MagBlog

After a quick flick through it, the magazine snob in me turned up his nose and made me put it down – it was all over the place designwise.

A few days later I picked it up again and started reading. The snob kicked in again, telling me what I’d say to students who started a feature that way or brought themselves into the story so egregiously.

But after a while the snob’s voice faded away and I became engrossed in the material. This was a magazine made by people who loved music and knew a lot about it. My magazine snob had given way to the tyro mandolin player who wanted to get hold of – no, make that had to have – the two Bill Monroe tribute cds put out by Rebel. Mike Scott’s project putting the words of WB Yeats to music sounded interesting too … could his version of The Song of Wandering Aengus possibly be as good as Donovan’s?

Cover of Donovan

I went out to the hazel grove ...

The experience made me realize all over again that the absolute focus of magazine journalism must be on content and intention –

• the intention must be a clear and driving force;


• the content must be compelling.

But what do we mean by compelling in this context?

Here’s a microthesaurus: authentic, raw, devoted, knowledgeable, passionate, committed, well crafted, skillful story telling.