"Don’t turn your nose up at regional journalism," was Kirstie Newton Editor of Cornwall Today, strongest piece of advice during a lecture with level one journalism students.
Kirstie, originally from Grimsby revealed that she didn’t think you had to originate from Cornwall to be passionate about the region, and that over the past year as editor of the magazine she felt she had really, "pounded a patch in Cornwall."
When starting out, she had every intention of finding her way in London because she thought it to be the place to find fame and fortune. But now she loves the sense of community spirit she gets from living and working in Cornwall.
Previously working on the Devon Today magazine, and moving to Cornwall just over a year ago, Kirstie has found herself drawing on many of her previous contacts when it comes to sourcing information for new features.
During the past year Kirstie has increased the amount of pages contained in the magazine by 40 which now means the magazine contains 216 pages. She is confident in the team she has working with her this includes only two on her in-house editorial team, but the magazine employs a large amount of freelance journalists, photographers and graphic designers.
Cornwall Today covers many topics including food, art, leisure, wildlife and sport. However, the biggest draw for readers are the stories containing a human interest angle.Kirstie admitted to thinking this is one of the winning formulas that the magazine contains.
Cornwall Today appeals mostly to middle to upper-class readers with expendable income, and although the magazine does have readers living within the county, many are people with outside interests, second homes or chose regularly to visit Cornwall on holiday.
Kirstie's background, previous to magazines, was in daily newspapers, she feared that she would have huge gaps between deadlines with nothing to fill her time with. This turned out to not be the case and she finds the majority of the time that there is not enough time in the month.
Although Kirstie prefers magazine style journalism, she knows her news background was invaluable grounding in both spotting a stories and writing tight copy.
She loves the fact that although still writing with your readership in mind, writing for a magazine allows you to write what you’re passionate about instead of writing about, "manufactured material because the T.V calls it news."
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2 comments:
I was really looking forward to this guest lecture because I am interested magazine journalism and have on a number of occassions read Cornwall Today. But to be honest I didnt get an awful lot out of it other than what people thought about second homes in Cornwall. So yet again I found it hard to find anything drastically newsworthy in there, and didnt feel I gained enough information to ask any questions about anything, which I know was my fault.Still the piece is there and I managed to get some quotes and facts in, so I know I am picking up on some of the more important facts mentioned.
Despite your reservations, I enjoyed reading this, though there's something awry with your first paragraph....any comments on why she'd increased the page count of the magazine - possibly a link to advertising.
I like the way you presented the material, starting with a quote, though as you mention, perhaps not quite the sort of earth-shattering material a keen feature writer might hope for.
jc
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