special is that they call to specific
audiences, circulating information all over the world.

With the turn of the century, special interest magazines became

extremely popular in the computer environment, helping expand the
knowledge of users and readers. Subscriptions to these magazines
have grown substantially throughout time as audiences seek
specialized material for their interests.

Revision question

There are different types of magazines. Discuss the following types

of magazines:

(a) Consumer magazines

(b) Specialist magazines

(c) Business to business

LINKS FORFURTHER STUDY

https://azslide.com/significant-learning-
outcomes_5a4c3a151723dd493a4515a0.html

https://study.com/academy/lesson/recognizing-different-types-of-
magazines.html
LINK TO A PAST PAPER

https://drive.google.com/open?id=10sE6arRC1pQzCB0jZDtHo1m-7giB57YD

COURSE: DIPLOMA IN JOURNALISM

UNIT: MAGAZINE JOURNALISM

LECTURER: CYRUS KIPKEMEI

SESSION 3

TOPIC: MAGAZINE JOURNALISM

OBJECTIVE:

By the end of the session, the trainee should be able to:

Explain the organization of a magazine.

State and explain the roles of magazine staffs

ORGANIZATION AND STAFF

Creating a successful magazine is a joint team effort. The following

are the major departments of magazine journalism:

Editorial Department
Functions-

Magazines hire editors to make sure that each issue is completed

and released on time. The editors select articles, edit them and
arrange them on the page.

• They generally do not write articles; however, they monitor and

revise the content of articles that are written by staff or freelance
writers.

• They may also write headlines and captions and choose

photographs to accompany the articles. Editorial assistants are
responsible for answering letters, doing research, fact-checking and
screening pieces submitted to the magazine. The final approval of
the magazine is the responsibility of the editor-in-chief, who also
may contribute editorials, short essays that express the magazine's
point of view on current subjects of interest.

Editor in Chief

The chief editor oversees the whole content and makes sure the
flow of the magazine is seamless. As a top editor, this person is
responsible for making all the final decisions and is constantly
getting reports from the managing editor, creative director and the
executive editor.

Managing Editor

The managing editor is second highest to the editor in chief and is

usually in charge of enforcing deadlines, following the editorial
calendar and making sure daily tasks are being accomplished by
each person, though responsibilities differ from publication to
publication. Some managing editors also plan the budget for the
magazine. The managing editor is in charge of producing each issue
of the magazine. Not only does this person need to stay on top of
the production of the upcoming issue, but he or she must also think
several issues ahead. A Christmas issue, for instance, should be
planned during the summer.

Creative Director

The creative director is in charge of the visual aspect of the

magazine and is constantly communicating back and forth with the
chief editor. His or her main task is in creating cover concepts and
directing photo shoots. This vision is then translated into the layout
by the art director, who works in conjunction with the photo editor.

Executive Editor

The executive editor selects the writers, assigns them stories and
edits their articles. He or she usually writes the larger stories and
the cover headlines that must be short, sweet and catchy. However,
in larger magazines, the executive editor may have a staff of editors
to oversee such as the features editor and a specializing editor (e.g.,
fashion or technology).

QUESTION: What are the functions of an editor in magazine

production?

Editor

The editor is in charge of the non-advertising content of the

magazine. The editor’s job is to see that the magazine stays true to
its vision so that it will continue to appeal to subscribers and
advertisers.

Section editor

A section editor is in charge of the staff of a section of the magazine.

This editor makes assignments and controls the budget of the
section and is responsible for what the section produces. Depending
on its content and organization, a magazine may have several
sections.

Design editor

The design editor, sometimes called art director, is in charge of the

overall look of the magazine. This editor may have several designers
or artists working in the section to lay out the magazine. One of the
most important jobs of the design editor is to commission the cover
of a magazine – often done by a freelance artist.

Online editor

This person is in charge of the web site of the magazine. Magazine

web sites are used not only to display a magazine’s editorial content
but also to attract and sign up subscribers.

Writers/contributing editors

These people are paid staff members and are expected to produce
certain kinds of copy and articles for each issue of the magazine.
Most magazines have relatively free writers on staff.

Copy Editor

A copy editor is one of the few who reads the magazine thoroughly
from cover to cover. He or she makes sure the publication has no
errors in spelling or grammar and that there is no libel. The
copyeditor is charged with reading all of the editorial copy that
appears in the magazine to make sure it is properly written and
factually correct.

Assistants

An editorial assistant writes small sections, answers calls, makes the

coffee and does whatever the editor assigns on a day-to-day basis.
An assistant editor has more experience, is given more
responsibilities and gets paid higher but is still in the assisting role.

ROLE OF THE EDITOR

1) He decides what will appear in the magazine’s editorial pages.

2) He keeps the words and images in the magazine consistent with

the magazine’s editorial mission.

3) His main concern is to satisfy the needs of the magazine’s

audience/readers.

4) His basic job is to oversee the editorial direction and content of

the magazine.

COURSE: DIPLOMA IN JOURNALISM

UNIT: MAGAZINE JOURNALISM.

LECTURER: CYRUS KIPKEMEI

SESSION 4

TOPIC: MAGAZINE JOURNALISM

By the end of the session, the trainee should be able to discuss the
business department of magazines and their role.

Business and Advertising Department

The Publisher

• A magazine publisher is the “general manager” for a magazine,

responsible for ensuring the financial health of the magazine.

• He is in charge of the business aspect of the magazine and is in

constant communication with the marketing/promotional director
and the associate publisher, who oversees the advertising.

• Some publishers also serve as editors, but it’s common for a

publisher to keep a “hands off” policy regarding editorial to prevent
conflict-of-interest—for example, to keep the desire to please
certain advertisers from influencing editorial content.

Associate Publisher

The associate publisher heads the advertising team, makes sales

strategies and reports the advertising numbers to the publisher.

Advertising Director

The ad director reports to the associate publisher and manages

account executives while networking, selling, finding leads and
training new recruits.

Account Executives

Account executives sell ad spaces by contacting media buyers and

decision makers in different companies and businesses. Their task is
to make creative proposals and convincing presentations to close as
many deals as possible.

Director of Finance

The director of finance oversees the financial aspect of the

magazine business and makes sure that expenses don’t exceed
revenue. Budgets are given to each department.
Marketing Director

The marketing director is in charge of creating value beyond the

page. He or she handles the market research and reports the trends,
gathers statistics and intelligence about the potential advertiser’s
brand and plans events and programs.

Circulation Director

The circulation director is in charge of the distribution of the

magazine, which includes subscriptions and newsstand
management. Part of the circulation department is the planning and
fulfillment manager who makes sure that the distribution goals are
successfully implemented.

ROLES OF THE PUBLISHER

1) He is the one responsible for all the operations of the magazine.

2) A strategist who sets challenging but achievable goals

3) He knows his readers and his advertisers.

4) Using possible resources (personal experience, market research,

current economic and business press)

5) Prime mover in the development of new products that can be

developed.

Consumer magazine

A consumer magazine (often referred to as a "periodical") is sold to

the general population. Consumer magazines have a wide audience
and a wide viewpoint. Many periodicals are written for a general
audience whose readers are not expected to have specialized
knowledge or training.

Special interest magazines

Special interest publications are magazines directed at specific
groups of readers with common interests. Most special interest
magazines cater to any specific interests or pursuits.

For instance, there are magazines that cover sports, news, fashion,
business, music and so on.

While some attempt to cover all aspects of a broad subject, others

are concerned only with a particular element of the general subject.

Sports Illustrated, for example, contains stories on practically any

sport, but Golf Digest carries only stories related to golf.

Other special interest publications find their audiences through

different demographic segmentations.

Specialized periodicals also serve most professions, industries and

organizations. Specialist magazines have been growing in recent
years, not only in terms of the number of readers, but also in the
increasing number of consumer advertisers who have seen the
benefits of the medium.

We can categorize some special interest magazines into the

following genres based on their content and target audience:

1) Sports magazines:

A sports magazine usually features articles or segments on sports

comprising of many photographic images and illustrations. The
common aim of any sports magazine is to take fans inside the game
and provide a mix of columns, features, and profiles of their favorite
players, scores, statistics and analysis of the game.

2) Environmental magazines.

The aim of this type of magazine is to provide information about

environmental issues and to share ideas about our very diverse and
dynamic environment so that readers can live more sustainable
lives and connect themselves to ideas and ongoing efforts for
change, as well as for building a more just and sustainable future.

3) Entertainment magazines
Entertainment magazines are usually glossy in nature and provide
entertainment. They usually carry news, original stories, scandals,
gossips and exclusives about celebrities in various entertainment
fields such as film, music, TV, fashion and related similar areas of
the industry.

4) Children's magazines

The main aim of children's magazines is to engage children to learn

new things through entertainment. The content is delivered through
colorful images, read-aloud stories and various fun activities that
both the parent as well as the child can enjoy together.

-Children's magazines are designed to set young children on the

path to become curious, creative, caring, confident individuals
through reading, thinking and learning with a wide variety of stories,
puzzles, crafts, games and activities.

5) Women's magazines.

The outlook of a women's magazine is an intelligent perspective that

is focused on personal style - the way women actually look, think
and dress. They reflect the spirit of today's woman -changing with
the times, moving with trends, styles and fashion.

6) Men’s magazines

Men's magazines bring the latest style tips, travel guides, lifestyle
improvement, offering advice and information useful to men on a
variety of topics including money, health, sports, cars, adventure,
politics and so on. Men's magazines use masculinity as a marketing
tool.
COURSE: DIPLOMA IN JOURNALISM

UNIT: MAGAZINE JOURNALISM

LECTURER: CYRUS KIPKEMEI

SESSION 5

TOPIC: MAGAZINE JOURNALISM

OBJECTIVE:

By the end of the session, the trainee should be able to discuss the
advertising and the types of advertisements.

ADVERTISING

An advertising department for a magazine is responsible for

generating revenue for the business by selling advertising space to
local or national organizations. To sell advertising space, the
department carries out a number of functions, including accepting
and processing orders from advertisers, creating advertisements,
providing media information to advertisers and advertising
agencies, helping businesses develop advertising plans and working
with editorial teams to develop features that will attract advertisers.

The magazine advertising department plays an important role in

helping businesses market their products and services.

Types of Magazine Advertising

Magazine advertising differs in many ways. Aside from the ad size,

there are different types, which include display ads, advertorials,
classifieds, and special promotions. Special promotions may include
products to be featured in an article or a series of articles on a
particular subject.

Special Ad Promotions

Special ad promotions is essentially a category with its own

subcategories. For example, a special ad containing different online
courses may be published alongside an article about learning
options abroad. These online educational institutions would be told
about the segment from an advertising sales rep and offered ad
space in that issue. A multitude of schools with the same target
audience could all be showcased, making the rates affordable and
allowing each institution the chance to reach a huge consumer
audience. Additionally, the author of an article can endorse specific
products and the companies would not have to pay for the mention
of their products.

Classifieds

Often found at the back of magazines, classified ad space typically

involves a few lines of text with contact information and a call to
action. A logo or small photograph is included. Classifieds are much
less expensive than full or partial page ads; however, readers may
not turn to the classified ad section and the business opportunity
may be risked.

Advertorials

This type of ad usually requires an entire page in the main part of a

magazine. Most advertorials are written in the form of a story with
an eye-catching headline. Magazine readers tend to gravitate
towards these ads as they can be confused with part of the content.
Due to laws in many areas about this confusion, words like
“advertisement” should be placed at the top of the ad.

Display Ads

Display ads are the most easily recognizable of all magazine ads.
They display products in a clear way along with some text. This type
of ad is more expensive than the others, and mainly national brands
are found on the pages of the most popular publication.

ADVANTAGES OF MAGAZINE ADVERTISEMENT

1. Magazine is something read leisurely. An advertisement,

therefore, in a magazine can create better impact.

2. The quality of paper used for magazines is superior. Therefore,

better visual effects can be created.

3. As the frequency of publication is less, each issue is read over a

fairly longer period of time. Therefore, it is possible to create a
lasting impression.

4. As there are different types of magazines, the advertiser can

select the particular magazine in which the product can be
advertised to create the desired impact. For example, products used
only by women can be advertised in magazines intended for
women..

5. As the size of the magazine is small, the number of

advertisements published in a page may be restricted to just one or
two. As a result, the advertisement gets prominence. This is in
contrast to newspapers where there is crowding of advertisements
in each page.

6. Advertisements in magazines brought out at national or

international level can give a very good impact particularly if the
product is marketed globally, e.g., electronic goods.

DISADVANTAGES OF MAGAZINE ADVERTISEMENT

1. In a newspaper, every page has some significance. For example,

the first page, the sports page, the centre page, the business review
page and so on. Therefore, the advertiser can select the page where
he thinks the advertisement should appear. Such an advantage is
not available in the case of magazines.
2. Unlike newspapers, magazines have only limited circulation. As a
result, the advertisement may not reach many.

3. The price of the magazine is generally high. Therefore, not many

people buy it.

4. These days, people hardly find time to go through even

newspapers. Only a very few people go through magazines.

5. Advertisements in magazines cannot be brought out as quickly as

it is possible in the case of newspapers.

6. For new product advertisement in magazine alone is not enough.

LINKS FOR FURTHER STUDY

https://www.google.com/search?
sxsrf=ALeKk01gbE4gEQqeI3ZNfyOn3DUtEqhogw:1591427583986&
q=types+of+magazine+advertising&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjz2NDe0e
zpAhXRDWMBHYSXBD0Q1QIoAHoECAsQAQ

REVISION QUESTIONS.

Define advertising

Discuss the types of ads in a magazine.

Compare newspaper adverts and magazine adverts.

LINK TO A PAST PAPER

https://drive.google.com/open?
id=1jSlyi163wjQ1TCOtwwKnCTK7Iu_eDBaF

COURSE: DIPLOMA IN JOURNALISM

UNIT: MAGAZINE JOURNALISM

LECTURER: CYRUS KIPKEMEI

SESSION 6

TOPIC: MAGAZINE JOURNALISM

OBJECTIVES

By the end of the session, the trainee should be able to:

 Discuss the circulation and sale department in

magazines.
 Discuss the marketing of a magazine.

CIRCULATION AND SALES

After the magazine pages are printed and dried, they will be folded,
trimmed, bound, and made ready for distribution. A circulation
director is responsible for getting the magazine into the hands of the
reader. Larger magazines have in-house circulation departments
that physically prepare the magazines for distribution. They also
maintain records of subscribers and their subscription status and are
responsible for fulfilling the agreement. Magazines are typically
labeled with mailing addresses and bar codes and presorted for
second-class mail. A circulation department must know the
requirements of the postal service and meet these specifications to
ensure a cost-efficient and timely delivery.

For single-copy sales, the circulation department may work with a

national distributor to get the printed issues to retailers. A large
magazine will ship copies to wholesalers throughout the country
provided by the national distributor. A wholesaler will record the
quantities that they send to retailers such as supermarkets and
convenience stores in their region. Any unsold copies will be
returned to the wholesaler, who notifies the national distributor. The
national distributor is able to provide sales figures for the publisher.

Maintaining Editorial Focus

The publisher and the editor must be in tune with their target
audience to create a successful magazine. The publisher relies on
sales figures and subscriptions as a source to track the progress of
the publication. A magazine may also conduct or commission reader
surveys, and it is the editor's job to use this information to ensure
that the editorial content reflects the preferences of readers.
Throughout the production process, the editor is responsible for
keeping the big picture in sight, and ensuring that the decisions
made will uphold the mission of the magazine.

Most magazines are classified as either consumer or trade

publications. Hundreds of categories exist in the consumer
classification. Each targets readers by where they live, their
interests, age, sex, income level, race, or any other defining
characteristics. A consumer magazine finds a niche that allows
advertisers to reach a target market that is relevant to their
product. Advertising is a large portion of consumer magazine
revenue, and these magazines are readily available to consumers.
Trade magazines target specific professions, and while advertising is
an important source of revenue, trade magazines can charge much
higher subscription rates than consumer magazines.
MARKETING

Marketing is the most important parts of any business activity. It is

what creates customers and generates income, guides the future
course of a business and defines whether it will be a success or a
failure. Without marketing, a business is like sitting in the dark and
expecting people to find you without a light. Marketing can be done
without a marketing team, but you cannot expect to go too far or
succeed by marketing on your own. For a sustained marketing
effort, a business of any size requires a dedicated marketing
department or a marketing team.

Marketing can be described as any activity that is carried on with

the specific purpose of conveying information about the use, quality
and value of a product or service in order to promote or sell the
product or service. Marketing is the way to announce the availability
of a commodity, service, idea or a brand to the world in such a way
that people are interested in it and wish to acquire it and use it. It
serves the purpose of plugging the gap between the public’s
requirement and the products that are available.

Importance Of A Marketing Department

The Marketing Department is the key to good marketing and sales.

It promotes and establishes a business in its niche, based on the
products or services the business is offering. It identifies the areas in
which the product fits and where the business should focus its
marketing strategy and, therefore, spend its budget for the
maximum coverage and results. The marketing department helps a
business to do the following:

 Build relationship with the audience: Creates awareness of

the business and its products as well as provide inputs that
create interest for the audience. It brings in new customers
and creates new business opportunities for the enterprise.
 Involve the customer: It engages existing customers, tries to
understand them and hear what they have to say. It monitors
the competition, creates new ideas, identifies outlets, plans the
strategy to involve customers and retain them.
  Generate income: Finally, the aim of the marketing
department is to generate revenue. All its activities are aimed
at broadening the customer base and finding opportunities that
would create more revenue for the enterprise.

Tools of the marketing department

In order to succeed in its aim of creating market awareness for the

business and its products, the marketing department requires some
tools to facilitate its work. It needs to discover what the consumers
want or require and provide them with it. This requires that the
marketing department has a proper direction and strategy at its
disposal to study the market, create the right product, and promote
the product and the brand, towards the final aim of developing the
business and enhancing the value of the business. The tools that are
employed by the marketing team are:

 Marketing Research

Marketing department is responsible for all marketing research.

Research is essential to understand the consumer needs and also to
identify the market for the products that the company hopes to sell.
Marketing research also helps to identify the strengths and
weaknesses of the business and its competitors. This eventually
helps a business to eliminate its weakness, work upon its strength
and to exploit the weaknesses of the competitors to wean away the
customers from the competitors. The entire enterprise benefits from
market research and the insights it generates.

 Product Development

Marketing department helps to create products that customers need

or want and improve upon the ones that already exist to create
better value for the customers. It is the job of the marketing
department to analyze the sales of products already in the market,
look for opportunities to introduce new products where there are
gaps or change and improve products that are hard to sell.
Marketing personnel provides information to product development
team about the customer preferences, so that new products can be
developed based on the customer insight provided by the marketing
team. The marketing team is also responsible for determining the
price of a product based on its research and for launching the
product into the market.

 Advertising and Promotional Campaigning

Once the enterprise has a product to sell, it is the responsibility of

the Marketing Department to promote the product and the brand.
This will be performed through the help of the creative team by
creating campaigns, events, advertisements, as well as promotional
material. Such promotional material is used to promote the product,
services, and brand to the public in order to create awareness and
to convert prospects into customers. The marketing department is
provided with a budget for promotion, and it has to design its
promotional activities within the budget. The marketing department
also manages the social media marketing for businesses. It does so
with the help of social media experts who design and implement the
strategy to promote the business and its product on the internet,
create a buzz and utilize that buzz to attract customers and improve
sales.

