Editor Profile: Penny Caldwell

THE BIO

WHO: Penny Caldwell, editor, Cottage Life; director of content development, Quarto Communications

ALSO TEACHES: Magazine and Web Editing, Magazine and Web Publishing certificate program, Ryerson University’s G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education

WENT TO SCHOOL AT: The University of Toronto, where she received her Bachelor of Arts

FIRST MAGAZINE JOB: Assistant editor, Canadian Yachting

AWARDS: Named Editor of the Year by the Canadian Society of Magazine Editors, 2006 and 2010. Has steered Cottage Life magazine to numerous national and international awards.

Reading List

A weekly roundup of job-hunting tips, career advice and interesting articles relevant to the magazine industry and being an editor.


• "Unpaid Interns: Working for Free" by Dakshana Bascaramurty in The Globe and Mail (hat tip to the Toronto Freelance Editors and Writers listserve). Companies that don't pay their interns may be breaking the law. Is it too much to hope that the climate might be ripe for a crackdown on unpaid internships?


• Canadian Living's Colleen Tully on being a Web Food Editor (video) on Good Food Revolution, via Magazines Online. Want to know what it's like to be an online food editor? Watch this.


• "Are You Trapped in a Bad Relationship…With Your Job?" by Sherrie Bourg Carter in Psychology Today. If your relationship with your boss or your job has gone sour, maybe it's time to leave.


• "The Unemployed Worker's New Friend: Outsourcers" by Joe Light in The Wall Street Journal (hat tip to @susan_peters). Paying someone to job hunt for you – I would recommend not doing this.

Why the Tyee's David Beers Thinks Aspiring Journalists Should Get Away From Their Computers

The Internet can be deceiving. You can have a relationship with the computer screen and feel that you can do this on your own. Or you can network with people on Twitter and Facebook and feel that you’re plugged into a community. If you’re starting out, I’d advise a real-life network of people who you see face to face, compare notes, get together to work constructively, take your work seriously, and work together to help each other get better. That was really instrumental to me when I got started.

– David Beers, founding editor of The Tyee and adjunct professor of the University of British Columbia's School of Journalism, giving advice to aspiring journalists in an interview with ArtsWire.

Reading List

A weekly roundup of job-hunting tips, career advice and interesting articles relevant to the magazine industry and being an editor.

• "Bored People Quit" on Rands in Repose. Required reading for editors in charge of a team. If you don't want to lose your best editors, that is.

• "99 Tips That Will Help You Land a Job" by James Clear on Passive Panda (via Alltop). From having the right mindset to interview tips to how to negotiate a salary, some great gems.

• "Help! I Can't Land a Job Interview" by Rosa E. Vargas on YouTern's The Savvy Intern blog (via @ginidietrich). I strongly urge everyone to heed Vargas' advice about resumés: Yours must "outdistance" others – it is a marketing tool, not a list of everything you've ever done.

• "Orgasm Guaranteed: What I learned While Freelancing at Cosmopolitan by Katherine Goldstein on Slate. An amusing account of life in the fact-checking trenches.

Editor Profile: Chantel Simmons

THE BIO

WHO: Chantel Simmons, hair editor, The Kit.

OTHER JOBS INCLUDE: Instructor (magazine writing, editing, online magazines), post-grad Book and Magazine Publishing Program, Centennial College; beauty expert, The Marilyn Denis Show; freelance writer ("I mostly focus on beauty, relationships, travel and home decor") for Elle Canada, HGTV, Food Network and a few other mags; author of two bestselling novels.

Bill Keller on the People Part of Being an Editor

"There's a lot of stuff they don't teach you in the mythical editors' school. ... [T]here's other stuff that I sometimes think of as an in loco parentis role. You have these people who work for you, but they're also people. They have families and people in their family get cancer and die, and there's a lot of being there for people. That was not something I had anticipated."

– Soon-to-be former executive editor of the New York Times Bill Keller in an interview with Scott Raab for Esquire's August 2011 issue. Read the full interview with Keller in two parts – pre and post the announcement that he was stepping down.