todays lesson - dave

today one of the other media teachers came into to talk to us about his old job. he used to be the debuty head of gatemaster, which was a gaming magazine. firstly he just wanted to find out what we were doing and the process in which we were designing the paper. after we told him he told us about the structure of how it worked for him while he was working in magazine design.

he explained the structure of who was in charge and who was below each member of the team.


The Structure of Editors.

Editor

↓

Deputy Editor → Art Editor

↓

Production Editor → Section Editor → Section Editor

↓

Staff Writer


what he said was the editor has final say on pretty much every decision made. if someone went up to him and gave him an idea for an article, if the editor didn't like it, it wouldn't be used. the art editor would be in charge of the overall look of the magazine so wouldn't nessessarily have say in the content. the staff writer would be given an article to write and would go ahead and write it, sticking to a deadline for drafts and such. dave explained that it was a tight system and was a small group as well, he said that teams can be bigger but he worked in a place where the team was quite small.

flat plan:

he also told us about flat plans. a flat plan is a way of presenting the paper or magazine in seperate sections, such as double page spreads and front and back pages. the pages are lined up so you can play around with what will go where and such. it starts off blank like the one below. whilst it's blank you can think about what you want to include and where you want it to go.





the nest stage is adding content. once you've decided what content is going to go where, you draw it on so that you know what you need to do still. it's a good way of visually seeing what needs to be done and how it's going to look.


the final stage is after a page or spread is done, you tick it off so that if you look at the flat plan, you still know what has to be done. this is a good technique because you can look at the flat plan and see whats already been done and what still has to be finished. with out a flat plan everything would be made and finished simply to meet the deadline. this way you know what needs to be done at all times. theres no messing around trying to chase people up.



Dave explained to us that during the making of a newspaper, there will be many versions of each article or spread. they are kept in a folder on the computer. once you've made a spread you put it in the raw copy folder. once the spread is put into raw copy its taken out and changed, then it's put into sub copy. it's moved around until it's gets to 'to send'. once its in there, it's ready to be printed off. this is a good idea because theres no hassle trying to find the right version of the page or article. this has happened to me before in projects. trying to find the right version of something when i haven't put it in a folder.

RAW COPY

↓

SUB COPY

↓

TO ART

↓

FROM ART

↓

TO CAPTION

↓

FINAL CHECK

↓

TO SEND

I think it will be a good idea to have this type of thing for our project, re-naming the files as they are moving through the sections of editing, and it is also a good idea to keep back-ups of all of those files, even the files from past edits.

Dave also spoke to us about all the separate deadlines that there are in an issue of a newspaper, these deadlines will also apply to our work and we will be working to these deadlines.

Deadines.

•Flat Plan Deadline (leaders of teams)
•Resource Checking Deadline
•Copy Deadline - all writing done
•Final Deadline - editor has seen everything and checked it is complete
•Print Deadline - PDF sent for printing