 Business Development

In order to create new business, marketing and sales departments

have to work together. The marketing team devises ways to engage
prospects. This may be facilitated through advertisements in the
media or internet via the website or the social media. It uses
information and incentives to keep the prospects interested and
provides an opportunity for the sales department to convince the
prospect to buy the product. So the marketing department creates
or generates leads for the sales department to pursue. Not all leads
convert to customers. The process of lead generation and creating
new marketing avenues is a continuous process, and the marketing
department is responsible for it.

Responsibilities of a marketing department

Marketing department has a huge responsibility of making a

business viable and profitable. It needs to do this by creating
awareness, engaging customers, researching competitors and their
product, preparing promotional activities and materials and a whole
host of other responsibilities.

1. Applying customer-centric approach

The Marketing Department needs to have a relationship with the

customer so that they can understand what the customers’ demand
from the business and thus aim to meet those demands. Customer
feedback is an important part of marketing and companies need to
conduct surveys to get the feedback from customers and prospects.

1. Keeping up with the competition

The marketing department is also responsible for researching the

competition and keeping up with them to know what they are doing,
which products they are launching, what are the weaknesses of the
competitors and how to avoid making the same mistakes as the
competitors. It is also essential to know how the company is placed
in relation to its competitors, why the customers prefer the other
companies, what customers the competitors target and the
relationship they have with their customers. Once all this
information is available then the marketing department can analyze
it and create a better marketing and customer relation strategy for
the company.

1. Branding
A brand is the identity of a company. It is the practice of creating a
name, design or symbol that denotes a particular product or
business and makes it stand apart from other similar products or
businesses. Branding helps to enhance the image of a business and
make it more credible, elicit an emotionally positive response from
the audience, motivates the audience to buy and creates loyalty for
the brand and its products. It is the duty of the marketing
department to create and promote a brand through images, words,
ideas, and promises of benefits to the customer. The message needs
to be delivered to the audience by all the members of the enterprise
consistently and frequently.

1. Finding the Right Partners

The marketing department of all organizations cannot be extensive

enough to handle all the marketing needs of the organization. In
order to bring the full range of marketing tools and expertise to a
business, it is often essential to hire specific expertise and people
from outside the organization. It is essential to find the right
partners who understand the philosophy and needs of the
organization. It is the work of the marketing department to identify,
hire and oversee these partners to bring best value to the business.
These strategic partners could be advertising agencies to create and
manage advertising campaigns, social media experts to manage the
social media marketing side of the business, web designers, data
analysts, copywriters, and other such people.

1. Being creative and innovative

The marketing department needs to be on its toes at all times. It is

the responsibility of the marketing department to come up with
creative ideas, whether it is for promotional purposes or to create a
new product. Feedback and ideas from the marketing team are
responsible for policy decisions regarding products, such as whether
to create new products or improve the old one. It also needs to
come up with creative ways to position the brand and the product to
create additional revenue for the company. In order to fulfill all its
responsibilities, the marketing department often takes the help of
outside partners.

1. Communicating with other departments

One of the key responsibilities of the marketing department is to
create a channel of communication with all the other departments
within an organization. It has to familiarize all the employees with
the marketing ethics, company’s philosophy, and customer
relationship. It can do so by conducting workshops, training sessions
and talks or presentation regarding customer handling and brand
awareness.

1. Budgeting

Marketing departments work on budgets. They are given a certain

amount of money to spend upon creating a presence for the
company or product in the market. It is the responsibility of the
marketing department to estimate the cost of all the marketing
activities it intends to carry out and prepare a budget that would
use the allocated amount of money most efficiently. It is essential
that the marketing personnel stick to the budget.

1. Being aware of ROI (return on investment)

The marketing department needs to be aware of the concept of

return on investment. Since all marketing activities cost money, the
concept of ROI can help the marketing team to create a marketing
strategy that gives the highest exposure for the least amount of
money spent. They should constantly monitor themselves and
evaluate whether the strategies that have been used have yielded
the desired benefit or not, and what was the cost of the strategy in
terms of time, effort, and most importantly money.

1. Managing Strategy

Managing the key activities of a business to work together is

another responsibility of the marketing department. It is the duty of
the marketing department to create and implement strategies that
would enhance the business activities of the enterprise.

10. Managing Research

Managing research for the company is also the duty of the

marketing department. This includes research about the products,
marketing strategies, strengths and customers of the competitors in
comparison to that of the organization. The Marketing Department
also provides inputs regarding the pricing of a product.

11. Managing Events

Managing events also comes within the scope of responsibilities of

the marketing department. This including promotional events,
exhibitions, seminars, training sessions, trade meetings,
conventions, etc.

We can thus see that the marketing department is essential not only
for positioning and promoting a product but also for providing vital
information to the organization about all aspects of the business. It
is the key department of any organization and cannot be dispensed
with. Even in tough times, a business cannot do away with the
marketing department. On the other hand, marketing department
becomes the key player to pull a business out of troubles and set it
back on the path to profitability.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Discuss the roles of circulation and sales department.

LINKS TO FURTHER STUDY

https://www.slideshare.net/shalinipandey77985/circulation-
management

https://books.google.co.ke/books?
id=7sr6CAAAQBAJ&pg=PA77&lpg=PA77&dq=CIRCULATION+AND+S
ALES+DEPARTMENT+IN+MAGAZINES&source=bl&ots=rR8cgcsLgi&
sig=ACfU3U2XR2xD6BSFVlOH8IajraS9f1jaYQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2a
hUKEwjAkOHL5fHpAhWLERQKHWhJAGcQ6AEwD3oECA0QAQ
LINK TO A PAST PAPER

https://drive.google.com/open?id=10sE6arRC1pQzCB0jZDtHo1m-
7giB57YD

COURSE: DIPLOMA IN JOURNALISM

UNIT: MAGAZINE JOURNALISM

LECTURER: CYRUS KIPKEMEI

SESSION 7

TOPIC: TYPES OF MAGAZINES.

OBJECTIVES

By the end of this session, the trainee should be able to discuss

consumer magazines and business to business magazines.

CONSUMER

A consumer publication is a magazine or publication intended for the

general reading public — typically for readers interested in spending
leisure time exploring myriad topics. You'll find these general
interest publications at your local supermarkets, bookstores and
newsstands.

A consumer magazine (often referred to as a "periodical") is sold to

the general population. Consumer magazines are also called
"glossies" (especially by those in the publishing world) because
these magazines are usually printed on glossy paper.

When the general public think about magazines, they usually have
consumer titles in mind. They think of Radio
Times, or FHM, or Cosmopolitan: they don’t think of Containerisation
International. At the last count, in the year 2001, there were 3,120
consumer titles published in the UK. In the same year, about 400
were launched, and at least 100 closed: it is hard to be precise,
since not all closures are announced.

Editorial technology has made it cheaper and quicker to create new

magazines, but it is no easier to make them thrive. On one day in
November 2001, IPC Media closed six titles, ranging from Women’s
Journal, a 74-year-old magazine that had slowly and inexorably lost
its place in the market, to Your Life, a women’s weekly that was less
than a year old.

Titles that die—and every closure is a kind of death to those

involved with it —sometimes succumb to the economic climate. The
year 2001 was disastrous, because of the collapse of the ‘dot-com’
Internet economy. That took with it not only most of the magazines’
online ‘portal’ sites, and many of the magazines that commented
upon the online world, but also a lot of advertising from more
general titles.

But other titles die because of changes in society itself. In the years
when house prices slumped, people opted to make the best of what
they had, and home interest magazines boomed. When the housing
market picked up, people dreamed of new homes, lost interest in
decorating, and previously successful magazines such as Homes &
Ideas and Garden Inspirations were quietly put to sleep. We may like
the idea of magazines that span the centuries, and many titles
successfully renew themselves to adapt to changes in society, but
publishers and editors are also learning to make the most of short-
term enthusiasms. That means accepting that titles will be born, but
also that they will die.

In business magazines, the success of a publishing venture reflects

entirely the buoyancy of that sector within a nation’s economy. New
technologies and industries require new magazines. Shrinking
industries are less attractive to publishers. Traditionally, business
publishing has been practised in large houses offering many titles:
as one industry goes into a temporary slump, another enjoys a
boom. The titles balance one another out. But increasingly
publishers target an industry only while the prospects are good:
when it slumps, they turn elsewhere.

In the consumer sector, most of this kind of ‘churn’ takes place

within what is called the ‘specialist’ area. Consumer magazines are
often divided into ‘general’ and ‘specialist’ titles. True ‘general
interest’ magazines were the heart of the magazine industry until
the 1950s. Titles like Titbits or Picture Post offered something for
everyone: news, features, fiction sometimes, puzzles and games.
They ceased to exist when television began providing information
and entertainment to a mass family audience. They continue to
thrive on the Continent, but here they live on in two pale shadows.
The first is the newspaper colour supplement, which, slightly remote
from economic pressures, can afford to be interesting but not
essential reading. The other is the magazine about television itself:
What’s On TV, Radio Times and the rest see the world through the
eyes of television, but that does give them broad coverage. It also
makes them among the most successful magazines that people are
prepared to pay for: they currently stand first and third in circulation
terms.

Most ‘general’ consumer magazines are not general at all, but

focused on a broad segment of society. They are for women or men
in a particular age group and social bracket, or they are for people
with a dominant interest in, say, current affairs or popular science.
‘Specialist’ titles, on the other hand, are for people with sharply
defined hobbies and pursuits, often involving the purchase of
expensive kit. This is the world inhabited by MacUser, Fast Ford,
Classic Stitches and more than 3,000 other magazines: there are
fewer than 100 ‘general’ titles. The most successful specialist
magazine is currently BBC Gardeners’ World, selling 344,000 copies.

Some specialist pursuits are more short-lived than others. Publishers

who know this area, and who can operate at speed, aim to catch
enthusiasms before they peak and leave them before they fizzle out.
There are plenty of examples: skateboarding, which comes and
goes; mountain-biking; particular computer games ‘consoles’;
Beanie Babies. While some specialist areas will always be with us—
the major sports, home interests, cars, real babies— others will not.
So if your career takes you into more volatile areas, you will need to
build up solid editorial skills as a backup to your obvious enthusiasm
for the subject matter. You have to be adaptable.

General consumer magazines find their readers from a broader

sweep of the population and by subtler means. If you call your
magazine Fast Ford and have a picture of a hot Escort RS Turbo on
the front, no one is going to look inside for relationship advice. But
general magazines can’t always pull in their target readers so
directly. They have to find them and keep them through subtleties
of design, balance of content and tone of voice. Readers of women’s
magazines, while increasingly volatile in their reading habits, will
usually settle on a title or group of titles that appeals to them. The
editor has to create that appeal and sustain it, month after month,
holding on to that group while deterring others who might weaken
the sense of community. And yet, in terms of age, income and so
on, the readers and non-readers may be exactly the same.

BUSINESS TO BUSINESS

Business to business magazines are different to consumer

magazines because the former focuses on content specifically for
those in the niche. The latter focuses on a larger, more diverse
audience. With the rise of digital content becoming more
mainstream, business to business magazines, are succeeding in the
digital space.

Business-to-business’ magazines used to be called ‘trade and

technical’. In 2001, there were 5,342 business titles in the UK
(BRAD), a slight reduction on the high point a couple of years
previously, and nearly double the number of consumer titles.
Between them they earned nearly £1,300 million in advertising—
more than 10 per cent of the total spent on all forms of advertising
in the UK. Despite this, their profile outside the industry is low,
because few of them appear on bookstalls.

They sell only £400 million worth of copies a year, and most of those
are by postal subscription. Aside from advertising, they earn a great
deal of money from exhibitions, awards, conferences and a whole
range of spin-off publications, including directories, CD-ROMs,
sponsored supplements and so on. Many also sell their subscription
lists to advertisers. In this way, they have learned to exploit their
relationships with their readers to the full without, in many cases,
taking any money off them. As an editor of a business title, you will
need to learn to love these ‘brand extensions’, to use the jargon.

There is no such thing as a typical business-to-business magazine,

any more than there is a typical business. And there are few
industries which do not boast at least one title: there are currently
at least 200 about agriculture, forestry and fishing, and more than
600 dealing with various aspects of medicine and health. Some 95
per cent of people in business and industry say they read at least
one business magazine: the average person reads four.

At one end of the scale come glossy general publications aimed at a

broad range of people working in business. Titles such as The
Economist and Management Today have more in common with
consumer magazines than with much of the business press, and are
usually edited by people with wide journalistic experience both
within and outside the business market. At the other extreme come
technical titles aimed at the specifiers and purchasers of particular
items of equipment: Control & Instrumentation and Process
Equipment News. Their editors and journalists will almost invariably
have had some experience in the industry.

In between come all the rest. Some magazines are ‘industry’

orientated, designed to appeal to a range of people within that
sector, while others direct themselves at particular professions
within an industry or towards particular technical interests. Weeklies
will often have a broad appeal within, say, the computing or
advertising industry. Monthlies tend to define themselves more
narrowly, to particular professional groups.

There are three broad types of circulation and each has an effect on
a magazine’s identity. About 30 per cent of commercial business
magazines have a cover price, and are bought either on the
bookstall or by subscription; the remainder are distributed free to
qualifying readers once they have been identified as useful to
advertisers and placed on a mailing list. There are also institutional
magazines, where distribution comes as part of the membership of
some professional or learned society.
When paid-for magazines and controlled-circulation titles are
battling in the same market, they will have subtly different
objectives. Controlled-circulation magazines survive by convincing
their advertisers that they are being read. This is no mean feat:
those working in fields that advertisers find lucrative are often
inundated with free publications. Increasing circulation, which drives
paid-for magazines, will not help controlled-circulation magazines. It
can only be achieved by altering the qualification criteria and
increasing the size of the mailing list: that may simply make the
magazine less well targeted and hence less interesting to
advertisers.

Paid-for magazines need solid sales, both for circulation income and
to keep advertising rates high. One editorial consequence of this is
that paid-for magazines aim to be ‘journals of record’, aiming at
longevity and sobriety. They want people to renew their
subscriptions automatically, and file copies on the shelves behind
the managing director’s desk. Controlled-circulation titles, in
contrast, need to be picked up, read and remembered, which means
they tend to go for hard news and impact. Research must
demonstrate to advertisers that these titles are not only seen but
read with close attention.

Institutional magazines present a different set of problems. There

the close relationship with the parent organisation may create
difficulties for the editor’s freedom of action. Publishing objectives
should always be clear, but in this case they may not be. Is the
magazine a service for the reader, or a way of making money for the
institution, or some combination of both?

The business press’ readers can be very demanding. The individual

industrial communities served are small, and relationships both with
the title and with personalities, can be intense and long-lasting.
Editors will be expected to play a role in that community in a way
that does not arise for those working in consumer magazines.

One obvious difficulty is that editors will have to publish articles

about their advertisers. Inevitably, some of these will be negative.
This is a tricky business which will be looked at in more detail later.
If your magazine is about chemistry, and chemical companies are
your advertisers, you can expect trouble. It helps when advertisers
have a more oblique relationship with the subject matter: magazines
for family doctors are full of adverts for anti-depressants, but in
general the editorial stays off the topic.

In the strictly scientific field, different editorial objectives and

procedures operate: papers are subject to searching ‘peer review’
before being published, to ensure their acceptability, and without
exception the journals are edited by those who share the vocabulary
and expertise of their readers and writers. Nonetheless, while
‘journalistic’ values may be inappropriate, editorial skills will always
be necessary.

Common background, interests and language between editor and

readers will always provide a head start. But many editors, if not
most, find themselves running titles with which they have no natural
empathy. Some consider that to represent true professionalism. But
it is always second-best. In general consumer magazines, especially,
editors operate by instinct more than calculation.

REVISION QUESTIONS

Discuss the characteristic of business to business magazines.

Differentiate between consumer and business to business magazine.

LINKS FOR FURTHER STUDY

https://www.scholarshipsads.com/magazine-journalism-types-of-
magazine/

https://yc.libguides.com/infobits/types-of-magazines-newspapers

LINK TO A PAST PAPER

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1WWB2LjlJFz07B5ArSl90rOP1GK-
XpVFw
COURSE: DIPLOMA IN JOURNALISM

UNIT: MAGAZINE JOURNALISM

LECTURER: CYRUS KIPKEMEI

SESSION: 8

TOPIC: TYPES OF NEWSPAPER

3: NEWSPAPER SUPPLEMENT AND MAGAZINES

Newspaper supplement is printed materials which has news context

and is distributed free with newspaper. Newspaper supplement has
softer news than news in main newspaper.

Subtopic 4: SPECIAL INTEREST

What makes special interest magazines special is that they call to

specific audiences, circulating information all over the world. With
the turn of the century, special interest magazines became
extremely popular in the computer environment, helping expand the
knowledge of users and readers. Subscriptions to these magazines
have grown substantially throughout time as audiences seek
specialized material for their interests.

Special interest publications are magazines directed at specific

groups of readers with common interests. Most special interest
magazines cater to any specific interests or pursuits. For instance,
there are magazines that cover sports, news, fashion, business,
music and so on. While some attempt to cover all aspects of abroad
subject, others are concerned only with a particular element of the
general subject. Sports Illustrated, for example, contains stories on
practically any sport, but Golf Digest carries only stories related to
golf. Other special interest publications find their audiences through
different demographic segmentations.

Specialist magazines have been growing in recent years, not only in

terms of the number of readers, but also in the increasing number of
consumer advertisers who have seen the benefits of the medium.
Circulation varies for a special interest magazine. But, even though
the circulation is small, it is usually stable over the short term and
offers an advertiser a well-defined market. Obviously, for a specialist
product, there is no better place to advertise than in a magazine
which concerns itself directly with the product area, such as
gardening or photography.

Subtopic 5: ACADEMIC JOURNALS

An academic or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which

scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published.
Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for
the presentation, scrutiny, and discussion of research. They are
usually peer-reviewed or refereed.

Content typically takes the form of articles presenting original

research, review articles, and book reviews. The purpose of an
academic journal, according to Henry Oldenburg (the first editor of
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society), is to give
researchers a venue to "impart their knowledge to one another, and
contribute what they can to the Grand design of improving natural
knowledge, and perfecting all Philosophical Arts, and Sciences.

There are two kinds of article or paper submissions in academia:

solicited, where an individual has been invited to submit work either
through direct contact or through a general submissions call, and
unsolicited, where an individual submits a work for potential
publication without directly being asked to do so. Upon receipt of a
submitted article, editors at the journal determine whether to reject
the submission outright or begin the process of peer review. In the
latter case, the submission becomes subject to review by outside
scholars of the editor's choosing who typically remain anonymous.
The number of these peer reviewers (or "referees") varies according
to each journal's editorial practice – typically, no fewer than two,
though sometimes three or more, experts in the subject matter of
the article produce reports upon the content, style, and other
factors, which inform the editors' publication decisions. Though
these reports are generally confidential, some journals and
publishers also practice public peer review. The editors either
choose to reject the article, ask for a revision and resubmission, or
accept the article for publication. Even accepted articles are often
subjected to further (sometimes considerable) editing by journal
editorial staff before they appear in print. The peer review can take
from several weeks to several months.

