How can the young people in Korea today prepare themselves to enter the world of magazine publishing?
FIPP endorses the Kaya School of Magazine programme, which supports young media executives entering the industry. By attending this course they get grounding in the business principles. The practical course offers students hands-on experience of creating a magazine from start to finish.” Says FIPP’s CEO, Chris Llewellyn.
Here three graduates of Kaya School of Magazine, who are now working as editors, gathered together to discuss what they have learnt. They discuss how attending the course was vital learning for their current roles and they talk about the challenges they faced when creating a magazine.
The first step of creating a magazine obviously starts with setting the overall concept of the magazine and its title. Taking this first step was not easy for them due to their lack of experience. Here Eunji Jang Assistant Editor, Neighbor, Kaya Media explains why. “I over-estimated the time it would take and how firm we had to be when deciding the overall concept, title, content and tone of the magazine. We spent a considerable amount of time to consider the opinions of all the team members and agree on the concept and content, so it could be consistent throughout the whole magazine.”
On deciding their new magazine concept Hoyeon Won Editor, Esquire Korea, Kaya Media explains: “We were fully aware of, and very much interested in the problems among the younger generation in Korea – as this generation is thought of as the ‘3-give-up’ generation – meaning that they give up on three things in their lives: relationships, marriage, and childbirth.
We know how hard it is for young people to get a job and to take part in the society after graduation, due to the stagnant economy and insufficient jobs across all sectors. With this in mind we all agreed to name the title of our magazine ‘IDIOT!’ We all wanted the content to reflect the harsh reality of life for them – what they have to go through and their thoughts and feelings about those issues.”
Sunkwan Kim, Assistant Editor, Motor Trend, Kaya Media said “Everyone was incredibly enthusiastic and full of energy to make a great magazine that reflected the current issues and concerns our generation is going through. The problem was that we spent too much time on planning the magazine and had so many great ideas; we could not keep up with the pace. We quickly realised that it was not as easy as we initially thought and that we had to be prepared for a lot of changes along the way, before getting to the final version.”
“Throughout the whole process of creating our own magazine it felt extremely stressful and exhausting as each step had to be done solely by us: planning and arranging interviewees, working with photographers, and writing articles. However, all members shared the burden together assisting one another when it all became too much. We built a strong bond and remain close friends and still support each other today” said Jang.
The graduates are all grateful for all the experiences doing this course have given them. Almost like a survival course – helping teach them what to do and how to be prepared at each stage of creating a magazine.
For more details about the course go to Kaya Media’s website or FIPP’s website.
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