Profile Article...

I’m really looking forward to an interview I will be conducting over the weekend for my profile story. The article will feature the lead singer of a local band. Normally I would conduct interviews in person, but this time I wanted to try a different approach and talk to him over the phone. That is unless he has a performance coming up, which of course I’ll swing by to take photos. With photos I’ll have more to offer to magazines besides an article. Luckily there are plenty of magazines related to music that I can choose from.
Quite possibly, with permission, I’ll stop by his job and take photos of him there if he is not performing anytime soon.

At first it was sort of difficult to find someone to profile. I wanted to profile someone who stood out. I was able to find him through my sister who happens to work alongside him at a retail/music store.

My previous article was a lot of fun. I wrote about a sculptor who lives in Sacramento. He is very gifted and his work is outstanding. It was such an honor to do a story on him since I consider him to be a modern day Leonardo DaVinci. Unfortunately I haven’t found anyone to publish this story, but I will continue to send out query letters to other magazines besides the three we are required to do. I feel it is my priority to have this article published because he is an artist no one should overlook.

On another note, I’m looking forward to the next issue of Sac State Magazine. The editor had asked me to help her with obtaining quotes and so I did. It’s quite possible that my name will be published due to the assistance provided. It will be absolutely exciting to see my name printed in a magazine. Although it’s not a major magazine, it’s certainly a start!

Query Letter...

I just sent off my first query letter to Sactown Magazine and I am both nervous and excited. I have been a fan and a constant reader of their magazines since the first issue they published. One of the editors for Sactown Magazine, Elyssa Lee, actually submits articles to InStyle magazine, which is another magazine I enjoy.

When I began to write the query letter this morning I had doubts about my article. Thanks to the assigned textbook, Writing for Magazines, there were wonderful tips in Ch.4 that provided me with a lot more confidence. After I finished writing the query letter and re-read it, the article actually sounded really great.

The article itself needs some more work, but I am determined to make the necessary edits that are needed and even do more extensive research. I'll also need to talk to several more students.

Tomorrow I will be sending two more query letters to Sacramento Magazine and Sac State Magazine. It would be absolutely fantastic if one of these end up publishing my article, but all hope will not be lost if they don't. I'll just keep trying over and over again.

Story Research...

On 9/13/2007 I was able to talk with a couple of students from American River College. I asked them each what they considered to be some of the more important gadgets to have while in school. Both of them placed their computers at the top of the list. Neither of them mentioned their cell phones as a necessity.
A website I visited was http://reviews.cnet.com. Here they made a list of the top 10 gadget must haves. Here http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/raskin/11631 they explain what technology students don't need. I visited the technology section at www.washingtonpost.com, but nothing really sparked my interest or closely related to what I was researching.
I'm still trying to find an angle to this story because as a student it's obvious what technology I need or don't need. If I am to write on how technology has transitioned then should I compare and contrast specific objects. For example, we now have the iPod Nanos, but before we had cassette players (Walkmans). Maybe I could get into how the cassette tape would unwind in the player and how it would take at least ten minutes to wind the tape back in by turning a pen in one of the two little holes.
Another angle that came to me was about common courtesy with technology. I work as a front office agent at a hotel and this guest came up, set his items on the desk, but didn't say a word to me until his conversation was over. Other guests would normally apologize.
On September 14 I have plans on talking with more people. The next set of interviews will be in regards to the other angles I came up with. Maybe they shared some of the same experiences with the tape cassette or quite possibly other obsolete gadgets.
By the way has anyone ever stopped to think about what would happen if we woke up one day and we were unable to connect to the Internet or have access to technology? I know this sounds like a really silly question, and it may not have a lot to do with my article, but a few times at the hotel I work for we had lost power and were forced to result to manual work. Normally it would take about 3 minutes to check one person in, but in these particular and unfortunate times it would take at least 6-10 minutes. It still may not seem like a lot, but I always felt really bad for the last person in line.

What I hope to learn in Magazine Writing...

What I hope to learn in magazine writing is how to acquire a sense of acknowledging what a good idea is for an article. It would also be great to know how to take that idea and develop it into an article that is worth publishing. I would love to learn how to get directly in touch with magazines and what it takes to sell an article. At some point it might even be interesting to learn if the writer of a particular article also provides the accompanying photos or if this is done by someone else. I'm really looking forward to what this class has in store.