Many academic journals are subsidized by universities or

professional organizations, and do not exist to make a profit.
However, they often accept advertising, page and image charges
from authors to pay for production costs. On the other hand, some
journals are produced by commercial publishers who do make a
profit by charging subscriptions to individuals and libraries. They
may also sell all of their journals in discipline-specific collections or a
variety of other packages.

Journal editors tend to have other professional responsibilities, most

often as teaching professors. In the case of the largest journals,
there are paid staff assisting in the editing. The production of the
journals is almost always done by publisher-paid staff. Humanities
and social science academic journals are usually subsidized by
universities or professional organization.

The cost and value proposition of subscription to academic journals

is being continuously re-assessed by institutions worldwide. In the
context of the big deal cancellations by several library systems in
the world, data analysis tools like Unpaywall Journals are used by
libraries to estimate the specific cost and value of the various
options: libraries can avoid subscriptions for materials already
served by instant open access via open archives like PubMed
Central.
ASSIGNMENT

Explain the difference between newspaper supplements and

magazines.

LINK FOR FURTHER STUDY

https://www.docsity.com/en/magazine-and-types-of-magazines-
magzine-journalism-lecture-handout/179609/

LINK TO A PAST PAPER

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1o8EHNx9Xuum0yfS-9L-
GspRZenkKjW8S

COURSE: DIPLOMA IN JOURNALISM.

UNIT: MAGAZINE JOURNALISM

LECTURER: CYRUS KIPKEMEI

SESSION 9

TOPIC: INTERVIEWING
OBJECTIVE

By the end of the session, the trainee should be able to

discuss the process of activities in planning for an interview.

INTRODUCTION

An interview is a special kind of conversation. It is a conversation

between a journalist and a person who has facts or opinions which
are likely to be newsworthy.

Interviewing is a process that takes a number of stages. These

stages include; planning, conducting and follow up.

PLANNING AN INTERVIEW

One of the hardest skills for a young reporter to master is

interviewing. It takes preparation and persistence to conduct a good
interview.

Step 1: Research

The only way to come up with good questions is to know everything

there is to know about your subject and the topic.

Step 2: Contact the Person You Wish to Interview

Ask when a good time would be to do the interview. Be polite. Say

"please" and "thank you." Try to set up the interview in person. If
this isn't possible, then set up a phone interview.

Step 3: Read Over Your Research and Brainstorm a List

questions

The more specific your questions are, the better. And never ask
questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no. Make your
interviewee talk.
Be sure to write all your questions down in a notebook, then practice
asking them with a partner. Become very familiar with your
questions before you go into the interview.

Step 4: Come Prepared

You will want to bring:

 A pen
 A notebook
 A list of good questions
 A recording device (always ask permission before recording an
interview)

Step 5: Be on Time

Arrive at your interview with plenty of time to spare. If you’ve never

been to the place where your interview is taking place, go early and
scout it out. There is nothing more unprofessional than a reporter
who is late.

You can also use the time you are waiting to make notes about the
surroundings. You won’t remember details later, so write them
down.

Step 6: Conduct Your Interview in an Organized, Timely

Manner

During the interview:

 Be courteous to your subject.

 Always take time to ask for an explanation about things you
don't understand.
 Don’t be afraid of uncomfortable silences and pauses.
 Let the interview take its natural course.
 Look the person in the eye when asking questions.
 Always listen carefully to the answers. Each answer could lead
to more questions or include an answer to a question you
haven’t asked yet. Don't ask a question that has already been
answered. Your subject will know you weren't listening and be
insulted.
  Don't read through your questions one right after another like
you can't wait to be finished. Conduct your interview like a
conversation. One question should lead naturally into another.
If you are LISTENING to the answers this will come naturally.
 Also, take notes on what the person looked like, what the
person was wearing, where he or she sat. If the interview is in
an office, make notes of what is on the walls and on the desk.
The objects people surround themselves with hold important
clues to their personalities. Ask about any object that interests
you. You’ll find some good stories.

Step 7: Even If You Are Recording an Interview, Take Notes

Don't try to write every word said. It will slow down the interview.
Just take down the highlights.

After the interview, while the details are still fresh in your mind,
write everything down you can remember about the person you
interviewed. Don’t forget to make note of the sounds in the
background. Take note of what was happening around you. Write it
all down as soon as possible.

At home, expand your notes by following up on things you learned

in your interview with more research.

Step 8: Review Your Research and Your Interview Notes

Circle or highlight quotations that you think will be good for your
article. Now you're ready to begin writing.

Revision question.

Mr McCarthy is planning to conduct an interview with a prominent

footballer whom he wants to feature in his up-coming edition of The
Crest Magazine, discuss some of the things that he should do while
planning the interview.
LINK TO FURTHER STUDY.

https://www.rev.com/blog/journalist-interview-tips

LINK TO A PAST PAPER

https://drive.google.com/open?
id=1jSlyi163wjQ1TCOtwwKnCTK7Iu_eDBaF

COURSE: DIPLOMA IN JOURNALISM

UNIT: MAGAZINE JOURNALISM

LECTURER: CYRUS KIPKEMEI

SESSION 10

TOPIC: INTERVIEWING

OBJECTIVES.

By the end of the session, the trainee should be able to:

Get the best from the interviewee.

Discuss how to set the right agenda and ask the right
questions.

GETTING THE BEST FROM AN INTERVIEWEE

Interviews may be conversational, but they are not casual
conversations. Organization is essential, as is attention to detail and
a firm will. The process also begins well before you talk with the
other person, be it face to face, on the telephone or over the
Internet. The intensity of your preparations may vary depending on
the gravity and importance of the interview.

The first thing to determine is your goals: Do you want to obtain

specific information? If so, what? Even if you’re working on a long-
term project and are just interested in “learning more,” do your best
to determine what you’d like to learn. Based on your goals, compile
a list of questions you’d like to ask. They can be highly specific

Ensure that your list also includes the most basic questions: Is the
interview on the record? Even if you know the subject’s name (and
presumably you do), you should always ask and confirm the
spelling; if appropriate, get the name of his or her organization and
title. If there’s any other basic information you need for the article —
say, if it’s on young entrepreneurs born in your state, you’ll need to
ask his or her birthplace and age — make sure those questions are
on the list.

Once you’ve got your list of targeted questions ready, turn them
into a list of general topics that you will have in front of you for the
interview. Ultimately, it’s better to work with a topics list rather than
a series of carefully worded questions. You should strive to create a
natural, though purposeful, conversation.

Gather the tools of the trade: voice or video recorder (make sure it’s
fully charged and tested; if you’re really cautious, you can bring a
backup unit), reporter’s notebook, pen or pencil (always carry a
backup), laptop. If the interview is taking place in person and you
have business cards, bring some with you.

If you’re having to deal with press officers or public relations people

to arrange the interview, they may ask you for a list of topics you
want to cover. While you can give them a general sense of topics,
resist agreeing that you will stick only to those topics and definitely
don’t send the questions you’ve compiled. Reserve your right to ask
any question that you deem relevant during the interview itself.
Special cases: The need for more homework

If the interviewee is someone whom you are seeking out because of

his or her particular position or authoritative knowledge of a
situation (the deputy transportation commissioner, the CFO of a
company, etc.), you need to put in sufficient time researching
previous news articles written about that person and other relevant
background. Come informed — in many ways, a journalist is the one
person in the community who represents only the public interest
and whose job it is to give voice to collective concerns. It may be the
only time an official has to be accountable for certain things, and it
is in this way that journalists play a special role — with special
responsibilities and burdens — in a democracy.

Another special case are experts whose views you seek to deepen a
story. The same rule applies there: Prepare, prepare, prepare. The
following are key things to keep in mind for these two special
classes of sources:

Academics and experts

For research experts, don’t just show up or call to “get a quote”; do

enough reading of his or her materials that you show respect and
can speak a little of the expert’s professional language. Don’t waste
someone’s time with factual questions that you should really know
yourself. An example of a sub-par question would be asking a
political scientist: “How many electoral votes does our state have?”
An example of a good question might be: “What factors might
influence the vote in our state?” That doesn’t mean you can’t ask
simple, direct questions; just ensure they aren’t things you could
learn on your own perfectly easily.

Though it is not good professional practice to give questions in

advance to sources such as public officials, with experts you may
want to email some general questions before speaking on the phone
or in person. Help them educate you. Most experts’ Web pages
feature links to their work; for academics, also search Google
Scholar and other databases. Try to read any primary articles and
research he or she has authored (at least be familiar with the
subjects and extent) that directly relate to your subject of interest.
For academic papers, try to at least read the introduction and
conclusion, even if the methods section is heavily statistical. Know
that most papers, at their root, are simply trying to figure out the
logical relationship between several variables and test a hypothesis
— try not to be intimidated. If the research is what you’re interested
in, email other academics cited in the paper and ask them what they
think of the findings.

Remember that many experts can be skeptical of journalists

because of the media’s general tendency to oversimplify. Show
them you know the subject matter and care enough to read in
depth. By doing so, you may earn a trusted source who can help you
in the future. You will almost certainly get better answers and fresh
angles for further stories.

Public officials and newsmakers

When interviewing public officials and people in the news, know the
job that he or she does — what their powers, limits and constraints
are. Also come to the interview with a sense of his or her agenda. Is
the person simply a good public servant? Running for higher office?
Wants to clear the record on some specific point? Good interviews
with public officials are directed but conversational. Remember, too,
that one reason people want to have a conversation with a reporter
is to learn things they may not know. As a reporter, you talk to
people in the community that officials and newsmakers don’t. Many
good interviews involve a two-way exchange in which both parties
learn something. Don’t give up your professional objectivity, but
recognize that you are dealing with human beings who are often just
as curious as you are.

Above all, educate yourself so that you do not walk into an interview
unaware of some previous controversial public issue or high-profile
accomplishment or failure that serves as important context. Once an
official realizes your ignorance, it would be very easy for him or her
to sidestep questions or give easy answers, if that’s what he or she
wants to do. You may want to do some advance background
interviews with others — especially those who may disagree with
your primary interview subject — about key areas of concern.

High-level persons typically have limited time in their schedule, so

you’ll want to plan your interview questions very carefully.
Remember that you can ask for things to be put on the record at the
end of the interview or later on; and you can always ask if there is
another way you can confirm information, such as a public record
that says the same thing. As mentioned, some of the most useful
things that you can come away with are documents, so ask if there
are reports, spreadsheets, papers, transcripts, etc. that you can take
or photocopy that might help your story. In the heat of an interview,
it is not always easy to figure out what is important; but documents
can be analyzed and studied afterward, when you have time to
think.

If you are planning to ask difficult and uncomfortable questions,

structure your questions so that the tougher ones come last,
knowing that, sometimes, you may be asked to leave. And prepare
to follow up even if things get tense. Maintain your composure.
Frame the question so that it does not become a debate and
consider triangulating so it does not become personal: For example,
use the phrasing “Your critics have said… What do you say?”

Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Ron Suskind advises

reporters about interviews as follows: “Be honest; and always say,
‘Please explain this to me in words so I can understand it.’ People
live inside a lexicon. Lexicons often carry with them judgments.
We’re very tribal…. Tribes develop language, and I am always wary
of that. When I say, ‘Explain that to me in terms I can understand,’
then sources start to get more fundamental and elemental.”

Subtopic 3: SETTING THE RIGHT AGENDA AND THE RIGHT

QUESTIONS
Careful preparation leads the interviewer to a few themes for the
interview, and these, in turn, suggest questions to be asked. But
before the specific questions are put to the interviewee, a few
housekeeping details usually are attended to, vital data questions.
For some interviews, these may involve age, education, jobs held,
family information. For well-known people, the questions may be
about their latest activities.

Questions of this sort are nonthreatening and help make for a

relaxed interview atmosphere. Also, they are sometimes necessary
because of conflicting material in the files, such as discrepancies in
age or education.

Direct Questions Most questions flow from what the reporter

perceives to be the theme of the assignment. A fatal accident:
Automatically, the reporter knows that he or she must find out who
died and how and where the death occurred. The same process is
used in the more complicated interview.

A reporter is told to interview an actor who had been out of work for
two years and is now in a hit musical. The reporter decides that the
theme of the story will be the changes the actor has made in his life.
He asks the actor if he has moved from his tenement walk-up, has
made any large personal purchases and how his family feels about
his being away most nights. These three questions induce the actor
to talk at length.

Another reporter is to interview a well-known entertainer. The

reporter decides to ask about the singer's experiences that led him
to write songs that call attention to war, poverty, sexism and racism.
“Bread,” says the singer in answer to the first question the reporter
asks. “Money,” he explains. There is a good market in such songs.
The reporter then quickly shifts themes and asks questions about
the economics of popular music and the singer's personal beliefs.

Open- and Closed-Ended Questions When the sportswriter asked

the hurdler, “What do you think of our town?” he was using what is
known as an open-ended question, which could have been answered
in general terms. The sports editor's suggestion that the reporter
ask the athlete about the condition of the track would have elicited
a specific response-fast, slow, or slick-as it was a closed-ended
question.

The open-ended question does not require a specific answer. The

closed ended question calls for a brief, pointed reply. Applied
properly, both have their merits. Two months before the budget is
submitted, a city hall reporter may ask the city manager what she
thinks of the city's general financial situation-an open-ended
question. The reply may cover the failure of anticipated revenues to
meet expectations, unusually high increases in construction costs,
higher interest rates and other factors that have caused trouble for
the city. Then the reporter may ask a closed-ended question, “Will
we need a tax increase?”

As we have seen, reporters often begin their interviews with

open-ended questions, which allow the source to relax. Then the
closed-ended questions are asked, which may seem threatening if
asked at the outset of the interview.

Television and radio interviews usually end with a closed-ended

question because the interviewer wants to sum up the situation with
a brief reply.

The reporter who asks only open-ended questions should be aware

of their possible implications. To some sources, the open-ended
question is the mark of an inadequately prepared reporter who is
fishing for a story.

Some television reporters tend to ask open-ended questions, even

when a specific one is more appropriate. A Chicago TV reporter in an
interview with orphans asked a youngster, “Do you wish you had a
mother and father?” The most familiar of all these open-ended
questions asked by poorly prepared TV reporters is, “How do you
feel about . . . ?”

Good questions are the result of solid preparation, and this requires
more than reading the local newspaper and chatting with
authorities. Reporters who hold to these narrow confines usually
operate only in a linear fashion. That is, today; s coverage is built on
yesterday's newspaper stories and the council meeting of the day
before. Good stories-informative journalism-are spurred by the
questions that break the chain of events. Remember Copernicus. All
he asked was what would happen if the sun and not the earth were
the center of the universe, and centuries of linear thinking shot off
onto a new plane.

Tough Questions Sometimes a young reporter finds that posing

the right question is difficult because the question might embarrass
or offend the interviewee. There is no recourse but to ask.

Oriana Fallaci, an Italian journalist famous for her interviews, says

that her success may be the result of asking the world leaders she
interviews questions that other reporters do not ask.

“Some reporters are courageous only when they write, when they
are alone with their typewriters, not when they face the person in
power. They never put a question like this, 'Sir, since you are a
dictator, we all know you are corrupt. In what measure are you
corrupt? “

Remarkably, heads of state, kings and guerrilla leaders open up to

Fallaci. One reason for this is her presumption that the public is
entitled to answers and her unwillingness to be treated with
indifference. When the heavyweight champion boxer Muhammad Ali
belched in answer to one of her questions, she threw the
microphone of her tape recorder in his face.

Another reason for her effectiveness is “her talent for intimacy,” as

one journalist put it. “She easily establishes an atmosphere of
confidence and closeness and creates the impression that she would
tell you anything. Consequently, you feel safe, or almost safe, to do
the same with her,” writes Diana Loercher in The Christian Science
Monitor.

Some reporters gain a reputation for asking tough questions and

not wasting time on preliminaries. When Jack Anderson, the
Washington columnist whose specialty is exposés, calls a
congressman, the politician knows that he is unlikely to be asked for
the text of a speech he is to give in Dubuque. Anderson is after
meatier game.

Intrusive Questions Still, there are questions that few reporters

like to ask. Most of these concern the private lives of sources-the
mental retardation of a couple's son, the fatal illness of a baseball
player. Some questions are necessary, some not. The guidelines for
relevance and good taste are constantly shifting, and reporters may
find they are increasingly being told to ask questions that they
consider intrusive. This is the age of intimacy.

Reporters who dislike asking these questions, preferring to spare

sources anguish, are sometimes surprised by the frank replies. A
reporter for Newsday was assigned to follow up on an automobile
accident in which a drunken youth without a driver's license ran a
borrowed car into a tree. One of the passengers, a 15-year-old girl,
was killed. In doing his follow-up story, the reporter discovered that
most of the parents were willing to talk because, as one parent said,
the lessons learned from the accident might save lives.

ASSIGNMENT.

a) Discuss the factor to consider when choosing an interviewee.

b) Discuss some of the ways of creating a rapport with source to

ease the tension before the interview.

c) Discuss the types of questions that you can use when

interviewing a source.

LINK FOR FURTHER STUDY

https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/how-
conduct-journalistic-interview/

LINK TO A PAST PAPER

https://drive.google.com/open?id=10sE6arRC1pQzCB0jZDtHo1m-
7giB57YD

COURSE: DIPLOMA IN JOURNALISM

UNIT: MAGAZINE JOURNALISM.

LECTURER: CYRUS KIPKEMEI

SESSION 11

TOPIC: INTERVIEWING

OBJECTIVE.

By the end of the session, the trainee should be able to:

 Conduct phone interviews for magazines.

 Discuss the use of quotes.
 Explain note taking in interviewing.

TELEPHONE INTERVIEWS

Used properly, the telephone can be your best friend. It is especially

useful for talking to people who are too far away for you to visit.

Basic rules for the telephone

Try to use the bright friendly manner, which you use for face-to-face
interviews, for the telephone as well. You will inspire confidence in
the person you are calling, and get your story much more quickly.

Don't be too hard on secretaries who are protecting the important

people you are trying to contact. They are only doing their job. If
they have been told by their boss to protect him from you, then you
will not get anywhere by being angry. In that situation, the
telephone is unlikely to succeed and you should visit in person.

Remember that when you telephone someone at home, at night or

during the weekend, you are intruding into their private family life.
You should not do so unless the story demands it. Even if it does,
you should apologise for having to interrupt them and state your
business quickly.

Because a journalist uses the phone so often, it is important that

you should know the standard rules of telephone politeness for the
profession.

 Ringing out

The people you phone for news are often busy people doing
important work. They protect themselves from trivia by employing
secretaries to answer the phone for them, and to separate the
unimportant or minor calls from those which require their personal
attention.

So when you phone the Police Commissioner, you will probably first
get the switchboard at police headquarters. You will ask for the
Commissioner's office. There, his secretary will answer the phone.
You must give her your name, the name of the organisation you
work for and the nature of your inquiry.

She will ask you to hold on, while she speaks to the Commissioner to
tell him that you are on the line, who you are and what you want. He
will then decide whether to take the call, or to refer it to somebody
else - his deputy, or the public relations department, for example.

