Editing for farmers: A love story

For the past few months, as many of you know, I've been freelance editing with a national agriculture magazine. It's been fun, but also an interesting change of pace from the newspaper world I'm used to.

At first, I wasn't sure how well I would adjust. While there's usually enough work to keep me pretty busy, the magazine office seems ... slower. More relaxed. There are deadline pressures, but it's nothing like the frantic last-minute drive I experienced in the newsroom, where there was almost always breaking news to cover and a nightly deadline looming over my head. The magazine office is organized; the newsroom was organized chaos. You get the picture.

So I was a little worried at first that I would get bored or annoyed working in a quieter space at a quieter pace. However, I soon found that there were other things to enjoy about the magazine's culture, and while I loved the newsroom, I LOVE what I'm doing now.

It took me a while to figure it out, but I've finally come up with the reasons why I love my job so much: 

1. The people. And I'm not just talking about the people I work with, though they're all nice, down-to-earth people who place a high value on family and tradition. I love the contributing writers and the readers, too. These people are farmers, and a far cry from the stereotypical manure-shoveling, hayseed-chewing country bumpkin a lot of people associate with the word. They are proud, no-frills businessmen and women, and savvy ones, too. After dealing with newspaper readers for several years (i.e. the general public), serving such a readership is pretty darn refreshing to me.
2. The topics. As an editor, it's pretty easy to get burned out on reading the same old stuff day after day. But the stories I edit are almost always interesting to me on some level. I get a nice variety of science, marketing, technology, mechanics, economics, politics and plain-old-family-feel-good stuff. I'm always learning something new, and I'm guessing our readers are, too. And best of all, I haven't had to edit a single story about some meth head throwing a baby off a bridge. (Is it really any wonder I have no faith in society?)
3. I'm nationwide. People across the country are reading the stories I've edited. Readers nationwide are "seeing" my work. And I get formal credit for it, to boot. Take that, local news.

When I first started into journalism, I remember thinking how cool it would be if I someday reported for some big, important magazine like National Geographic. Well, the work I do now isn't as flashy as that, but I think it's probably more important. Editing for an ag magazine might not sound that exciting, but it's still pretty cool to me.