Building magazine and web publishing skills

Looking to build your skills in many areas of magazine and web publishing? Check out the following courses, open for enrollment in the Winter 2015 term of the Magazine and Web Publishing program at Ryerson's Chang School in Toronto. 

39-hour Courses

• CDJN 112 - Magazine and Website Publishing
• CDJN 113 - Magazine and Website Editing
• CDJN 116 - Introduction to Magazine Design
• CDJN 117 - Writing for Magazines and the Web
• CDJN 118 - Advanced Feature Writing
• CDJN 205 - Magazine Production

19.5-hour Courses

• CDJN 120 - Magazine Fact-Checking and Research
• CDJN 121 - Magazine Packaging (Online Delivery)
• CDJN 122 - Advanced Magazine Editing
• CDJN 123 - Success as a Freelancer NEW!
• CDJN 201 - Magazine Advertising Sales and Marketing
• CDJN 204 - Layout Software for Magazine Editors
• CDJN 207 - The Online Publishing Toolkit
• CDJN 208 - Ad Sales on the Web

Early enrollment is advised. Course scheduling is subject to change.

Online learning about online editorial; also how to sell those all-important magazine ads

The growing trend at universities towards online learning is catching on at the Magazine and Web Publishing program of the Chang School for Continuing Education at Ryerson University where the classroom course Creating Website Editorial has been especially adapted for web delivery. Students all across Canada (or those even in Toronto who prefer self-paced learning online) can now access the excellent seven-week course (CDJN206) via the web, interacting with the instructor and with each other. The instructor, Kat Tancock, is a writer, editor, and digital consultant who has worked on the websites of major brands including Reader’s Digest, Best Health, Canadian Living, Homemakers, Style at Home, and Elle Canada. The course begins Saturday, October 27.

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Getting those magazine advertising contracts signed is more challenging than ever. The Magazine Advertising Sales and Marketing course (CDJN201), taught by Gwen Dunant (well-known as the coordinator of MagNet, the annual industry conference and the Magazines Canada Schools for Advertising Sales and Circulation)is focussed on the fundamentals: using standard research tools to develop sales presentations, sales call preparation, working with advertising agencies and closing sales. Guest speakers from the advertising field add to the learning experience. The 7-week course begins Monday, November 5.

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  For further information on both evening courses, go to ryerson.ca/ce/magazine and follow the links.The fee for each is $343 and registration closes soon.

[disclosure: I coordinate the program and teach in it]

First Charles Oberdorf award made to Ryerson magazine student Jill Goodwin

Anya Oberdorf, Jill Goodwin and Mechtild Hoppenrath

The first annual award in the name of the late Charles Oberdorf was made Thursday at the Leaders in Learning event at the Chang School for Continuing Education at Ryerson University in Toronto. The $1,000 award is funded by donations from Oberdorf's friends, family and colleagues and the first recipient is Jill Goodwin, a part-time student in the Magazine and Web Publishing certificate program for which Oberdorf was the longtime and devoted coordinator. The award was presented by Oberdorf's wife Mechtild Hoppenrath and his daughter, Anya Oberdorf. 

Charles Oberdorf

The Charles Oberdorf Memorial Award was created to honour a student who is nominated by faculty and who is close to completing the 7-credit certificate program. The winner each year is to be chosen based on over all excellence and deemed potential for making the same kind of difference in the magazine and web publishing world in future as Charles made during his long career.

Charles was a highly respected, indeed loved, colleague and friend as a writer, editor and teacher who passed away September 2011. To know more about him, here is the obituary written at the time by Michael Posner that was published in the Globe and Mail. 

Contributions continue to be welcomed to raise the more than $25,000 necessary so that the annual award may be ensured, essentially forever. If more is raised, more awards will be given. Contributions to the fund are charitable and donors will receive a tax receipt issued by Ryerson University.
 

Contributions may be made online at
* *Charles Oberdorf Memorial Award
For those who wish to contribute by cheque it may be mailed to:
Charles Oberdorf Memorial Award
c/o Maureen Sheridan, Associate Director of Development
The G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education
Ryerson University
350 Victoria Street, CED 613
Toronto, Ontario M5B 2K3
416 979-5184
sheridan@gwemail.ryerson.ca

[If you have difficulty with the online link* above, the following can be typed into your browser:  https://ruonline.ryerson.ca/ccon/new_gift.do?action=newGift&giving_page_id=23

Mag shorts: Saving on ad handling; Global Brief resurgent; Segal leads leadership centre

The advent of ad portals, such as the SendMyAd digital portal offered by Magazines Canada, means shorter production cycles and a better relationship with clients, according to a Q & A from Publishing Executive with Kim Latreille, the production director of St. Joseph Media and Gary Garland, Magazines' Canada's executive director of advertising services. Garland says the new service save time and money for publishers.

