Cover me
After editing and writing for magazines for years, it never fails to tickle me pick whenever I get a cover story out on the stands. Even if it’s for a magazine I don’t edit. Especially if it’s for a magazine I don’t edit. Most especially when it’s a major title with a big national circulation.
One came out this week: Metro‘s March issue, with my cover interview of actress Cristine Reyes.
After trading my old editorial duties for a more organizational role in magazine publishing, I don’t get to write as much as I used to, so I really like it when I get a chance to do a piece. I’ve been writing tech pieces so much for the past decade I hadn’t realized I missed writing about non-geek stuff. About people that make you blink, instead of things with lights that blink at you when you turn them on. (Hmm, that’s a thought. I think I’ll think I’ll give my geekery a rest this year.)
Cover stories are the Holy Grail of journalism. (That, and Pulitzers.) My first cover was when I was barely out of high school, for a mag called TV Times, and a cover story about Champoy, the old comedy sketch show of Noel Trinidad and Subas Herrero. (I think Dad still has a copy in a drawer somewhere in the old house. He and my mom, God rest her soul, were prouder than I was, I think.) It’s a heady feeling, having something you wrote partly responsible for the sale of a magazine. Scary too. Never forgot it; no matter how many times it’s happened, that feeling is still the same, after all these years.
I last wrote for Metro almost two decades ago, as a freelance contributor. Back then it was staffed by my idols in feature writing. Who would have thought it would still be around 20 years later – Metro celebrates that milestone next month – and who’d have thought I’d still be writing for it? A cover story, no less!
Get a copy of the March issue of Metro when you can, read it, and tell me what you think.
Snacker Snarking