If he agrees to talk to you, you will hear him come on the line. You
must then repeat your name, your organisation and what you want.
Do so quickly and efficiently. Don't waste time mumbling and
thinking about exactly what it is you want to say. If you sound
confused and unsure of what you want, you will probably get
nothing. You will also give your newspaper or radio station a bad
reputation.
  Answering the phone

When the phone rings in the newsroom and you pick it up, you
should say "Newsroom" and then give your name - for example:
"Newsroom, Joe Vagi speaking." It is not enough to say "Hello?", as
this forces the other person to waste time by asking if they are
connected to the newsroom and who they are speaking to.

If the caller wants to speak to a reporter who is not in the

newsroom, then you should say: "She is not in the office at the
moment. I'll just find out where she is." Ask the chief of staff, or
whoever else is around, where the person is. If she will be back in a
minute or two, you may suggest that the caller waits; if she is out
for a while, you must tell the caller so. You should then say: "Can I
help you? Or can I take a message?"

The caller can now choose. If they think you can help, they can talk
to you instead of the person they wanted. If they think you cannot
help, at least they can leave a message with you. The message
should contain:

 The caller's name and telephone number

 The date and time they called
 What they wanted
 Whether they will call back later, or whether they want to be
called back
 Your own name

It should be clearly written, or better still typed, and left where the
person will find it. The most usual place for messages to be left for
reporters is on their keyboard. If you have an internal office email
system, you can send them an email with the information.

Using the telephone effectively

It is possible to interrupt people at inconvenient times when you use

a telephone. You must use the phone efficiently, so that you use as
little as possible of your interviewee's time. Think before you make
the call exactly what information you need from this person. If you
ask for information which you could easily have found elsewhere,
then a busy person will get cross with you - and rightly so.

 Timing

The timing of a telephone call is important. If your deadlines allow,

try not to phone too early or too late in the day.

People are not at their best within one hour of starting their day's
work, and within half an hour of lunch they will not want to be
bothered. People are very often late back from lunch, and again do
not want to get a call within half an hour of the end of their day's
work.

If you can call at the best times in between - mid-morning or mid-

afternoon - you are more likely to be helped.

If you want to phone someone at home, do so as early in the

evening as possible - people do not like having to get out of bed to
answer the phone.

 Ask for someone by name

Whenever possible, find out the name of the person who can help
you. The receptionist - if approached politely - might help you. You
might ask her: "What is the name of the person in charge of
property, please?" Or you can pretend to know the name, but have
forgotten it: "Can I please speak to ... oh, what's his name? The
person in charge of property? Mr...?" "Mr Hussein?" "That's it! Mr
Hussein."

Having a name to ask for can save you from being transferred from
one person to another ... and ending up after half an hour back with
the person you first spoke to.

 Start at the top

Try to talk to the boss - he is often more willing to talk to the press
than more junior people are. He knows the answers and he usually
understands the importance of journalists getting a story about his
company or department right.
Even if he does not have time to speak to you, it can be useful to
make that contact first. For example, if you have called Mr Hussein,
the managing director, and he refers you to somebody else in his
company, then you can say to that person quite honestly: "I was just
speaking to Mr Hussein and he said I should speak to you." He
cannot now refuse, if his boss says he must speak to you.

 Listen carefully

When we interview someone face-to-face, we can see from the look

on their face, or the gestures which they use, whether they are
serious about what they are saying, or whether they are being
funny, or sarcastic. When you use the telephone, you have only their
voice to get this information - and it can alter the meaning of what
they are saying.

Feedback what they say, to make sure you have understood it

properly in the way they meant it. For example, you may say: "So
the Foreign Minister called you `an imperialist lackey', did he?" If the
reply comes back: "No, no, not really; I was just joking!", then you
can apologise and you have avoided an embarrassing
misunderstanding. But if the reply is "Yes, that's just what he said",
then you may have a very big news story.

 Smile

A smile shows in your voice. If the person at the other end of the
telephone line can sense that you are smiling, that you are polite
and positive, you will get a much better response.

 Avoid pauses

In a face-to-face interview a short pause can sometimes help by

making the interviewee feel he must continue speaking. In a
telephone interview it does not help.

If there is silence, then the person on the other end of the line
seems to have disappeared. Your interviewee may well think that
the interview is over, and hang up. Keep the conversation flowing,
even when half your mind is reading back over your notes of what
has already been said.
It is helpful, too, to remind the interviewee from time to time that
you are there and that you are listening. While he is speaking, you
may say "oh yes" or "really?" or even grunt one of those little noises
that shows you are listening and interested. This does not apply,
however, if you are recording an interview for radio - the reporter's
grunts will become very annoying to the listener when the interview
is broadcast.

 Thanks

Thank the interviewee. Check that you can call back if you need
more information. If it is appropriate, ask if a photograph can be
taken. Politely say goodbye.

Telephone problems

Using a telephone has many advantages, but it also has its

problems. These include the impersonal and inhuman nature of the
telephone, the difficulty of knowing the situation you are phoning
into, and the problem of clarity.

 Impersonal

Telephones are most effective when you call somebody you already
know. If you can visualise the person at the other end of the line,
you can talk more easily to them.

Try not to use the telephone to interview somebody you do not

know. Do not be lazy, and use the telephone just because you
cannot be bothered to walk 100 metres.

The telephone is always second-best to a face-to-face interview,

because it is impersonal.

 Unknown situation

When you phone a busy person, you will almost certainly interrupt
them from doing something. Busy people do not sit around doing
nothing, waiting for the phone to ring.
It is difficult to know the situation you are going into. Is your
interviewee angry or frustrated, worried, miserable or happy?

It is a good idea to start a telephone interview by asking: "Is this a

convenient moment to ask you a couple of questions?"

 Lack of clarity

Telephone lines are not always as clear as we would wish. A poor

quality line can make communication difficult.

Also, a strange accent is even harder to understand on the

telephone than it is face-to-face, especially when one or both of you
is working in a second language.

Remember that it is as hard for your interviewee to understand you

as it is for you to understand your interviewee. Make it as easy as
possible by speaking loudly, slowly and clearly, with the telephone
mouthpiece in front of your mouth and not under your chin.

QUOTES

As the novelist Elmore Leonard says, “When people talk, readers

listen.” In interviews, the writer listens for the telling remark that
illuminates the person or the situation. Leonard says he lets his
characters do the work of advancing his story by talking. He gets out
of the way.

“Readers want to hear them, not me.”

Listen to the singer Lorrie Morgan talk about her problems: After her
husband, the singer Keith Whitley, died of alcohol poisoning, Morgan
was only offered slow, mournful ballads by her songwriters, she said
in an interview with The Tennessean of Nashville.

“I mean, it was all kinds of dying songs,” she said. But then she fell
in love with Clint Black's bus driver, and she decided to change her
tunes.
“I said, 'I'm not going to do that. I'm not basing my career on a
tragedy.' I live the tragedy every day without it being in my music.”
Her life, she said, has turned around, thanks to her new love. “He's a
wonderful, wonderful guy. This guy is very special, and I'm into him
real bad.” However, not too long afterward Lorrie’s love life took a
detour ¾ her affections switched to a politician.

For reasons unknown, reporters have a tendency to paraphrase

rather than to quote directly. In fact, several articles have appeared
in journalism publications advocating paraphrasing as an efficient
way to tell a story. Efficient? Maybe. But so are telegrams. For
reader interest, for enthralled reading and viewing, direct contact
with the individual interviewed is best achieved by letting
interviewees speak.

Research shows that quotations are useful. S. Shyan Sundar of

Pennsylvania State University found “the credibility and quality of
stories with quotations to be significantly higher than identical
stories without quotations.”

Actions Can Be Revealing

Watch the dean of students as he discusses a student disciplinary

case. As he answers your questions, is he fiddling nervously with a
paper clip, leaning back in his chair, looking at the papers on his
desk? Is he tense, relaxed?

Do the quarterback's fellow players joke with him in the locker room,
or do they avoid his company?

Does the grief seem genuine or forced?

Sometimes, sources reveal themselves as much, perhaps more so,

in their actions as they do in their statements.

The revealing profile blends background, quotations and

observations.

Diversity
We live in an entertainment-driven period, and the media reflects
this preoccupation. Look at the covers of magazines. Most of them
display a popular personality. (A side comment: In order to be able
to profile these stars, the magazine usually allows the personality to
choose the questions that will be asked, is given approval rights
over the photos to be used and often is shown the piece before
publication.)

The journalist who wants to show the diversity of American society

has a more fascinating story to tell.

Listen to Linda Raisovich-Parsons, one of the first women to go into

the coal mines, talk to Bharati Sadasivam: I went into the mines
when I was 18 years old and had just finished high school. There
was not a whole lot of career opportunities for a girl back then in
West Virginia. My father was a coal miner. He had multiple sclerosis
and I didn't want to burden him with the expense of a college
education.

Initially, he didn't like the idea because he didn't want his daughter
working in that kind of environment. But when he saw that I was not
just testing the waters and was determined to make a go of it, he
taught me the ropes and looked out for his baby daughter. . . .

There was a lot of heavy lifting and carrying to do and that was what
I found the most difficult. Most of the men took the position that
well, if you're here, you've got to pull your weight and I was
determined that no one was going to prove that I wasn't able to do
the job.

Sadasivam's magazine article consists entirely of direct quotes. She

allows Raisovich-Parsons to tell her story. After several years in the
mines, the United Mine Workers union offered her a job as a mine
inspector. She would have been the first female inspector. At first, it
was not easy.

There were some safety committees that simply couldn't accept a

woman and would bypass me and go to my male co-workers. And I
often got the same reactions from the coal companies. But there
were others that were more accepting of me. I found the older
miners more helpful and respectful than the younger ones. Sexual
harassment was a problem initially but we've grown with these men
and I think we're just one of the crew now.

NOTE AND RECORD KEEPING

However good you may think your memory is, you must keep a
record of what you are told. An hour later, after a lot more talk and a
journey back to the office and a chat with the chief of staff on your
way to your desk, your memory of what was actually said will be
unclear.

Tape recorder

You may record an interview with a tape recorder. If you are working
for radio, you will need to do so, but even some newspaper and
magazine reporters work this way. The advantage is that you record
the interview accurately, without having to worry about note-taking,
and can concentrate on what the person is saying. The
disadvantage is that, after the interview, you may have to play the
whole tape through again, sorting out what you want to use and
what you don't want. This takes a lot of time.

If you are recording an interview with a tape recorder, you will need
to follow a few simple rules:

 Know your tape recorder and what all the switches do. Practise
with it in the office, until you are familiar with it.
 Check that the battery is fully charged before you leave the
office. The best thing is always to put the battery in the
charger whenever you finish a job, so that it will be ready for
the next job.
 Take a spare clean tape with you. Keep an eye on the tape
recorder during the interview, so that you can change the tape
before it reaches the end.
  Put the microphone in a good position to record, and the tape
recorder conveniently beside you. Check before you begin the
interview that it is working and that the sound levels are right.
 Set the counter to zero at the start of the interview.

Notebook

The alternative is to make notes in a notebook. This can best be

done by using shorthand, so that you note the speaker's exact
words while he or she is speaking them. You can then use them as a
quote later, if you wish.

The advantage of such notes is that you do not bother to take a note
of stuff which is boring or irrelevant, and which you know you will
not use. Notes are selective and save time later.

For newspaper journalists, this is the best method. However, you will
need shorthand of at least 80 words per minute, and preferably 100
words per minute, if you are to use this method effectively.

For court reporting, this is often the only method of recording which
is allowed.

Combination

Journalists who do not have good shorthand, or who work in a

language for which there is no good shorthand system, can use a
combination of the previous two systems.

You take a tape recorder to record the whole interview, but you also
make notes in a notebook.

There is no need to write down the speaker's words - they will be on

tape - but you can note when he says something interesting. By
noting the number on the tape counter, you will be able to find
quickly the bits you want when you return to the office.

Tips for note taking

 Verbatim note taking is not effective, or even possible, over

the long term. You must learn to create a note taking system
that works for you. For example, perhaps you can make up a
 list of abbreviations that you will recognize over time, such as
using the letter "S" to stand for "Subject," or the person being
interviewed.
 Learn to leave yourself notes in your note taking that indicate
you might need clarification – and didn't get the gist of the idea
– maybe put a question mark or exclamation mark in a triangle
– to indicate you need to stop and go back at some point.

 Taking copious notes is good. There is something about writing

down words and ideas helps to cement them in your mind.
Now, taking notes while giving the speaker adequate attention
is an art form in itself – remember, you do not want to be rude,
but you need to write this stuff down! So remind the speaker
that you are taking notes to ensure accuracy, and assure them
their commentary is very interesting to you, as a reporter.

 Use technology for note taking. Most people tend to carry

around their laptops these days – and word processing is easier
than long-hand note taking for many journalists.

 Many experts say to leave a blank line between ideas. This will
allow you to go back later and fill it in. They also suggest you
paraphrase – a skill that you will perfect as time goes on.

 Use graphic symbols to your advantage, as well. Arrows,

outlining numbers and letters, shapes, shading – the longer
you are a journalist, the more defined your note taking style
will be, and the more comfortable you will be in using the style
without thinking and double checking during the interview. For
example, you won't need to ask yourself what the abbreviation
‘wk envir.' means. You will automatically know it means the
phrase "work environment." You are sure to have dozens of
abbreviations and symbols the further you get into your career.

ASSIGNMENT.

Discuss the importance of note taking in interviewing.

Explain the process of selecting quotes for a magazine article.

Discuss the disadvantages of phone interviews over face to face

interviews.

LINK FOR FURTHER STUDY.

http://mpi.my/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/T-Selva-Interview-
techniques-for-journalists.pdf

LINK TO A PAST PAPER

https://drive.google.com/open?id=10sE6arRC1pQzCB0jZDtHo1m-
7giB57YD

COURSE: DIPLOMA IN JOURNALISM

UNIT: MAGAZINE JOURNALISM.

LECTURER: CYRUS KIPKEMEI

SESSION 12

TOPIC: INTERVIEWING

OBJECTIVE:

By the end of the session, the trainee should be able to:

 Discuss the use of quotes in interviewing.

 Discuss note taking in interviewing
QUOTES

As the novelist Elmore Leonard says, “When people talk, readers

listen.” In interviews, the writer listens for the telling remark that
illuminates the person or the situation. Leonard says he lets his
characters do the work of advancing his story by talking. He gets out
of the way.

“Readers want to hear them, not me.”

Listen to the singer Lorrie Morgan talk about her problems: After her
husband, the singer Keith Whitley, died of alcohol poisoning, Morgan
was only offered slow, mournful ballads by her songwriters, she said
in an interview with The Tennessean of Nashville.

“I mean, it was all kinds of dying songs,” she said. But then she fell
in love with Clint Black's bus driver, and she decided to change her
tunes.

“I said, 'I'm not going to do that. I'm not basing my career on a

tragedy.' I live the tragedy every day without it being in my music.”
Her life, she said, has turned around, thanks to her new love. “He's a
wonderful, wonderful guy. This guy is very special, and I'm into him
real bad.” However, not too long afterward Lorrie’s love life took a
detour ¾ her affections switched to a politician.

For reasons unknown, reporters have a tendency to paraphrase

rather than to quote directly. In fact, several articles have appeared
in journalism publications advocating paraphrasing as an efficient
way to tell a story. Efficient? Maybe. But so are telegrams. For
reader interest, for enthralled reading and viewing, direct contact
with the individual interviewed is best achieved by letting
interviewees speak.

Research shows that quotations are useful. S. Shyan Sundar of

Pennsylvania State University found “the credibility and quality of
stories with quotations to be significantly higher than identical
stories without quotations.”

Actions Can Be Revealing

Watch the dean of students as he discusses a student disciplinary

case. As he answers your questions, is he fiddling nervously with a
paper clip, leaning back in his chair, looking at the papers on his
desk? Is he tense, relaxed?

Do the quarterback's fellow players joke with him in the locker room,
or do they avoid his company?

Does the grief seem genuine or forced?

Sometimes, sources reveal themselves as much, perhaps more so,

in their actions as they do in their statements.

The revealing profile blends background, quotations and

observations.

Diversity

We live in an entertainment-driven period, and the media reflects

this preoccupation. Look at the covers of magazines. Most of them
display a popular personality. (A side comment: In order to be able
to profile these stars, the magazine usually allows the personality to
choose the questions that will be asked, is given approval rights
over the photos to be used and often is shown the piece before
publication.)

The journalist who wants to show the diversity of American society

has a more fascinating story to tell.

Listen to Linda Raisovich-Parsons, one of the first women to go into

the coal mines, talk to Bharati Sadasivam: I went into the mines
when I was 18 years old and had just finished high school. There
was not a whole lot of career opportunities for a girl back then in
West Virginia. My father was a coal miner. He had multiple sclerosis
and I didn't want to burden him with the expense of a college
education.

Initially, he didn't like the idea because he didn't want his daughter
working in that kind of environment. But when he saw that I was not
just testing the waters and was determined to make a go of it, he
taught me the ropes and looked out for his baby daughter. . . .

There was a lot of heavy lifting and carrying to do and that was what
I found the most difficult. Most of the men took the position that
well, if you're here, you've got to pull your weight and I was
determined that no one was going to prove that I wasn't able to do
the job.

Sadasivam's magazine article consists entirely of direct quotes. She

allows Raisovich-Parsons to tell her story. After several years in the
mines, the United Mine Workers union offered her a job as a mine
inspector. She would have been the first female inspector. At first, it
was not easy.

There were some safety committees that simply couldn't accept a

woman and would bypass me and go to my male co-workers. And I
often got the same reactions from the coal companies. But there
were others that were more accepting of me. I found the older
miners more helpful and respectful than the younger ones. Sexual
harassment was a problem initially but we've grown with these men
and I think we're just one of the crew now.

NOTE AND RECORD KEEPING

However good you may think your memory is, you must keep a
record of what you are told. An hour later, after a lot more talk and a
journey back to the office and a chat with the chief of staff on your
way to your desk, your memory of what was actually said will be
unclear.

Tape recorder

You may record an interview with a tape recorder. If you are working
for radio, you will need to do so, but even some newspaper and
magazine reporters work this way. The advantage is that you record
the interview accurately, without having to worry about note-taking,
and can concentrate on what the person is saying. The
disadvantage is that, after the interview, you may have to play the
whole tape through again, sorting out what you want to use and
what you don't want. This takes a lot of time.

If you are recording an interview with a tape recorder, you will need
to follow a few simple rules:

 Know your tape recorder and what all the switches do. Practise
with it in the office, until you are familiar with it.
 Check that the battery is fully charged before you leave the
office. The best thing is always to put the battery in the
charger whenever you finish a job, so that it will be ready for
the next job.
 Take a spare clean tape with you. Keep an eye on the tape
recorder during the interview, so that you can change the tape
before it reaches the end.
 Put the microphone in a good position to record, and the tape
recorder conveniently beside you. Check before you begin the
interview that it is working and that the sound levels are right.
 Set the counter to zero at the start of the interview.

Notebook

The alternative is to make notes in a notebook. This can best be

done by using shorthand, so that you note the speaker's exact
words while he or she is speaking them. You can then use them as a
quote later, if you wish.

The advantage of such notes is that you do not bother to take a note
of stuff which is boring or irrelevant, and which you know you will
not use. Notes are selective and save time later.
For newspaper journalists, this is the best method. However, you will
need shorthand of at least 80 words per minute, and preferably 100
words per minute, if you are to use this method effectively.

For court reporting, this is often the only method of recording which
is allowed.

