Giving You a Peak Behind the Scenes of The Edge: Pandemic Edition
Editor-in-Chief Aleeza Zinn at home due to the pandemic. (Photo courtesy of Zinn.)
Most, if not all, of us have never run a magazine before. Therefore, it’s hard to understand the complexity of such a job, but doing so remotely during a global crisis? Forget about it.
And yet The Edge’s executive team takes it all in stride. We caught up with Editor-in-Chief, Aleeza Zinn, to learn more about what it’s like to operate a magazine right now.
“It’s definitely been a challenge, but it’s a good challenge and I’m sure we will all be able to come out of this and just be so proud,” Zinn says. “We did all of this during this time which is just so unique.”
The Edge is a student-run magazine and relies on many people to function. From the executive board to editors, writers (hi), photographers, designers and others, everyone needs to be in sync for things to run smoothly. This can be difficult when we’re not all in one place and communication requires a lot more effort.
“If we were at school, then we could just have an in-person meeting with everyone and everyone would be on the same page, but now we can’t exactly do that,” Zinn says, citing road blocks such as different plans and time zones.
Zinn says that, especially as she and other members of the executive team are working on this semester’s print issue of The Edge, not being able to get together in person has been difficult. “We all just keep saying that we wish we could just all be together,” she explains. “Since everything is so digital, it definitely has been a bit of a challenge to really make sure everyone is a part of it and making sure we’re getting things done.”
While she wants to make sure everyone on the team is involved, Zinn is also compassionate to the fact that the world is crazy right now. “We don’t want anyone to feel stressed by The Edge,” Zinn says. “Our hope was that it’s still a creative outlet … and that people could look forward to writing a fun article or working on something for The Edge during this stressful time — like a little mini escape from it.”
She also hopes that everyone at The Edge will gain valuable experience from working under these new conditions. “I just got the latest issue of Vogue which was completely made remotely,” Zinn shares. “[The magazine industry] is just a totally different world now, so it will be really interesting to see how that progresses. I think The Edge in itself has given everyone a pretty unique opportunity to sort of get a little taste of that, and hopefully it will help people once we go back to the real world.”
The Edge has been operating remotely since March, and since then Zinn says she has learned a lot of management and leadership skills. She reflects that flexibility and patience seem to be key in her role as Editor-in-Chief at this time.
Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash
“It’s a good learning experience, but an unexpected one,” Zinn says. “Everyone is trying their hardest and we’re all in this together, just slowly working through it.” Our Editor-in-Chief also feels that this experience has brought on personal growth. Through the trials and tribulations of running The Edge remotely, she feels that she has learned a lot about herself.
“I think I don’t even know the extent of what I’ve learned about myself yet,” Zinn shares. “Sometimes, without even realizing it, I can be really rigid or have this idea that we have to do it this way… Something that I have learned about myself, really, is taking a step back and understanding the unusual times and saying ‘Let’s come up with creative solutions to make this work.’”
She says that this lesson has been particularly important as the print issue deadline draws closer. Instead of being frustrated that we were not on campus to do photoshoots, with the help of our creative director, Sydney Donaldson, The Edge has been able to readjust and take photos for the magazine in unconventional ways — such as over Facetime.
“Working remotely has definitely presented very different conditions than Aleeza and I could have predicted for the print issue this spring semester,” says Donaldson. “It was definitely an adjustment to work virtually with designers and not be able to be as hands-on as we would’ve liked, but it definitely gave us a lot more time to focus our attention on each individual designer and help them in their process. Although COVID-19 presented us with many unexpected challenges as it did for so many, I am very proud of The Edge team’s ability to work together with passion and drive to produce this semester's print issue.”
Zinn also expresses how thankful she is to have The Edge magazine right now. “We’re just sitting in the same room all day, which is so odd,” she says. “To be able to be super creative in a different channel and take that into a different space has been super useful.”
Everyone here at The Edge is trying to make the best out of a bad situation and hopefully learn and grow to create something we’re proud of at the end of the day. We are super thankful for our teammates at The Edge and all of our readers for enabling us to do so!