Well, that whole “weekly posting” thing hasn’t exactly materialized. I’ve been teaching a fast-paced January term Intro to Mass Communication class, so things have been a bit busy. However, I did have a chance to learn more about the new user-generated content experiment at Ladies’ Home Journal, and wrote about it for PBS MediaShift.
I asked editor Sally Lee if she thought working with inexperienced writers was going to be challenging for her editorial team, and she noted that working with experienced writers isn’t always a piece of cake either. Moreover, the “amateurs” bring something different to the magazine:
”We’re getting fresh, clear voices that don’t fall into the trap of thinking that they have to write a certain way for a women’s magazine … One of the wonderful things about working with so-called amateur writers is they don’t have preconceived notions about what the magazine should be.”