Combination

Journalists who do not have good shorthand, or who work in a

language for which there is no good shorthand system, can use a
combination of the previous two systems.

You take a tape recorder to record the whole interview, but you also
make notes in a notebook.

There is no need to write down the speaker's words - they will be on

tape - but you can note when he says something interesting. By
noting the number on the tape counter, you will be able to find
quickly the bits you want when you return to the office.

Tips for note taking

 Verbatim note taking is not effective, or even possible, over

the long term. You must learn to create a note taking system
that works for you. For example, perhaps you can make up a
list of abbreviations that you will recognize over time, such as
using the letter "S" to stand for "Subject," or the person being
interviewed.
 Learn to leave yourself notes in your note taking that indicate
you might need clarification – and didn't get the gist of the idea
– maybe put a question mark or exclamation mark in a triangle
– to indicate you need to stop and go back at some point.

 Taking copious notes is good. There is something about writing

down words and ideas helps to cement them in your mind.
Now, taking notes while giving the speaker adequate attention
is an art form in itself – remember, you do not want to be rude,
but you need to write this stuff down! So remind the speaker
that you are taking notes to ensure accuracy, and assure them
their commentary is very interesting to you, as a reporter.
  Use technology for note taking. Most people tend to carry
around their laptops these days – and word processing is easier
than long-hand note taking for many journalists.

 Many experts say to leave a blank line between ideas. This will
allow you to go back later and fill it in. They also suggest you
paraphrase – a skill that you will perfect as time goes on.

 Use graphic symbols to your advantage, as well. Arrows,

outlining numbers and letters, shapes, shading – the longer
you are a journalist, the more defined your note taking style
will be, and the more comfortable you will be in using the style
without thinking and double checking during the interview. For
example, you won't need to ask yourself what the abbreviation
‘wk envir.' means. You will automatically know it means the
phrase "work environment." You are sure to have dozens of
abbreviations and symbols the further you get into your career.

ASSIGNMENT

Discuss the importance of using quotes in an article.

State five reasons why note taking is key in interviewing.

Discuss how you would select a quote and attribute it when writing a
story.

LINK TO FURTHER STUDY

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/
276406334_The_written_discourse_of_interviewing_style_for_a_mag
azine_interview

LINK TO A PAST PAPER

https://drive.google.com/open?
id=1zspjaPQZuTVTpAeHG8iixnpURldpPBZr

COURSE: DIPLOMA IN JOURNALISM

UNIT: MAGAZINE JOURNALISM

LECTURER: MR. CYRUS KIPKEMEI

SESSION 13

TOPIC: FEATURE WRITING

By the end of the session, the trainee should be able to:

 Explain the meaning of feature writing.

 Discuss feature article styles.

FEATURE WRITING

Definition

Feature Writing is a course in mass communication which involves

and explores the creative abilities of the journalist to its fullest; and
uses the journalist’s literary skills maximally. It is a creative effort
based on facts and figures.

The feature writer writes articles or stories that break out as news or
that creep up from his personal imaginations or his true life
experiences. These stories or articles are therefore not fictitious;
rather, they are factual and so are more in-depth than fiction

What is feature writing?

A feature story is a colourful story about people, events, places and
life. It is an in-depthly researched and creative piece of writing with
information drawn from eye witnesses and experts on the subject.
Features could be occasionally subjective, but often factual in
nature. They are primarily designed to entertain and inform readers
of an event, a situation or an aspect of life. These attributes of
features may have been responsible for Okoye’s definition of
features as:

“An in-depth and factual write up on a topical issue which seeks to

give comprehensive information in a more captivating and relaxed
style than straight news”.

Feature writing is a crucial part of the news papering business

especially in this age when cable transmissions are discouraging a
lot of people from reading newspapers. The broadcast media,
especially the television, is capitalizing on its strength of
immediacy, impact, price and credibility. This means that you can
get the information live, immediately it happens and this makes an
impact on you especially if it comes with vivid and colorful pictures.
The credibility is also not in doubt because it becomes a matter of
“what you see is what it is”.

Subtopic 1: FEATURE ARTICLE STYLES

A feature story must be unusual i.e. it should not be about

something that usually happens, e.g. car crash (except if it involves
a prominent personality). It must have the human interest
dimension as this gives the reader or listener a sense of personal
relationship with the subject. When human interest feelings or
suffering is narrowed down to a particular human being, then the
reader readily identifies with the subject.

Usually, a conflict (serious or trivial) gets resolved either way i.e.

negatively or positively in a feature story. Thus, a feature story has
universal appeal to its readers.

Features are not restricted to only the print media. There are
features on radio and television also. A radio feature may take up
three minutes while a television feature can run for 10 15 minutes.
Berger (1990) distinguishes between mini documentaries (these are
not longer than 15 minutes) and standard documentaries that run
for one hour or more.

Characteristics of features

A feature article is not fiction, neither is it a one-sided account of an

interested party. Rather, it is a balanced report reflecting all the
angles of the story. This is why Okenwa in distinguishing a feature
from a story states that:

While a news writer will normally stick to facts and report them as a
matter of fact, without embellishment or comments of any kind, the
feature writer offers more than bare facts. He can add flavour to his
story. He can embellish the facts, background them, entertain
comments… and interpret them. He uses anecdotes, descriptions
and humour. He uses more factual and imaginative language. And
his story can be more subjective; maybe, even more
entertaining. (okenwa, ……..)

From the above assertion, it becomes obvious that a feature story

takes on additional values which make it quite unique and
distinct from straight news. Certain things equally make features
stand out clearly against straight news. These can be regarded as
their characteristics which every regular reader of features can
easily identify. A few of these characteristics are discussed below
just to refresh our memories.

1. 1. Imperishable

This is a very important feature of feature articles. This simply

means that a feature article does not perish, unlike the story which
becomes stale the next day. This is because there is usually a time-
frame on the news story which makes the story lose value if not
published within the time-frame. The feature story is not attached to
such time-frames since it is usually carefully selected and created at
the feature writer’s convenience.
 1. 2. Cannot be scooped

This means that someone’s particular feature article cannot be

published in its originality before hand, by another writer. This is
simply because the choice of topics for future stories is simply is the
prerogative of the feature writer.

1. 3. Can be created from mundane ideas or issues

There is actually no rigidity in the selection of a feature topic.

Hence, any topic or issue can be featured. In the past, certain topics
or issues were considered too trivial to be published. However, with
the development of the press, ideas and topics which previously
would have been considered inconsequential became the toast of
feature writer. In other words, the choice of topics for features
includes both the serious and trivial.

1. 4. Give in-depth information on topical issues

Feature articles give in depth information to the audience about a

particular topic. This is because the writer must have investigated
the topic before presenting the different angles to the audience.
Hence, features are written under very relaxed atmosphere. This
gives room for adequate survey of facts and information on the topic
to be “featurised”

1. 5. Selection of topic is rigorous

Feature articles are rigorously selected because the feature writer

has to present something (topic) that is usually captivating;
colourfully and stylishly presented in a unique manner.
 1. 6. Delayed and more complete

Feature stories are not as timely as straight news because

time is required for the indepth investigation of the topic. Hence,
delay in feature is pardonable, moreso, when it is justified with
a balanced report. Features are complete because they give all the
sides to the story and present a rounded perspective of it, thereby
satisfying the curiosity built up by the skeletal nature of straight
news.

1. 7. Fleshy and Colourful

The feature writer adds more flesh to the straight news to make it a
feature story. However, “fleshiness” does not mean undue padding
and stuffing of the material. The language of the feature is supposed
to be colourful, having been written in figurative and in flowery
constructions. This colourful language appeals to the sensory
aspects of readers. This kind of language is quite different
from the formal language of straight news. It is really more
picturesque, informal and humorous. Hence, it is more attractive
to read. Suggestively, good feature articles are read for pleasure.
So it is a major challenge of feature writers to make their stories
pleasurable to the reader.

1. 8. Stylish

This means a unique or peculiar way of doing something which is

equally attractive in nature. Stylistic therefore, permits the feature
writer to use his own peculiar approach to writing which could be in
form of his own word-coinages, romantic expressions, captivating
images or use of language. Style differentiates one writer from
another and it professionally allows the writer to shift his mode
of writing. The stylistic language of feature entrenches the readers
and thus distracts the attention of the readers from the bulkiness of
the piece which naturally, would have made the story boring.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Discuss the different writing styles for feature articles.

Outline the characteristics of a feature writer.

Discuss the characteristics of features.

LINK FOR FURTHER STUDY

http://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/
Journalists-Resource-syllabus-Feature-writing.pdf

LINK TO A PAST PAPER

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1o8EHNx9Xuum0yfS-9L-
GspRZenkKjW8S

COURSE: DIPLOMA IN JOURNALISM

UNIT: MAGAZINE JOURNALISM

LECTURER: MR. CYRUS KIPKEMEI

SESSION 14

TOPIC: FEATURE WRITING

OBJECTIVE

By the end of the session, the trainee should be able to:

 Discuss the planning of feature article.

 Explain feature planning.
2: FEATURE PLANNING

Introduction

Unlike news stories which are dictated by strict style guidelines and
time and space considerations a feature article is more flexible.
Having an increased number of options makes a draft plan essential
to the creative process. Features may inform, entertain, persuade or
amuse. A feature article goes beyond the factual brief of news and
broadens the scope of the subject – features “offer an opportunity to
tell the story behind the story.” This places responsibility on the
writer to determine what the “story behind the story” is, why it’s
worth telling and how best to tell it. Approaching the topic of the
effect of new communications technologies on youth culture in the
United Kingdom there are numerous possible angles. The first job of
the writer is to decide which one to choose and where to pitch the
idea.

Tone and Content

A feature’s tone and content can vary widely depending on the

target market. For example, an analysis of new communications
technologies for a mobile phone trade magazine would be very
different from one written for a pop culture magazine. For the
purpose of this plan the target is a broadsheet newspaper, so the
article will be addressed to a general audience who know some
information about youth culture and technology, but who may not
have considered the impact of one on the other. The first question
to ask, and answer, is why will they care? The theme of this feature
takes a cultural analysis perspective. In social discourse “language
is linked with practice, truth is constructed, and power exercised,”
The importance of new communications technologies on youth
culture is that the truths they construct and the power they exercise
will become a part of the cultural landscape as they grow up.

Target and Theme

A focused target and robust theme are the essential building blocks
of a feature. Next comes research. In this case, define the subject
(does “youth” mean 14-18 years old? 16-20?) and then focus on
getting the raw data: information on the types of new technology,
percentage of the target age group that uses a given technology,
the amount of time an average youth spends using new
communications technologies. This information can be gleaned from
news sources, product manufacturers and relevant related features.
Good organisation is essential, use techniques such as feature files
for storing all the data, contacts, questions, notes and information
on a feature. The broad gist of this research should be to show that
new communications technologies are widespread and widely used
enough to be of serious cultural interest.

The Human Element

The next step is to find the human element in the facts and figures –
people’s experiences distinguish features from news and bring the
story to life. First identify useful potential interviewees. These
include experts who can explain the function and scope of new
technologies, cultural observers who can offer cultural or historical
context about social change, teachers, parents and young people.
Then decide what order to address them in; the order of your
interviews is important to the direction of the story. Conducting
interviews is a critical step. Make sure the questions and technique
are suited to the subject. A teenager will respond different than a
professional who is used to giving interviews. Listen and observe
carefully, allow for pauses while the thinks and collect the facts
objectively. When writing about young people bear in mind any legal
issues. For example, publishing anything that could lead to the
identification of someone under 18 who is under police investigation
is an offence.

Writing

When the research and interviews are completed it is time to write

the feature. Write an outline or use notes to create a first draft,
paying attention to the structure (i.e., will it be chronological, bullet-
points or a narrative?) Make sure there is a gripping opening using a
dramatic fact or anecdote. Since the theme of the feature is the
socio-cultural impact of the effect of new communications
technologies on young people it might be interesting to compare the
UK with other countries as a way of establishing the global
significance of communication technology. For example, a study
about technology use by Czech young people showing that: “CMC
[computer mediated communication] is providing opportunities,
before unknown, for young people to participate in post-socialist
civic discourse in very creative ways” makes a thought-provoking
parallel. Bearing in mind the general audience keep technical jargon
to a minimum and focus on accessibility and clarity.

Boxes and Sidebars

Boxes and sidebars are essential to features and are an economical

way to convey important facts or information. Adult newspaper
readers are probably not familiar with all the different new
communication technologies so a box profiling the most popular
communication tools could be useful. For example, “hardware
versus software” outlining innovations like touch-screen mobiles,
blue-tooth headsets, Twitter and Facebook Mobile.

Proofread and Revise

After completing all the steps of the draft feature plan read the
feature with an objective point of view. A plan is a guideline to
create a professional piece of work, but if there is something
missing, or something in the original plan doesn’t fit with the
finished piece carefully consider and revise. The job of a feature is to
speak to its audience – if the plan gets in the way then the plan
needs to change.

Subtopic 3: RESEARCH

A careful consideration of study regarding a particular concern or

problem using scientific methods. According to the American
Sociologist Earl Robert Babbie, “Research is a systematic inquiry to
describe, explain, predict, and control the observed phenomenon.
Research involves inductive and deductive methods.
Journalistic research strives for completeness, balance, and
accuracy with the understanding that each individual report is, by
definition, incomplete and weighted toward a particular view by the
accessibility of sources and the need to get information out in time.

Characteristics of research

1. A systematic approach must be followed for accurate data.

Rules and procedures are an integral part of the process that
set the objective. Researchers need to practice ethics and a
code of conduct while making observations or drawing
conclusions.
2. Research is based on logical reasoning and involves both
inductive and deductive methods.
3. The data or knowledge that is derived is in real time from
actual observations in natural settings.
4. There is an in-depth analysis of all data collected so that there
are no anomalies associated with it.
5. Research creates a path for generating new questions. Existing
data helps create more opportunities for research.
6. Research is analytical in nature. It makes use of all the
available data so that there is no ambiguity in inference.
7. Accuracy is one of the most important aspects of research. The
information that is obtained should be accurate and true to its
nature. For example, laboratories provide a controlled
environment to collect data. Accuracy is measured in the
instruments used, the calibrations of instruments or tools, and
the final result of the experiment.

Types of research

1. 1. Primary research

Primary research is research you conduct yourself (or hire someone

to do for you.) It involves going directly to a source – usually
customers and prospective customers in your target market – to ask
questions and gather information. Examples of primary research
are:

 Interviews (telephone or face-to-face)

  Surveys (online or mail)
 Questionnaires (online or mail)
 Focus groups
 Visits to competitors' locations

When you conduct primary research, you’re typically gathering two

basic kinds of information:

1. Exploratory. This research is general and open-ended, and

typically involves lengthy interviews with an individual or small
group.
2. Specific. This research is more precise, and is used to solve a
problem identified in exploratory research. It involves more
structured, formal interviews.

Primary research usually costs more and often takes longer to

conduct than secondary research, but it gives conclusive results.

2. secondary research

Secondary research is a type of research that has already been

compiled, gathered, organized and published by others. It includes
reports and studies by government agencies, trade associations or
other businesses in your industry. For small businesses with limited
budgets, most research is typically secondary, because it can be
obtained faster and more affordably than primary research.

A lot of secondary research is available right on the Web, simply by

entering key words and phrases for the type of information you’re
looking for. You can also obtain secondary research by reading
articles in magazines, trade journals and industry publications, by
visiting a reference library, and by contacting industry associations
or trade organizations. (Note: When you locate the research you
want, check its publication date to be sure the data is fresh and not
outdated.)
One excellent source of secondary research data is government
agencies; this data is usually available free of charge. On the other
hand, data published by private companies may require permission,
and sometimes a fee, for you to access it.

Following are the types of research methods:

Basic research: A basic research definition is data collected to

enhance knowledge. The main motivation is knowledge expansion.
It is a non-commercial research that doesn’t facilitate in creating or
inventing anything. For example: an experiment to determine a
simple fact.

Applied research: Applied research focuses on analyzing and

solving real-life problems. This type refers to the study that helps
solve practical problems using scientific methods. Studies play an
important role in solving issues that impact the overall well-being of
humans. For example: finding a specific cure for a disease.

Problem oriented research: As the name suggests, problem-

oriented research is conducted to understand the exact nature of a
problem to find out relevant solutions. The term “problem” refers to
multiple choices or issues when analyzing a situation.

For example, revenue of a car company has decreased by 12% in

the last year. The following could be the probable causes: there is
no optimum production, poor quality of a product, no advertising, or
economic conditions.

Problem solving research: This type of research is conducted by

companies to understand and resolve their own problems. The
problem-solving method uses applied research to find solutions to
the existing problems.

Qualitative research: Qualitative research is a process that is

about inquiry. It helps create in-depth understanding of problems or
issues in their natural settings. This is a non-statistical method.
Qualitative research is heavily dependent on the experience of the
researchers and the questions used to probe the sample.
The sample size is usually restricted to 6-10 people. Open-ended
questions are asked in a manner that encourages answers that lead
to another question or group of questions. The purpose of asking
open-ended questions is to gather as much information as possible
from the sample.

The following are the methods used for qualitative research:

1. One-to-one interview
2. Focus groups
3. Ethnographic research
4. Content/Text Analysis
5. Case study research

4: PICTURE AND VISUAL ELEMENTS

1. The development of picture magazines is a twentieth‐century

phenomenon, aided by print technologies that offered quality
reproduction of photographs in large numbers and in a short
time, like rotogravure, which had yielded high quality
reproduction using a single plate for type and photo since
1910. Earlier, photographs had been used for wood‐engraved
illustrations in many magazines, including the Leipziger
Illustrirte (Germany, 1843), L'Illustration (France, 1843),
Illustrated London News (UK, 1842), L'Illustracion (Spain,
1849), the Saturday Evening Post (USA, 1821), Frank Leslie's
Illustrated Newspaper (USA, 1855), Harper's Weekly (USA,
1857), and the Weekly Illustrated of India (India, 1880).
The Canadian Illustrated News (1869) featured a half‐tone on
its first cover, only a few years after the Illustrated London
News (1842) had been launched with 32 woodcuts on 16
pages.
2. We’ve all heard the cliché, “a picture tells a thousand words”,
but there is real value in using images to promote scientific
content. Images help us learn, images grab attention, images
explain tough concepts, and inspire.
3. We are very visual creatures. A large percentage of the human
brain dedicates itself to visual processing. Our love of images
lies with our cognition and ability to pay attention. Images are
 able to grab our attention easily, we are immediately drawn to
them. Think about this blog, for example: did you look at the
words first, or the image?
4. We process images at an alarming speed. When we see a
picture, we analyse it within a very short snippet of time,
knowing the meaning and scenario within it immediately. The
human brain is able to recognise a familiar object within 100
milliseconds. People tend to recognise familiar faces within 380
milliseconds, which is pretty speedy.

10. Bright colors capture our attention because our brains are wired
to react to them. Our vision senses are by far our most active of the
senses. This may be thanks to our evolution. Quick processing of
visual information would have saved our ancestors from the attack
of a predator or during a hunt for food. A gatherer would need to be
able to identify certain shades of red berries during their forage.
These primitive behaviors come into play even now in our everyday
lives. This is often a fact that advertisers use to their advantage.

