Machinations of Magazines Pt. 1

Or what is otherwise known as production. Unless you've actually been apart of a magazine's 'production week' or if it happens to be a weekly 'production day', its intensity will certainly be lost on you. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) I have experienced many of these first hand.

This is where the other side of magazines rears its ugly head. Or rather where everyone working on producing a mag of literary, political, entertaining, beautiful genius realizes that their mag is nothing without ads. In production all of the copy and the delicately designed pages come crashing into advertising space and printing deadlines. Sattie and Rookiya at Rogers run tight ships. There is absolutely no leeway when it comes to making a magazine's scheduled on-sale date.

Having previously interned at the Walrus none of this was entirely new information to me.  But in the end I did come away with one eyebrow raising fact.  As Sattie sat us down and modestly mentioned Rogers produces about 70 magazines (mostly consumer and trade).  She told us the breakdown of ad space to actual content in these magazines is roughly a 45/55 split. WHAT?  That's a shitty shitty deal.  Not exactly a surprise but a harsh reality to hear.