There's less handling of ads, less troubleshooting. Aside from that, there's increased reliability. When ads come through the portal, they're ready to print. That means less liability for publishers who have to open up files and make fixes because they were improperly produced.

But I think the biggest advantage is that all of these things together help to reduce cycle time. You can get your production done quicker and the magazine out to consumers faster. That helps in addressing needs of advertising agencies, who want to be able to reach consumers faster than ever.

Latreille says the ad portal provides opportunities to automate the process of ad file handling.

For example, we use a file naming convention. So for all of our ads, because we have several magazines with multiple regions each, we're picking up little pieces of the job ticket that the advertiser pulls out—i.e., that they fill in. So those fields are pulled out and put into the naming of the file. So when it lands on our server, it's already named. There are a lot of shortcuts that it's provided us in our production department.

In the past, it was taking us about 15 to 20 minutes to process an ad once we were told the ad had been delivered. If that involved pulling it down from our FTP or printing and preflighting it, we were spending 20 minutes an ad. Now we're spending five minutes or less on an ad.

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The second issue of the quarterly world affairs magazine Global Brief is being unveiled at a launch party hosted by Glendon College, its new home, on Tuesday, November 3 at 4 p.m. at the BMO conference centre, 2275 Bayview Avenue, Toronto.

There will be special  remarks at the reception by Christopher Alexander,  former Canadian Ambassador to Afghanistan  and former Deputy Special Representative of the  United Nations Secretary-General for Afghanistan. 

The future looked uncertain for Global Brief after its first issue until it was taken up by the Glendon School of Public and International Affairs. 

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Brian Segal, the president and CEO of Rogers Publishing, has been announced as chair of the Ted Rogers Leadership Centre at Ryerson University's Ted Rogers School of Management.  Segal, who was president of Ryerson from 1980 to 1988 before joining Rogers, will be piloting a program of teaching, leadership events and communication and scholarship and research.

Playing well with others; be nice, be professional, show respect

The School of Journalism at Ryerson University in Toronto has issued a set of written guidelines for its students and for the university community. Chair Paul Knox distributed an online link to the guidelines that are apparently intended to address come conflicts and "misunderstandings" between students who are doing daily or longer term reporting assignments (print, radio and TV) and faculty and staff of the downtown university.

Have you ever been approached by a Ryerson student journalist and wondered how to respond? Do you have questions about campus news media and their relationship to the School of Journalism?

If so, or if you're just interested in news and journalism, you might like to check out a document approved recently by the Journalism School Council. We hope the Guidelines will enhance understanding of the School of Journalism, its publications, its students and the practice of journalism in an academic program. We also hope it will help dispel some misconceptions and promote an atmosphere of mutual respect on campus.

The thread that runs through the guidelines is one of mutual respect and courtesy, something that everybody in this business can applaud. For instance:

• [for faculty and staff] Treat student reporters with the same respect you would like them to show you.
• [for students journalists] Don't demand interviews or information. Ask nicely. Be way more polite than you think is required, especially if you’re showing up unannounced. (You can never be too polite.)

$15 million gift to Ryerson business faculty; becomes Ted Rogers School of Management

Ted Rogers, whose cable, phone and magazine publishing empire is well known, has -- with his wife Loretta -- given $15 million to Ryerson University which, in turn, has named its brand spanking new business school the Ted Rogers School of Management. The school is on Dundas Street in Toronto, between Yonge and Bay Streets.

The majority of the gift will be used to establish 52 new undergraduate and graduate student awards and scholarships, at unprecedented levels for the University, said Ryerson President Sheldon Levy. The gift will also establish a new Research Chair to seed academic initiatives that will attract outstanding faculty and create centres of excellence in management research.

While Levy said this was the only school to which Rogers has given his name, in fact the Rogers Communications Centre at Ryerson has been the home to the School of Journalism and Radio and Television Arts for some 15 years; the school is named after Ted Rogers' father, however, a radio pioneer.