11. In a world where we are bombarded by stimuli, we often seek

the easiest and most fluent way of acquiring and learning
information. Reading can be a slow and time-consuming activity. It
takes a lot longer to read a long sentence than to analyse a visual
scene.

12. This is what makes infographics so popular: they crunch down

data and findings and present them in an easy to digest manner.

13. Sometimes scientific findings, even the important ones, just

don’t seem personal to us as individuals. People may not feel
concerned about a certain disease or condition because they are not
emotionally invested in it. Now, this isn’t because we’re all stone
hearted monsters. It’s because sometimes these findings just aren’t
reaching out to us in the way they ought to.

14. Images help us become involved. With images, we are seeing

the science, rather than standing on the outskirts. The images help
contribute to the storytelling process that can make science more
engaging.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS.

Explain the importance of research in feature writing.

Discuss the planning of feature articles.

Discuss the sources of primary date for features.

LINK TO FURTHER STUDY

http://wp.lps.org/akabour/files/2013/12/How-to-write-a-feature-story-
Journalism-skills.pdf

LINK TO A PAST PAPER

https://drive.google.com/open?id=10sE6arRC1pQzCB0jZDtHo1m-
7giB57YD

COURSE: DIPLOMA IN JOURNALISM

UNIT: MAGAZINE JOURNALISM

LECTURER: MR. CYRUS KIPKEMEI

SESSION 15

TOPIC: MAGAZINE PRODUCTION

OBJECTIVE

By the end of the session, the trainee should be to discuss

production of magazines, and explain the desktop editing
systems.
MAGAZINE PRODUCTION

It is hard to be passionate about production. Nevertheless, most of

us enjoy the look and feel of the finished magazine when it is
delivered. It is the only time you are really aware that editing is the
start of a manufacturing process. Your job in that process is to add
the value that turns a bundle of compressed tree pulp into an object
worth buying. You must make everything run as smoothly as
possible.

You are not responsible for the physical quality of that manufactured
object, its printing and its binding, but you do want it done well, and
on time. That means the editorial part of the process has to be
efficient. Editorial pages must be handed over at the right time, they
must occupy the right spaces and they must match the physical
requirements of the printing process. This is a matter of copy-flow,
scheduling and the flat-plan.

Before that, however, words have to be edited and cut, brought into
house style and placed on pages. Headlines, standfasts and captions
have to be written. These are all jobs for the sub-editors or copy
editors.

Subtopic 1: DESKTOP EDITING SYSTEMS

The publishing domain was restricted exclusively to print shops until

the age of computers. Now, the printing job is externalized while
magazines are designed in-house. Designers and editors work
together and use publishing software to create the layout, graphics
and covers of a magazine, newspaper, brochure, book, etc.

Desktop Publishing or DTP is the process of producing printed

content by using special software to link desktop computers with
other printers and desktops. The quality of desktop publishing is
designed to supersede that of typeset printing in books. While it can
include any network — home or office — to produce a printable
document, DTP is often used to refer to computer-based publishing
from expert providers.

Desktop publishing (DTP) software is designed for creating

visual communications such as brochures, business cards, greeting
cards, web pages, posters, and more for professional or personal
printing online or on-screen.

Programs such as Adobe InDesign, Microsoft Publisher, QuarkXPress,

and Scribus are examples of desktop publishing software.
Professional graphic designers and commercial printing technicians
use some of these, whereas office workers, teachers, students,
small-business owners, and non-designers use others. Their choices
depend on capabilities, budget, and personal preference.

Among professionals, "desktop publishing software" refers primarily

to high-end professional page layout software applications including
Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress.

Desktop Publishing Software as a Catch-All Phrase

Other applications and utilities often included in the desktop

publishing software category are better classified as graphics, web
publishing, and presentation apps. Nonetheless, they play important
roles in print and digital media. The DTP programs discussed here all
accomplish the core task: composing text and graphics into page
layouts for publishing.

Increased Home Publishing Options

Since the 1990s, the explosion of consumer programs and the

associated advertising hype has stretched the phrase "desktop
publishing software" to include software for making greeting cards,
calendars, banners, and other crafty print projects. This resulted in a
wide range of low-end, low-cost, easy-to-use software that doesn't
require traditional design and prepress skills to use.

In contrast, the primary page layout applications that professional

graphic designers and commercial printing prepress technicians use
is quite advanced and draws on refined skills ranging from graphic
design to computer proficiency. These most often
include Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress.

Who Makes Desktop Publishing Software?

The main players in this arena are Adobe, Corel, Microsoft, and
Quark, with products that stick close to the original intent of desktop
publishing software for professional page layout. Additionally,
Microsoft, Nova Development, Broderbund and others have
produced consumer-oriented creativity and home desktop
publishing software for many years, of varying quality.

1. 1. Adobe

Adobe makes many professional software packages used by

designers. You've probably heard of Photoshop and Illustrator, for
example. The company's other programs are not page layout
software applications for print publishing; they are graphics
software, web design software, programs for creating and working
with the PDF format, all of which are important adjuncts to the
publishing process. Adobe InDesign dominates the field of
professional page layout software.

1. 2. Corel

Corel is best known for its CorelDRAW Graphics Suite, which

includes apps and tools for vector illustration, layout, photo editing,
and typography. In the past, Corel produced creative printing and
home publishing programs, too, but the primary page layout
software from Corel is the vector-based CorelDraw.

1. 3. Microsoft

Microsoft produces Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and various

consumer graphics and creative printing programs used alone or in
conjunction with other applications to do some form of personal
desktop publishing. Microsoft's entry into page layout for print is
Microsoft Publisher.

1. 4. Quark
Quark makes other software, but the one most closely associated
with desktop publishing is QuarkXPress. Its many XTensions
enhance and expand the software package's basic capabilities,
allowing users to customize the app to their needs.

Types of Software Used in Desktop Publishing

Generally, four types of software make up the tools for desktop

publishing: word processing, page layout, graphics, and web
publishing. The lines between them are blurry, though, in much the
same way as that between professional and home apps are. Much of
the best design software is used for both print and web, and
sometimes, it also serves as page layout and graphics software,
creative printing and business software, or other combinations. For
this reason, manufacturers often offer these interrelated apps as
suites.

COURSE: DIPLOMA IN JOURNALISM

UNIT: MAGAZINE JOURNALISM

LECTURER: MR. CYRUS KIPKEMEI

SESSION 16

TOPIC: MAGAZINE PRODUCTION

OBJECTIVE

By the end of the session, the trainee should be able to

explain the different page layouts in magazines.
Subtopic 2: PAGE LAYOUT

Page layout is the term used to describe how each page of your
magazine will appear when it is printed. In a magazine, page layout
includes elements such as the margins, the number of columns, how
headers and footers appear, and a host of other considerations. As
you design your pages, you can use the tools that page design
software puts at your disposal in this regard.

Page layout is the part of graphic design that deals in the

arrangement of visual elements on a page. It generally involves
organizational principles of composition to achieve specific
communication objectives.

The high-level page layout involves deciding on the overall

arrangement of text and images, and possibly on the size or shape
of the medium. It requires intelligence, sentience, and creativity,
and is informed by culture, psychology, and what the document
authors and editors wish to communicate and emphasize. Low-level
pagination and typesetting are more mechanical processes. Given
certain parameters such as boundaries of text areas, the typeface,
and font size, justification preference can be done in a
straightforward way.

Until desktop publishing became dominant, these processes were

still done by people, but in modern publishing they are almost
always automated.

Beginning from early illuminated pages in hand-copied books of the

Middle Ages and proceeding down to intricate modern magazine and
catalog layouts, proper page design has long been a consideration
in printed material. With print media, elements usually consist of
type (text), images (pictures), and occasionally place-holder
graphics for elements that are not printed with ink such as die/laser
cutting, foil stamping or blind embossing.

Since the advent of personal computing, page layout skills have

expanded to electronic media as well as print media. E-books, PDF
documents, and static web pages mirror paper documents relatively
closely, but computers can also add multimedia animation, and
interactivity. Page layout for interactive media overlaps with
interface design and user experience design; an interactive "page"
is better known as a graphical user interface (GUI).

Modern web pages are typically produced using HTML for content
and general structure, cascading style sheets to control
presentation details such as typography and spacing, and JavaScript
for interactivity. Since these languages are all text-based, this work
can be done in a text editor, or a special HTML editor which may
have WYSIWYG features or other aids. Additional technologies such
as Macromedia Flash may be used for multimedia content. Web
developers are responsible for actually creating a finished document
using these technologies, but a separate web designer may be
responsible for establishing the layout. A given web designer might
be a fluent web developer as well, or may merely be familiar with
the general capabilities of the technologies and merely visualize the
desired result for the development team.

Grids versus templates

Grids and templates are page layout design patterns used in

advertising campaigns and multiple-page publications, including
websites.

A grid is a set of guidelines, able to be seen in the design process

and invisible to the end-user/audience, for aligning and repeating
elements on a page. A page layout may or may not stay within
those guidelines, depending on how much repetition or variety the
design style in the series calls for. Grids are meant to be flexible.
Using a grid to lay out elements on the page may require just as
much or more graphic design skill than that which was required to
design the grid.

In contrast, a template is more rigid. A template involves repeated

elements mostly visible to the end-user/audience. Using a template
to lay out elements usually involves less graphic design skill than
that which was required to design the template. Templates are used
for minimal modification of background elements and frequent
modification (or swapping) of foreground content.
Most desktop publishing software allows for grids in the form of a
page filled with coloured lines or dots placed at a specified equal
horizontal and vertical distance apart. Automatic margins and
booklet spine (gutter) lines may be specified for global use
throughout the document. Multiple additional horizontal and vertical
lines may be placed at any point on the page. Invisible to the end-
user/audience shapes may be placed on the page as guidelines for
page layout and print processing as well. Software templates are
achieved by duplicating a template data file, or with master page
features in a multiple-page document. Master pages may include
both grid elements and template elements such as header and
footer elements, automatic page numbering, and automatic table of
contents features.

Static versus dynamic layouts

Static layouts allow for more control over the aesthetics, and
thorough optimization of space around and overlapping irregular-
shaped content than dynamic layouts. In web design, this is
sometimes referred to as a fixed width layout; but the entire layout
may be scalable in size while still maintaining the original
proportions, static placement, and style of the content. All raster
image formats are static layouts in effect; but a static layout may
include searchable text by separating the text from the graphics.

In contrast, electronic pages allow for dynamic layouts with

swapping content, personalization of styles, text scaling, image
scaling, or reflowable content with variable page sizes often referred
to as fluid or liquid layout. Dynamic layouts are more likely to
separate presentation from content, which comes with its own
advantages. A dynamic layout lays out all text and images into
rectangular areas of rows and columns. As these areas' widths and
heights are defined to be percentages of the available screen, they
are responsive to varying screen dimensions. They'll automatically
ensure maximized use of available space while always staying
adapted optimally both on screen resizes and hardware-given
restrictions. Text may freely be resized to provide users' individual
needs on legibility while never disturbing a given layout's
proportions. The content's overall arrangement on screen this way
may always remain as it was originally designed.
Static layout design may involve more graphic design and visual art
skills, whereas dynamic layout design may involve more interactive
design and content management skills to thoroughly anticipate
content variation.

Motion graphics don't fit neatly into either category, but may involve
layout skills or careful consideration of how the motion may affect
the layout. In either case, the element of motion makes it a dynamic
layout, but one that warrants motion graphic design more than
static graphic design or interactive design.

Electronic pages may utilize both static and dynamic layout features
by dividing the pages or by combining the effects. For example, a
section of the page such as a web banner may contain static or
motion graphics contained within a swapping content area. Dynamic
or live text may be wrapped around irregular shaped images by
using invisible spacers to push the text away from the edges. Some
computer algorithms can detect the edges of an object that contain
transparency and flow content around contours.

Front-end versus back-end

With modern media content retrieval and output technology, there

is much overlap between visual communications (front-end) and
information technology (back-end). Large print publications (thick
books, especially instructional in nature) and electronic pages (web
pages) require meta data for automatic indexing, automatic
reformatting, database publishing, dynamic page display and end-
user interactivity. Much of the meta data (meta tags) must be hand
coded or specified during the page layout process. This divides the
task of page layout between artists and engineers, or tasks the
artist/engineer to do both.

More complex projects may require two separate designs: page

layout design as the front-end, and function coding as the back-end.
In this case, the front-end may be designed using an alternative
page layout technology such as image editing software or on paper
with hand rendering methods. Most image editing software includes
features for converting a page layout for use in a "What You See Is
What You Get" (WYSIWYG) editor or features to export graphics for
desktop publishing software. WYSIWYG editors and desktop
publishing software allow front-end design prior to back-end coding
in most cases. Interface design and database publishing may involve
more technical knowledge or collaboration with information
technology engineering in the front-end. Sometimes, a function on
the back-end is to automate the retrieval and arrangement of
content on the front-end.

Design elements and choices

Page layout might be prescribed to a greater or lesser degree by a

house style which might be implemented in a specific desktop
publishing template. There might also be relatively little layout to do
in comparison to the amount of pagination.

Typical page layout decisions include:

Size of page margins

 Size and position of images and figures

 Deciding on the number and size of columns and gutters (gaps
between columns)
 Placement of intentional whitespace
 Use of special effects like overlaying text on an image,
runaround and intrusions, or bleeding an image over the page
margin
 Use of color printing or spot color for emphasis

Specific elements to be laid out might include:

 Chapter or section titles, or headlines and subheads

 Image captions
 Pull quotes and nut graphs which might be added out of course
or to make a short story fit the layout
 Boxouts and sidebars, which present information as asides
from the main text flow
 Page headers and page footers, the contents of which are
usually uniform across content pages and thus automatically
duplicated by layout software. The page number is usually
 included in the header or footer, and software automatically
increments it for each page.
 Table of contents
 Notes like footnotes and end notes; bibliography, for example
in academic journals or textbooks

Digital Magazine Layout

1. Plan Your Content

You should plan out the content of your magazine before you even
touch a computer. You can’t properly plan your layout if you don’t
know what you’re going to be publishing.

What stories are you going to include in the issue? Will you have a
photography spread? Will it be text-heavy or a balanced mix of
media and text?

You should have answers to all of these questions already before

you begin designing your magazine. If you have an editorial staff,
work with them to decide on the final content that will make it into
the magazine issue.

Also, you need to make sure that the big idea for your magazine’s
content is there. However, try to refrain from constantly repeating
the idea throughout your magazine. It will be too much for your
readers to handle.

Once you know what your magazine will include, then you can get
started on building your layout.

2. Use Universal Themes

There are a lot of pages that go into a magazine, and designing

each of them one by one would be a drain on your time. Instead,
create a theme that will help to determine your overall layout and
feel of the magazine.

You don’t want to create just one theme because then your
magazine will look the same on every page. You want unity and
cohesiveness, but it shouldn’t be too uniform or it will be boring to
look at.

Instead, you can create multiple themes. For example, create a

theme for the first page of a feature, and a page for the text-pages
in between.

Having themes can also speed up your content creation process a

lot more. You can have several different template pages for each
type of pages such as Cover, TOC, Editorial, Articles, Videos,
Advertisement, and more. Having a universal theme for your
content/pages means that for the next issue, you don’t need to
brainstorm or work on your content layout from scratch.

3. Eye-catching Cover is Key

The cover is the first thing that anyone will see and notice about
your magazine. If your magazine cover is boring and unappealing, it
might put off your potential readers from checking out your
magazine altogether.

Your magazine cover will be one of the key aspects when you
promote your magazine, especially to potential readers. It acts as a
shopping window, and everything on your magazine cover is meant
to create an image of your brand.

Don’t get stuck thinking that your magazine cover has to be a static
image with a famous person smiling! Especially with the current
digital magazine tools available, there are endless potentials and
ideas to make your cover very attractive. For example, you can
place an animated cover with video or audio playing on the
background.

4. Color & Contrast

Think of any magazine on the shelf of a convenience store. If you

pick one up at random and flip through it, will you see mostly white
or will you be greeted with a burst of colors?
Color has a big influence on the look and feel of your magazine. It
can even help to set the tone of specific articles you include within
each issue. As you design your digital magazine layout, make sure
that you’re thinking about the different ways that you can use color.

Adding contrast to digital magazine layouts helps to make them

visually interesting instead of too boring or jarring.

For example, not all of your background pages should be white.

Maybe the feature page has a patterned background or a
photograph behind it to add some visual interest. Adding a sidebar
in a different color also draws the eye to the information that you
want to highlight.

5. The Right Font

We all constantly interact with type in almost every aspect of our

lives. But did you realize how fonts affect what we read and
influence the choices we make? The right fonts can help express
further what your brand image is. Is your magazine portraying
stylish, chic vibes? Or is it supposed to be elegant? Creative?

It goes both ways, too. If you choose the wrong font, your content
(and overall magazine feel) can come across as unreliable, or
boring, or too authoritative. Also, remember to not go overboard
when choosing fonts for your content. Too many different types of
fonts will confuse and tire your audience. Try to use not more than
2-3 font types throughout the content of your digital magazine.

6. Content Formatting is Important

It goes without saying that one of the most important parts of the
digital magazine layout is the content formatting. However,
sometimes editorial teams are too caught up in trying to cram as
much information as possible on one page, and the whole layout
ends up looking too crowded.

Make sure that your content is aligned properly, and use the proper
margin and spacing. Proper spacing makes your readers feel good,
and you do want them to feel good reading your content, right? No
one likes to read content on extremely tight spacing. The tighter
your letters are together, the harder it is for people to identify the
shapes that make up different letterforms.

The good thing about creating layouts for digital magazines is that
you don’t really have to worry about space, as it’s unlimited. Yes,
you read that right. With digital magazines, you can have a vertical
and horizontal scroll. That way, you don’t have to try to cram as
much information as possible into a fixed dimension as you would
with print.

For example, you need to be careful with columns. Too many

columns won’t look good on mobile- which is most of what your
readers will use to read your content. Make sure that your content
doesn’t have more than 2 columns at the same time unless you use
responsive design and set the columns to collapse on smaller
screens. Read on for more information about responsive digital
magazine layouts.

7. Take into Account the Responsive Design of Digital Layout

The best thing about digital magazines that separates them from
print is that digital magazines allow the responsive design to come
into play.

Responsive design simply means that instead of having a fixed

static PDF page, as you would with print, your content will adjust
accordingly to the device it’s being viewed on. This means that your
content can look and read great on any device, size, and
orientation! Isn’t that great? No more pinch to zoom just to read one
simple sentence.

However, we feel that the responsive design is almost always

overlooked when publishers are creating content- most probably
because people are so used to designing for print. We feel not doing
responsive design is such a missed opportunity to step up your
digital magazine.

8. Don’t Overdo Effects

With the tools available today, especially for digital content creation,
there are tons of ways to implement cool widgets and effects to your
content.

Remember to not go overboard with this, as it is very easy to do so.

Too many effects on your digital magazine can make your readers
feel tired very easily, and they will most likely leave your magazine
before they finish reading the content because it would be too much
to handle.

9. Pictures Matter

The saying “A picture is worth a thousand words” might be cliché,

but it’s also correct. Your magazine isn’t finished without adding
media. Adding pictures within your magazine articles can have more
impact and help deliver the message you want to.

