An email I received...

Won't say who it's from, but it felt good to hear.

Here's an excerpt:

"If you guys do this right, you could really change the face of sports media in the city."

Wow. I don't know about all that, but I'm not going to fight it if it's true.

Oops.

Well, I called this "The Rookie Editor" for a reason. I figured I'd make some mistakes, and I did...right off the bat.

We sent the file to printer LATE last night (5 a.m.), and we decided to print off a few pages to see how they would look. It was then that I noticed I had spelled the last name of one of our contributing writers wrong. No, I couldn't possibly have noticed that while we were proofing everything, could I?

We are on the phone with the printer as I write this, hoping it's not too late to re-upload the pages where his name appears.

I feel sick to my stomach that I let this happen. If the situation were reversed, I'd be more upset than Star Jones when the Wal Mart ran out of Twinkies.

I hope we can fix this, because it's not right that I let this happen to one of my writers. It's a constant reminder that this isn't just some website anymore. This is a business, and people need to be treated with respect.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

**Edit**

Just heard back...we're all set, and we can make the changes.

Whew.

Almost Ready

Well, here we sit, seven hours (ish) from deadline. The first issue of MCS Magazine is about to go to the printer. This thing was born in idea form exactly one year ago, and now we're finally set to go.

Our designer stayed up until 5 a.m. giving everything a detailed sweep. Our editor stayed up well past his bed time to re-edit everything - just to be sure. I think we're all a little nauseaus this morning as we prepare to send this out.

A lot of hard work went in to this from many different people. Muneesh gave up a cushy job with ESPN, moved out of his apartment and dragged all his stuff to Michigan on a whim. I have turned down jobs because I feared it would take away from the time I had to commit to this magazine and it's launch. And it should be mentioned - again - that our entire staff is prepared to work for free this first month for the good of the magazine.

Like I said below - good people.

More later, I'm sure.

It's coming...

It is now 12:30 pm, and we are 28.5 hours from our deadline.

Still on our list of to-do's:

Receive editded interview.
Place interview.
Complete Roundtable intro.
Place barcode.
Place three house ads.
Design and place three consumer ads.
Proof EVERYTHING.

I'm probably missing something, and if so, it'll be pointed out to me soon.

28.5 hours from sending my magazine to the printer. Doesn't get much better than this...well, at least not until tomorrow when this is all done until next month.

The MCS Interview

Well, we actually got it done. Again, can't say who it's with quite yet, but we'll just say that Pistons fans should find it interesting.

I was told weeks ago by the writer handling this that he could do it by the deadline day of 8-31, and we recently extended the deadline to the 10th. Today I was told it likely wasn't going to happen, so we went into a frantic search for a back-up plan. On short notice, there wasn't one.

About three hours later I got a call from my writer saying that the interview was miraculously done, and we'd have it tonight. Lots of ups and downs today...not even including the advertiser that dropped out.

From what I hear, this is pretty normal during deadline week. At least now I'm prepared for next month.

Good times.

My hero - Eddie Gilmour

One of the most difficult pieces of this magazine thing is the editing. I am fairly versed in the AP style of writing, and I know most of the rules. At least I thought I did. I took it upon myself to edit a majority of the articles that are in for October, and I felt pretty good about my work.

Enter Eddie Gilmour.

Eddie is not his real name. He works for another publication and was told he could not spread his talents to another. He is a master copy editor. He returned some some of my "edited" pieces to me, and they were filled with so many red streaks it looked like Riley's rear with diaper rash.

He has edited, to date, over 75 pages of columns, filler material and introductions, and it should be mentioned that he, like many of us this first month, is working for free.

Eddie, thanks for all your work. We'll make it up to you.

Welcome

I know, I know. I just shut down my other, more meaningful blog, but I had the urge to fire up a new one, so I did. Sue me.

This will be my little area for venting some of the stress that builds up from running your own magazine, and getting ready for its inaugural issue.

Things go wrong - FAST. This is a lesson we have all quickly learned in the past 7 days. For example, we still don't have one of our features in, much less edited, and we go to print on Wednesday morning. It was supposed to be an interview with somebody pretty interesting (won't say who just yet), but he is not great about keeping his appointments it seems. We are searching for a plan "b" as I type this, but we might just have to go without an "MCS Interview" in our first issue and add it in later.

Another issue, we have five advertisers that either haven't submitted their artwork, or have submitted it and it will be here Tuesday afternoon...several hours before we have to have EVERYTHING done and send the file on its way to the printer.

Right down to the wire.

But we'll have plenty of time to go over the bad stuff associated with the magazine, right now I want to introduce the core team that is putting this together.

Muneesh Jain is my business partner. He spent a few years with ESPN in D.C. doing production work for SportsCenter, Cold Pizza and he even worked on Tony Kornhieser's radio show for a while. He is handling all of the "on-the-ground" work...advertising, promotions, marketing, etc. while I am still in Grand Rapids.

Greg Shamus is our Art Director. As you can see form that link, he's done a little bit of everything, and he's done it for some major publications.

Becky Antcliff is our designer. She has done a great job of nailing our deadlines and working through the stress. Her work has been amazing, as well. No suprise there.

And, of course, we can't forget about our writers. Terry Foster, Greg Eno, Jon Combs, EJ Smith, Eddie Gilmour, Josh Head, Tim Connaughton, Bill Roose...just for starters. Also, Sean Baligian and Matt Schwartz appeared in our first Roundtable discussion. I'm sure they will both be back in the future.

Hopefully some of you find this interesting enough to return...and hopefully I can break 10 readers per day!

KA