The manuscript must be reviewed to be sure it fits the prescribed editorial format. It is then turned over to the appropriate staff people for illustration and layout.
Professional Magazines
Professional magazines are published by professional societies. Some examples of these are The Journal of Chemical Education, published by the American Chemical Society; Civil Engineering, by the American Society of Civil Engineers; and the American Journal of Nursing, by the American Nurses' Association. In an issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, the Mathematics Association of America advertised for an editorial manager to work in Washington, DC. The duties of the position included supervising the editorial department for three journals and several books a year. Training in mathematics, excellent writing skills, and some editing experience were required.
A great many journals are read by audiences outside one's company. For this reason, if you become a technical journalist, above all you must be able to gauge the interest and needs of these external readers and to produce material that is "reader friendly." The ability to analyze these readers becomes of paramount importance. If you think that you have this ability, together with imagination and proper motivation, technical journalism may be your career goal.
Sometimes a company magazine can be published by only one or two people working with a printing firm and outside advertising people, or it may be produced in-house with the use of computers and laser printers. It can have a much larger staff, including editors, proofreaders, copy readers, illustrators, office support staff, and an editorial board.
Working on a company magazine will bring you in contact with many people; this will require patience and tact on your part. In the first place, you must persuade the engineers and scientists to write for you, and they can be very busy people who often are not particularly interested in whether they get published.
Most editorial boards start preparing an issue of a magazine by having a "think session." And from here on, many of the things said about company magazines can be equally applied to commercial technical magazines, articles, editing articles written by other people, editorializing, and carrying out special assignments.
A think session occurs when the magazine's staff gets together to decide just what is to go into a particular issue. And you may be surprised to learn that magazines work six, seven, or eight months in advance. It takes weeks and weeks to produce an issue from the first article until it is wrapped up and sent to the mail room.
One of the most fruitful sources for papers and articles is conferences attended by company employees. Papers delivered at such gatherings often turn up as magazine articles. But such selection is made with several factors in mind. The editor of the magazine may find it necessary to consult the public relations department to determine what is going on in the company that will appeal to readers. In addition, management must be consulted, because in the long run, responsibility for the magazine rests with the company's administrators.
Once you have received a manuscript from an author, the real job of writing and editing begins. A good deal of the experience you have gained in school, particularly in your writing classes, the aforementioned Popular Mechanics. The first two magazines often contain articles every bit as sophisticated and mathematical in content as those published by scientific and medical associations. Magazines like Popular Science and Popular Mechanics are intended for people who know little about science or technology, but who are, nevertheless, interested in these matters. The writers for these magazines must be able to interpret and present scientific material in such a way as to make it understandable and attractive to their lay clientele. The success and longevity of these magazines speak for themselves.