You need to make sure that your pictures are of high quality. Ensure
that the pictures added throughout your content are sharp, in focus
(nothing says unprofessional like blurry pictures), and relevant to
your content. However, this doesn’t mean that you need to upload a
50MB-sized picture on your digital magazine. Doing so will simply
make your issue size to be much bigger, which means longer
download and loading time, and taking more storage on your
reader’s device. Images with 72-110 DPI should be good enough to
be viewed on digital devices. You can also use tools such as
TinyPNG to help compress the size of your images.

REVISION QUESTIONS

Discuss the design elements in page layout.

what is quarkXpress.

explain the meaning of white space in page layout

LINK FOR FURTHER STUDY

https://www.magloft.com/blog/creating-magazine-layout-guide/

LINK TO A PAST PAPER

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1WWB2LjlJFz07B5ArSl90rOP1GK-XpVFw

COURSE: DIPLOMA IN JOURNALISM ICM

UNIT: MAGAZINE JOURNALISM

LECTURER: MR. CYRUS K. MUTAI

SESSION: 17

TOPIC: MAGAZINE PRODUCTION

OBJECTIVES:

By the end of the session, the trainee should be able to discuss the
history of desktop publishing from Pagemaker to Quark Xpress and
Indesign

The production of magazines requires a desktop publishing(DTP)

software. The publishing industry has undergone a lot of revolution
since inception. Desktop publishing software used in the modern
day are WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) in nature.

In this sub-topic, we will look trace the history of DTP from

pagemaker to in-design. The software are; Aldus Pagemaker, Quark
Xpress, InDesign.

a) ALDUS PAGEMAKER

The US company Aldus Corporation was founded in February 1984 in

Seattle, Washington, by Paul Brainerd a degree graduate in
journalism at the University of Minnesota and worked at the
Minneapolis newspaper Star and Tribune.
Brainerd and his partners to named their company Aldus, after Aldus
Pius Manutius a famous fifteenth-century Venetian pioneer in
publishing, known for standardizing the rules of punctuation and
also presenting several typefaces, including the first italic. Manutius
went on to found the first modern publishing house, the Aldine
Press.

The flagship program of Aldus Co—PageMaker was released in July

1985. This groundbreaking program was the first ever desktop
publishing application and revolutionized the use of personal
computers, virtually creating the desktop publishing industry. The
term desktop publishing was itself coined by Brainerd.

PageMaker relied on a graphical user interface, and was initially for

the then new Apple Macintosh, in 1987 for PCs running the then new
Windows 1.0. PageMaker relies on Adobe Systems' PostScript page
description language. Suddenly anyone could design brochures.
Publishers had to become computer literate, and Apple started
selling Macs and LaserWriters in large numbers. Aldus helped Apple
to market its hardware to customers who wanted desktop publishing
capabilities. In return, Apple featured Aldus's software in much of its
advertising, and also helped the fledgling company distribute its
program.

The basic elements needed to lay out pages: free form drag and
drop positioning of page elements, sophisticated type tools, a well-
chosen selection of drawing tools, the ability to import text and
graphics (most importantly, EPS files) from other applications, and
the ability to print to high resolution PostScript printers with
WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) accuracy. The users could
easily create professional-quality books, newspapers, newsletters,
brochures, pamphlets, and other graphic products.

PageMaker not only made desktop publishing possible, it spawned

entire cottage industries for clip art, fonts, service bureau output
and scanning, and specialty products for laser printing such as foil
overlays.
Aldus succeeded to make the PageMaker program accessible to all
kinds of computers and operating systems, signing agreements with
Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft Corporation, IBM, Wang Laboratories and
Digital Equipment. Then it decided to offer its program to computer
users outside the United States, establishing itself as Europe's
leading producer of desktop publishing software by the spring of
1988. Controlling nearly half of the British, French, and German
markets for these products, PageMaker was the world's fourth most
popular software program.

Despite the popularity of the PageMaker, Aldus's status as a single-

product company caused some concern among management and
investors. The company needed to move beyond PageMaker to
other products and functions in order to continue its rapid growth
and remain profitable. Thus in 1987 Aldus introduced FreeHand, a
raster graphics drawing program, and SnapShot, an instant
electronic photography software package for use on personal
computers. Later Aldus presented SuperPaint, Personal Press, Digital
Darkroom, PhotoStyler, PressWise and PageAhead.

In May 1988, Aldus introduced updated versions of PageMaker for

use on the Macintosh and on IBM-compatible PCs. With this
advance, Aldus maintained its dominant grip on the desktop
publishing market.

PageMaker continued to evolve, reaching new heights with its 1992

version 4.2, which had such essential features as text rotation and a
story editor. Despite some interesting marketing ploys however
Aldus had lost significant market share to the rival QuarkXPress,
which had some powerful features, such as color separation, which
PageMaker then lacked. Later QuarkXPress continued to gain market
share, due largely to ignorance and mythology regarding
PageMaker's capabilities. Most people who used both programs
preferred PageMaker, but that didn't seem to help Aldus, and their
dwindling revenues eventually led to their acquisition in 1995 by
Adobe, which re-introduced PageMaker as Adobe PageMaker and
subsequently updated it to version 6, 6.5, and finally 7 in 2001.
Then, Adobe rebranded the next version of PageMaker to Adobe
InDesign. InDesign was developed in Seattle by the PageMaker
product team.
QuarkXPress

The first version of QuarkXPress was released in 1987 for the

Macintosh. A Microsoft Windows version (3.1) followed in 1992. In
the 1990s, QuarkXPress quickly became widely used by professional
page designers, the typesetting industry and printers. In particular,
the Mac version of 3.3 (released in 1996) was seen as stable and
trouble-free, working seamlessly with Adobe’s PostScript fonts as
well as with Apple’s TrueType fonts.

Early on, QuarkXPress incorporated an application programming

interface called XTensions which allows third-party developers to
create custom add-on features to the desktop application.
Introduced in 1989, Xtensions, along with Apple Computer’s
HyperCard, were among the first examples of a developer allowing
others to create software add-ons for their application.

After having released QuarkXPress 3.3, QuarkXPress was seen as

needing significant improvements and users criticized it for its
overly long innovation cycles.

The release of QuarkXPress version 5 in 2002 led to a conflict with

Apple’s user base, as QuarkXPress did not support Mac OS X, while
InDesign 2.0, launched in the same week, did. Only with Version 6
QuarkXPress support Mac OS X, however the first really adopted
version was QuarkXPress 7 (which was also a Universal Binary
application).

Quark started to lower its pricing levels in 2004. In December 2006,

Quark licensed the Windows version of QuarkXPress 5 to be
distributed free of charge on the cover of a UK computer magazine,
Computer Shopper, with the idea of enticing consumers to upgrade
to later versions.

Having arrived late with a Mac OS X version, Quark took a different

approach to porting to Intel-native applications on Mac (Universal
Binary), and released its Universal Binary version 10 months before
Adobe ported InDesign.
With QuarkXPress 8 and 9 the product seems to listen more to its
user base, as reviews worldwide became more positive and several
Mac magazines gave awards to QuarkXPress, even best product of
the year (MacWorld Awards 2011: Grand Prix Winner).

Discussion question.

Discuss the features of:

1. pagemaker
2. quarkXPress

LINK TO FURTHER STUDY

https://history-computer.com/ModernComputer/Software/
Pagemaker.html

LINK TO A PAST PAPER

https://drive.google.com/open?
id=1jSlyi163wjQ1TCOtwwKnCTK7Iu_eDBaF

LECTURER: MR. CYRUS K. MUTAI

COURSE: DIPLOMA IN JOURNALISM (KNEC)

UNIT: MAGAZINE JOURNALISM

SESSION: 18

TOPIC: MAGAZINE PRODUCTION

OBJECTIVES:
By the end of the session, the trainee should be able to:

• Explain the features of InDesign.

• Discuss the history of InDesign.

InDesign

InDesign is a desktop publishing software application for creating

flyers, brochures, magazines, newspapers, and books. Projects
created using InDesign can be shared in both digital and print
formats. InDesign is used by graphic designers, artists, publishers,
and marketing professionals. It is developed and produced by Adobe
Systems and is available individually, or as part of the Adobe
Creative Cloud. InDesign was previously available as part of the
Creative Suite.

What is InDesign CC

Adobe InDesign CC is part of the Creative Cloud, a collection of

applications used for design, marketing, and communications in
print, video, and online. Adobe InDesign CC is available for use on
either Mac OS or Windows computers. The CC designates that the
application is part of the Creative Cloud. The current version of
InDesign is InDesign CC 2020.

InDesign CC provides access to other Adobe resources. Many of

these services within InDesign CC involve additional paid services, in
which Adobe collects additional fees beyond the monthly license for
the CC apps. These include Adobe Stock which, for additional fees,
provides access to images. Similarly, fonts from Typekit are
available for additional fees beyond the cost of InDesign.

What is the difference between InDesign CC and CS

Earlier versions of the app used the CS designation, which
represented Creative Suite. InDesign CC is subscription-based,
requiring a monthly or annual fee, while InDesign CS was available
as a perpetual license which could be purchased and used forever
with a one-time fee. Many of the same features necessary for
working on projects are present in both the CC and CS versions of
InDesign. While InDesign CS is no longer supported by Adobe
Systems, it can still be used for many projects on Mac OS and
Windows computers. While InDesign CC may not have received
significant updates since the creative suite versions, related Adobe
apps have been updated considerably. Users subscribing to the
entire Creative Cloud for other applications can access InDesign CC
as it is included. InDesign CC is useful if using the most current
Windows operating systems.

InDesign History

The first version of InDesign was released on August 31, 1999. The
program began development long before this, with a different
company known as Aldus that was based in Seattle and created
desktop publishing software. Aldus developed some of the first
graphics and desktop publishing programs available for personal
computers that were running early versions of the Windows and Mac
operating systems. These included applications such as Superpaint
and PageMaker. The first version of PageMaker was released by
Aldus July 1985 and it provided a simplified graphical user interface
that fit the Macintosh point-and-click user experience. PageMaker
became popular for early desktop publishing use as a result. At the
company's height in 1990, PageMaker 4.0 hit the market and was
considered advanced for its time, although it was starting to see
competition from Quark, Inc., a smaller startup based in Denver who
produced the electronic publishing software application
QuarkXPress.

In 1994, Adobe purchased Aldus and acquired most of their software

apps, with the most notable being PageMaker. In the years prior to
the Adobe–Aldus acquisition, PageMaker had been losing significant
market share to QuarkXPress. Quark had many more features and
eventually pushed PageMaker out of the professional desktop
publishing market.

In 2000, Adobe released the first version of InDesign with the intent
to replace PageMaker and offer an application that was more
competitive with QuarkXPress. With the dawn of Mac OS X, Adobe
also had the first-mover advantage by offering InDesign as the first
desktop publishing program native for OS X, as QuarkXPress was
only available on earlier versions of the Mac OS at that time.

Adobe eventually bundled InDesign with Photoshop and Illustrator,

and then added additional tools to deliver the Creative Suite. As
many designers already used Photoshop and Illustrator, offering
InDesign as part of these other applications caused it to be adopted
more quickly. Within 10 years of its launch Adobe InDesign had
displaced QuarkXPress as the preeminent desktop publishing tool.

How is InDesign Used

InDesign is used to create flyers, brochures, magazines,

newspapers, posters, business cards, postcards, stickers, comics,
and many other types of documents or visual communication.

InDesign is an industry-standard for publishing design and is used

by graphics and marketing professionals. It may be used in
conjunction with other applications that are part of the Adobe
Creative Cloud including Illustrator and Photoshop, or it can be used
on its own. Images and illustrations are usually not created within
InDesign, rather layouts using text, images, and drawings that often
are built in other programs are assembled into a layout using
InDesign.

What Does Adobe InDesign Do

InDesign provides the tools necessary to design pages and create

visual layouts that can be used for both print and digital media.
InDesign provides users a simplified way to create professional
pages which can be published and distributed in print or online.

InDesign is especially useful for documents containing multiple

pages, layouts that combine text and images, and those containing
significant amounts of text.

How Much Does InDesign Cost

Adobe InDesign CC is available as a subscription, and the cost for

InDesign CC varies based upon the subscription plan selected. An
individual subscription for only InDesign is $19.99 per month when
subscribed for a full year, and $29.99 per month if subscribed only
for a single month. Adobe also offers a Creative Cloud plan that
includes InDesign along with more than 20 other Adobe apps which
costs $49.99 per month or $74.99 per month if only subscribed for a
single month.

Academic discounts are available for Creative Cloud, including

InDesign. Students and teachers can subscribe to all the Creative
Cloud apps for $19.99 per month for an annual plan with proof they
work at or attend an eligible educational institution. There is no
month-to-month option for the discounted fees.

Learning InDesign

There are many options to learn InDesign. These include hands-on

classes, private training, books, and online tutorials. Live InDesign
classes are a good way to learn with other professionals and be able
to ask a professional instructor questions in-person during lessons,
and after class about projects. Live InDesign classes also make it
easier to ask questions about aspects of InDesign that may be
specific to an individual’s type of work. Live instruction can also help
you decide whether you'd like to go with a single-app subscription or
the full Creative Cloud. InDesign training can help streamline a
project workflow, improve efficiency, and work on new types of
projects that require additional skills. Live Online classes are an
option for those unable to travel to a classroom location.

Online tutorials are another valuable resource for learning how to

use InDesign. These can be used by themselves and in conjunction
with live or online InDesign classes. American Graphics Institute
offers free online tutorials by professional InDesign instructors which
show how to solve common problems and create layouts using
InDesign.

Books are another option to learn InDesign. Books such as the

InDesign Digital Classroom make it possible for individuals to learn
InDesign at their own pace, and don't require an internet
connection.

No matter how you initially get started with your InDesign learning
experience, practice is often the best way to learn a new program.
Experimenting with different features and functionalities on a
practice document that isn't contingent on a deadline and quality
standards for a client or employer can prepare you for when it's time
to use InDesign professionally.

InDesign Mac vs. Windows Differences

InDesign works equally well on Mac and Windows computers. There

are no significant differences between the Mac and Windows
versions of InDesign. On similarly equipped Mac and Windows
computers, InDesign performs equally well on both platforms.

Advanced users may find differences in the scripting languages. Mac

users will use AppleScript to automate repetitive tasks, while
windows users utilize Visual Basic Scripting, also known as VBScript.

Slight differences in the key commands exist between Windows and

Mac systems, but the general functionality is identical. For example,
users who prefer to work from their keyboard may press the Ctrl key
along with the P key to print if operating on a Windows computer,
while a Mac user would press the Command key along with the P
key to perform the same task.

Ultimately though, the best computer to use for Creative Cloud,

including InDesign depends on the processor speed and size of the
monitor rather than the operating system.

InDesign

InDesign is a desktop publishing software application for creating

flyers, brochures, magazines, newspapers, and books. Projects
created using InDesign can be shared in both digital and print
formats. InDesign is used by graphic designers, artists, publishers,
and marketing professionals. It is developed and produced by Adobe
Systems and is available individually, or as part of the Adobe
Creative Cloud. InDesign was previously available as part of the
Creative Suite.

What is InDesign CC

Adobe InDesign CC is part of the Creative Cloud, a collection of

applications used for design, marketing, and communications in
print, video, and online. Adobe InDesign CC is available for use on
either Mac OS or Windows computers. The CC designates that the
application is part of the Creative Cloud. The current version of
InDesign is InDesign CC 2020.

InDesign CC provides access to other Adobe resources. Many of

these services within InDesign CC involve additional paid services, in
which Adobe collects additional fees beyond the monthly license for
the CC apps. These include Adobe Stock which, for additional fees,
provides access to images. Similarly, fonts from Typekit are
available for additional fees beyond the cost of InDesign.
What is the difference between InDesign CC and CS

Earlier versions of the app used the CS designation, which

represented Creative Suite. InDesign CC is subscription-based,
requiring a monthly or annual fee, while InDesign CS was available
as a perpetual license which could be purchased and used forever
with a one-time fee. Many of the same features necessary for
working on projects are present in both the CC and CS versions of
InDesign. While InDesign CS is no longer supported by Adobe
Systems, it can still be used for many projects on Mac OS and
Windows computers. While InDesign CC may not have received
significant updates since the creative suite versions, related Adobe
apps have been updated considerably. Users subscribing to the
entire Creative Cloud for other applications can access InDesign CC
as it is included. InDesign CC is useful if using the most current
Windows operating systems.

InDesign History

The first version of InDesign was released on August 31, 1999. The
program began development long before this, with a different
company known as Aldus that was based in Seattle and created
desktop publishing software. Aldus developed some of the first
graphics and desktop publishing programs available for personal
computers that were running early versions of the Windows and Mac
operating systems. These included applications such as Superpaint
and PageMaker. The first version of PageMaker was released by
Aldus July 1985 and it provided a simplified graphical user interface
that fit the Macintosh point-and-click user experience. PageMaker
became popular for early desktop publishing use as a result. At the
company's height in 1990, PageMaker 4.0 hit the market and was
considered advanced for its time, although it was starting to see
competition from Quark, Inc., a smaller startup based in Denver who
produced the electronic publishing software application
QuarkXPress.
In 1994, Adobe purchased Aldus and acquired most of their software
apps, with the most notable being PageMaker. In the years prior to
the Adobe–Aldus acquisition, PageMaker had been losing significant
market share to QuarkXPress. Quark had many more features and
eventually pushed PageMaker out of the professional desktop
publishing market.

In 2000, Adobe released the first version of InDesign with the intent
to replace PageMaker and offer an application that was more
competitive with QuarkXPress. With the dawn of Mac OS X, Adobe
also had the first-mover advantage by offering InDesign as the first
desktop publishing program native for OS X, as QuarkXPress was
only available on earlier versions of the Mac OS at that time.

Adobe eventually bundled InDesign with Photoshop and Illustrator,

and then added additional tools to deliver the Creative Suite. As
many designers already used Photoshop and Illustrator, offering
InDesign as part of these other applications caused it to be adopted
more quickly. Within 10 years of its launch Adobe InDesign had
displaced QuarkXPress as the preeminent desktop publishing tool.

How is InDesign Used

InDesign is used to create flyers, brochures, magazines,

newspapers, posters, business cards, postcards, stickers, comics,
and many other types of documents or visual communication.

InDesign is an industry-standard for publishing design and is used

by graphics and marketing professionals. It may be used in
conjunction with other applications that are part of the Adobe
Creative Cloud including Illustrator and Photoshop, or it can be used
on its own. Images and illustrations are usually not created within
InDesign, rather layouts using text, images, and drawings that often
are built in other programs are assembled into a layout using
InDesign.
What Does Adobe InDesign Do

InDesign provides the tools necessary to design pages and create

visual layouts that can be used for both print and digital media.
InDesign provides users a simplified way to create professional
pages which can be published and distributed in print or online.

InDesign is especially useful for documents containing multiple

pages, layouts that combine text and images, and those containing
significant amounts of text.

How Much Does InDesign Cost

Adobe InDesign CC is available as a subscription, and the cost for

InDesign CC varies based upon the subscription plan selected. An
individual subscription for only InDesign is $19.99 per month when
subscribed for a full year, and $29.99 per month if subscribed only
for a single month. Adobe also offers a Creative Cloud plan that
includes InDesign along with more than 20 other Adobe apps which
costs $49.99 per month or $74.99 per month if only subscribed for a
single month.

Academic discounts are available for Creative Cloud, including

InDesign. Students and teachers can subscribe to all the Creative
Cloud apps for $19.99 per month for an annual plan with proof they
work at or attend an eligible educational institution. There is no
month-to-month option for the discounted fees.

Learning InDesign

There are many options to learn InDesign. These include hands-on

classes, private training, books, and online tutorials. Live InDesign
classes are a good way to learn with other professionals and be able
to ask a professional instructor questions in-person during lessons,
and after class about projects. Live InDesign classes also make it
easier to ask questions about aspects of InDesign that may be
specific to an individual’s type of work. Live instruction can also help
you decide whether you'd like to go with a single-app subscription or
the full Creative Cloud. InDesign training can help streamline a
project workflow, improve efficiency, and work on new types of
projects that require additional skills. Live Online classes are an
option for those unable to travel to a classroom location.

Online tutorials are another valuable resource for learning how to

use InDesign. These can be used by themselves and in conjunction
with live or online InDesign classes. American Graphics Institute
offers free online tutorials by professional InDesign instructors which
show how to solve common problems and create layouts using
InDesign.

Books are another option to learn InDesign. Books such as the

InDesign Digital Classroom make it possible for individuals to learn
InDesign at their own pace, and don't require an internet
connection.

No matter how you initially get started with your InDesign learning
experience, practice is often the best way to learn a new program.
Experimenting with different features and functionalities on a
practice document that isn't contingent on a deadline and quality
standards for a client or employer can prepare you for when it's time
to use InDesign professionally.

InDesign Mac vs. Windows Differences

InDesign works equally well on Mac and Windows computers. There

are no significant differences between the Mac and Windows
versions of InDesign. On similarly equipped Mac and Windows
computers, InDesign performs equally well on both platforms.

Advanced users may find differences in the scripting languages. Mac

users will use AppleScript to automate repetitive tasks, while
windows users utilize Visual Basic Scripting, also known as VBScript.
Slight differences in the key commands exist between Windows and
Mac systems, but the general functionality is identical. For example,
users who prefer to work from their keyboard may press the Ctrl key
along with the P key to print if operating on a Windows computer,
while a Mac user would press the Command key along with the P
key to perform the same task.

Ultimately though, the best computer to use for Creative Cloud,

including InDesign depends on the processor speed and size of the
monitor rather than the operating system.

Outline some of the features of indesign.

If you can access indesign software, attempt to practically design

the front page of a newspaper.

COURSE: DIPLOMA IN JOURNALISM

UNIT: MAGAZINE JOURNALISM

LECTURER: MR. CYRUS KIPKEMEI

SESSION 19

TOPIC: MAGAZINE PRODUCTION

OBJECTIVES

By the end of the session, the trainee should be able to:

 Discuss the role of a sub-editor in a magazine.

 Discuss the qualities of a sub-editor.

INTRODUCTION

Editing is the most challenging fact of journalism. A good editors

needs creative skills, command over the language, ideas to improve
the copy, and correct judgment about how much importance should
be given for a particular news item. The copy of the report has been
improved by the sub-editor and is therefore easier to read and
understand. Sub-editor is all about quality control in print
journalism. The role varies depending on whether you are working in
print, online or broadcast media. It is says that reporter write the
paper (story), sub-editor make it.

EDITOR

Editor is a special post for a journalist. A person who edits a copy of

a story is called an editor. An editor supervises the reporters and
improves his reports for publication. An editor also plans about what
to report, how to cover and the relative importance to be given to
each story. Every newspaper will have a set of editors, like
reporters. All editors are not of the same category. In a newspaper,
the top post is that of a Chief Editor. Modern newspapers have
editors for every section. The sports editor looks after sports news.
The feature editor looks after the features section. Picture editors
are in charge of photographers. Like that business editors look after
business news etc.

SUB-EDITOR
Sub-editor is a person who collects reports from reporters and
prepares the report to publish or broadcast. He also corrects and
checks articles in a newspaper before they are printed. A big
newspaper or magazine would employ several news/feature/sports
editors assign work and edit a reporter/writers material for accuracy,
content, grammar, and style.

QUALITIES OF A SUB-EDITOR

It is customary to describe desired qualities of a sub-editor

separately. To be a good sub-editor one’s must be an all-rounder.
The qualities that must be present in a sub-editor are listed below:

NEWS SENSE

News sense is the basic quality of newsmen. News sense is essential

for a sub-editor. He has to have news sense or nose for news to
distinguish news from non-news. He is the first reader of a reporter’s
copy and if the reporter has made a mistake he has to correct it. A
bad copy may have the most important element of the story buried
in the fourth paragraph. It will be left to the sub-editor’s nose for
news to bring that to the first paragraph. He should be able to
compare various news values and decide where to begin his story
and should not miss important details.

CLARITY

A sub-editor should have clarity of mind and expression. A person

who is confused himself cannot tell a story to others. Only clarity of
mind is not enough unless it is accompanied by clarity of expression.
Without clarity of expression clarity of mind has no meaning. Sub-
editor is the judge of clarity of the copy a good subeditor will never
allow a copy escape him unless the meaning is crystal clear. He has
every right to make life miserable for a reporter who is not clear and
does not write in simple language.

ALERTNESS

A sub-editor should always be alert while dealing with his subjects.

Many major news breaks in the past were possible because of
alertness of reporters. Scoops don’t walk into newspaper offices
alert reporters catch them in air and pursue. A sub-editor has to be
alert while working on news-desk. Lack of alertness of a sub-editor
can be seen by readers in the morning for he will be leaving or
introducing mistakes for everybody to see.

SPEED

A person who cannot work fast cannot be a good sub-editor. A sub-

editor has to work with speed. He cannot sit with a copy for long. He
has to do swiftly whatever is required of him for a lot more copy is
waiting for him. He should think fast, decide fast and write or type
fast for he has to meet deadlines or may have to go to another
assignment. A slow sub-editor is a curse at the news desk and is
treated with contempt. Some people are misfits in the profession.

CURIOSITY

Sub-editors should have an insatiable curiosity. This characteristic

will keep on improving a sub-editor for with every passing day a
curious subeditor will have a better background to do his job the
next day. Reporters and sub-editors should read as much as
possible to constantly improve their awareness level.

BI-FOCAL MINDED

Sub-editor must be a bi-focal mind. By bi-focal mind we mean that a

person observe a fact in two ways one from very close and other far
from sight. It means that the sub-editor should have the ability to
catch any mistake in a story.

When he take a copy of a story firstly he follow the visible mistakes,

this is called very near mistake. For example, ‘Chapy Nobabgonj is
the capital of mango in Bangladesh’ here contain spelling mistake,
the correct spelling is ‘Chapai Nawabgonj’.

The second mistake is ‘The largest mangoes hut sits in Shivganj

district’. Here Shivganj is not a district, it is a sub-district of Chapai
Nawabgonj. The sub-editors should ability to face this type of
mistake. In general sense this is called bi-focal mind.

Skepticism
It is another necessary quality which a subeditor should cultivate.
He should not take anything for granted. He should have an
unwavering posture of doubt until faced with undeniable proof.
Reporters should be more vigilant for many forces constantly try to
use them, and through them their paper. Many people try to plant
on reporters a wrong story for their own ends. Sub-editors should
also be careful for some clever politicians, public relations men and
product advertisers keep on trying to take them for a ride. They
should not fail to check even reporters, copy for such foul play.

OBJECTIVITY

Sub-editor should aim at objectivity while dealing with a story. They

should not allow their personal bias or ideas to creep into a story.
They should not take sides but try to cover all the different
viewpoints to achieve balance in the story.

ACCURACY

A sub-editor should strive for accuracy. He should check and re-

check his facts till he is satisfied that he has them accurate. The role
of a sub-editor is to check for accuracy. It is particularly important
when background is involved. In the case of dates and names the
reporter may rely on his memory but the sub-editor must check
them from reference material available in the newspaper office.
When there is a doubt he should leave it out—this is the golden rule
of journalism. It is better not to say a thing than to say it wrong.

PUNCTUALITY

It is a good habit. It is always better to be punctual and then wait

than reach late and ask others—a rival may misinform you or hide
some important information. At the desk too punctuality pays. If a
sub-editor is punctual he will be treated with respect by his co-
workers. If he is late he will irritate them and spoil the working
atmosphere. Besides he may have to face the problem of backlog of
copy which he will have to clear under the pressure of deadline.

VAST KNOWLEDGE

All other things being equal reporters need additional qualities to

deal effectively with all sorts of people they meet in the field. Sub-
editors should have better command over language as they improve
what reporters write. An intelligent envisioning of the future helps
newsmen in general. The quality helps them in identifying processes
and people who will be important in future. The sub-editors should
keep up-date information and vast knowledge about home and
abroad. Keep up to date with sector issues, by reading related
publications. Adapt all these skills for a publication’s website.

CREDIBILITY

A report should be credible. Before writing or editing, the sub-editor

should crosscheck the facts and figures. Mistakes can creep in when
work is done in haste. It is always better to revise the copy before
sending to publish or broadcast. If the story can be improved, it
should be rewritten.

IMAGINATION

This basic mental faculty helps reporters in writing better stories

that retain the reader’s interest. For a sub-editor this creative
faculty is very useful as he can add sparkle to somebody else copy
and make it lively. Besides, imaginative headlines attract the reader
and improve the quality of a newspaper.

TACTFULNESS

A sub-editor should be tactful. He should have the ability to handle

sensitive people and situations gracefully without causing hurt or
angry feelings. He should be considerate of others and should be
careful not to embarrass, upset or offend them. He should have an
understanding of human behavior and emotions. This will help him
in developing contacts that are so essential for news gathering &
writing.

SELF-DISCIPLINE

One can achieve a degree of proficiency in sub-editing or reporting

by systematic effort and self-control. In this sense self- discipline
suggests dedication and firm commitment. It helps in journalism as
in any other field.
CALMNESS

Sub-editors often work in trying circumstances. They have to remain

calm and composed in most exciting and tragic circumstances. In
many situations they have to be calm— devoid of hysterical actions
or utterances and apply appropriate mental and physical effort to
write or edit the story. Reporters and sub-editors are human beings.
They have emotions but they have to stifle them in the face of
disturbing influences—they have to develop resistance to
excitability. Sub-editors should develop a temperament to work
under pressure of deadlines. They should not lose their cool if they
are behind the clock for calm mind can work faster.

FEARLESSNESS AND FRANKNESS

These qualities help sub-editor in asking unpleasant questions and

taking risks to find out truth. Nobody gives a story on a platter. He
will have to probe, question, authenticate and exercise his power of
deduction to write a good story.

DILIGENCE

Sub-editors should be diligent. Their jobs require painstaking

exertion of intense care and effort, alertness and dedication to the
task and wary watchfulness. They have to make extremely fine
distinctions while writing or editing copy a sub-editor should insist
on perfection and should lose his job for he can make or impair the
newspaper. These qualities are basically qualities of good and
efficient human beings. Good and efficient human being makes
good and efficient sub-editors and reporters.

INTEGRITY

It is a virtue in itself and implies undeviating honesty and strict

adherence to a stern code of ethics. This human quality is important
for journalists. It is more important for reporters for they are more
exposed to temptation as compared to sub-editors.
FUNCTIONS OF A SUB-EDITOR

WRITE A HEADLINE

The sub editor then has to find a good headline for the story and
writing headlines that capture the essence of the story or are clever
or amusing. The headline should be sharp, attractive, crisp and
convey the spirit of the story. The headline should compel the
reader to stop and read the whole story.

While writing the headline, a sub editor should know the space
available for the story, whether it is one column, two columns or
three etc. The headline should fit within that column. While writing
the heading, it should fit into the mood of the story. A sarcastic
headline for a hard story will look odd. Similarly a hard-line headline
will spoil the spirit of a humorous piece. The headline should also be
suggestive. It should never be a full sentence.

FOLLOW IN HOUSE POLICY

Sub-editors are responsible for overseeing the content, accuracy,

layout and design of newspaper and magazine articles and making
sure that they are in keeping with house style. Every media house
has its own policy and ethics. The media house contains and
maintains their own goals, rules, and regulation. Every media
follows their several news, advertisement, and page makeup policy.
They oriented by their own policy. So the sub-editor should follow
and fulfill the in house policy.

Without these three functions there are various significant jobs that
are perform by sub-editors are remarks below:-

PAGE MAKEUP/LAYOUT OF PAGES

Page layout or page make up is an art. Each newspaper has a

different layout though all have eight columns in each page. Types
or fonts used by newspapers also differ from paper to paper. Every
sub editor has to learn the typefaces available in the paper and the
layout pattern adopted. Preparing the page of the newspaper is
called page making. Earlier sub editors used to do it on dummy
pages. Now a day they are doing it on the computer screen.

Picture editing also involves placing the picture in the correct

position in the page. It is part of the page layout. Usually in the front
page, only very important news pictures will find a place. He must
have noticed from this that the headlines are not of uniform type.
The type, or font, of the letters in each headline differs according to
the length and width of the column. A sub editor should also know
about the font sizes available. Each paper has its fonts and types.
Ensuring that, stories are the right length and correctly placed on
pages.

USE PICTURE PHOTOGRAPH OR GRAPH

The sub editor now has to see if there is a possibility for including
photographs along with the news item. Pictures or graphs can
improve the visual quality of a report. Photography is an integral
part of the media.

Whether a newspaper or news weekly or news channel or a news

portal, photography is essential to give it the visual impact, effect
and authenticity. It is said that a good picture is worth a thousand
words. Sometimes one picture is enough to explain the mood of a
situation or an event.

WRITE CAPTION

When you see a photo in the newspaper you look for what is written
under it. This writing under a photo is called the catchword or
caption. When photographers file photos, it is the job of the sub
editor to write the appropriate caption. Cropping photos and
deciding where to use them for best effect, and writing picture
captions. A good caption can improve the impact of the picture.

CONDENSATION

Condensation is a task that the sub editor has to do. Reporters

generally file lengthy stories. Only the sub editor will be able to
know about the availability of space in the newspaper. If the full
story written by a correspondent will not squeeze into the space
available, it is the job of the sub editor to condense it by rewriting or
editing. If one word can substitute for a number of words that
definitely should be done.

RE-WRITE NEWS STORY

Rewriting material needs that it flows or reads better and adheres to

the house style of a particular publication. Ensuring that, a story fits
a particular word count by cutting or expanding materials as
necessary. Checking facts and stories to ensure they are accurate,
adhere to copyright laws, are not libelous or go against the
publication’s policy. Working to a page, plan to ensure that the right
stories appear in the correct place on each page. If the sub-editor
find any mistakes in a reporters copy he should correct the copy. If
he think that the story needs to add some information or develop
the story then he should re-write the story.

VALUE ADDED

The next job of the sub editor is to value add the report. If some
background material has to be added, he has to collect it from the
library and improve the story. For example, if a report is filed on a
train accident killing ten people, the sub editor can improve the
story by collecting information about other major train accidents
that happened recently.

GIVE A BYLINE

Another important decision an editor has to take is about giving a

byline or credit to the story. Normally bylines are not given for
particular stories. But if a reporter files an exclusive story then it
should appear with his byline or name so that he gets individual
credit for the story. The decision of giving a byline to a reporter for a
particular story is taken by the news editor. But a sub editor who
edits the story can always suggest to the news editor about giving
that story a byline.

PROOF READING
Proofreading complete pages produced by other sub-editors using
the main basic proofing symbols. Checking facts and stories to
ensure they are accurate, adhere to copyright laws, are not libelous
or go against the publication’s policy. When a news ready to go for
publication the sub-editor should check the spelling, grammar,
punctuation and so on.

TRANSLATE THE STORY

Translation a copy is a vital job for the sub-editor. To translate the

news story is a significant function of a sub-editor. There are many
news sources, news agencies and institutions around the world from
where the news media collect information to publish or broadcast.
This type of information usually written in English. Besides this the
press note, press releases are almost publish in English. The sub-
editor needs to translate these types of information for the readers
benefit.

CONCLUSION

Editing is a process by which a report is read, corrected, modified,

value added, polished, improved and made better for publication.
Condensation is also part of editing. The editor also decides whether
photographs or other images or graphs should be used along with
the report

Sub-editors are journalists or designers responsible for overseeing

the content, accuracy, layout and design of newspaper and
magazine articles and making sure that they are in keeping with
house style. Now we can say that, the sub-editors are responsible to
the house performing various functions. Besides sub-editors should
cultivate some qualities that, make him for the competitive media
world.

REVISION QUESTIONS

Discuss five qualities of a sub-editor.

Outline five functions of a sub-editor in a magazine.

Differentiate between a sub-editor and a copy editor in a newsroom.

FURTHER RESEARCH

Warren,Carl: Morden News Reporting.

B.N. Ahuja & S.S.Chhabra; Editing.

Rahman, Jawadur ; News Editing.

Gilmore, Gene; Modern Newspaper Editing, University of Illinois.

http://www.copyblogger.com

http://journalism.about.com

LINK TO A PAST PAPER

https://drive.google.com/open?id=10sE6arRC1pQzCB0jZDtHo1m-
7giB57YD

CREATION, DEVELOPMENT AND MANAGEMENT OF MAGAZINES

Subtopic 1: HUMAN RESOURCES

Media companies that adapt to changes in the competitive

environment will succeed, whilst those that don’t, will fail. That is
the conclusion many of the contributors to this handbook will make
during the course of their arguments. Our discussion on Strategic
Human Resource Management (SHRM) issues facing media
companies now and in the medium-term future is no different.
“Adapt or die” is the mantra that we have chosen to adopt in our
view of the issues facing many media firms HRM departments.
An organization’s deliberate strategy to adapt to their changing
environment means that SHRM practice and policies need to support
the organizations goals (Shameem & Khan, 2012); therefore, the
authors propose examining the key trends in HR functional
components of recruitment, performance and retention. These three
elements support organizational objectives pertaining to human
capital and are the foundation of HRM policies and procedures
(Taylor& Woodhams, 2016).

A dynamic media environment is being driven, primarily, by

technological influences and change. Media firms need to adapt to
this turbulent environment and re-align their SHRM policies in
accordance with the strategic management of their organization
(Shameem & Khan, 2012). Commonly, HR tasks such as recruitment,
retention and performance of employees are not industry specific,
but competencies of management relating to creative talent
management, digital technology that constantly evolve and
continuous innovation do influence standard HR functions (Artero &
Manifredi, 2016).

A central tenet of our discussion is that media firms and their

employees need to remain adaptive, particularly as firms that adapt
fastest can achieve a competitive advantage over rivals (Oliver,
2016). Research by Reeves and Deimler (2011) and Reeves, Love
and Nishant (2012) presented a powerful argument for media firm
adaptation. They examined the volatility in the US Media Industry
between 2005-2011 and concluded that during periods of
turbulence in demand, competition and profit margins, firms that
outperformed others did so due to their ability to interpret and
adapt to signals of impending market volatility. Their research
indicated that DirecTV, Time Warner Cable and The Walt Disney Co.
had all outperformed their industry rivals (including Omnicom
Group, The Washington Post, Viacom, Cablevision Systems and
Thomson-Reuters) because of their proficiency to rapidly adapt their
businesses to volatile operating conditions. Central to these
adaptive media firm practices and processes is the role that human
capital or employees played as a key strategic resource in delivering
superior business performance (Wang, Jaw & Tsai, 2012).