Notes from a Hired Pen: Don’t overlook regional magazines

Readers!

I am back from my vacation to Oklahoma City to see the Oklahoma Museum of Art’s “Edith Head: Hollywood’s Costume Designer” exhibit, which included the dress above. I loved it. Completely worth the road trip.

However, that’s not the only thing I saw. I of course road tripped, and spent two days in Hot Springs, Arkansas, to visit Hot Springs National Park and also stay in a hotel where the hot springs water is connected to your tub. Yes really!

I picked up a few regional magazines while there, and while I don’t expect I’ll write for them, I did want to use them as a way to highlight a market that is sometimes overlooked: regional magazines.

I wrote about this in my ebook for laid off journalists who want to freelance — because it can be a great place for your work.

I got my start in regional magazines, first writing for one, then becoming the editor of it, and using that as a springboard to a bigger regional magazine, and then national work. I still pitch regional magazines sometimes, thought it has to be the right story and of course the right price, and I’ve found that can vary wildly, even at the same publication. One such magazine paid me $1/word but wanted to pay me an absurdly low fee for heavily researched pieces that would appear online. No thank you!

I don’t know anything about these titles other than what I found here. I don’t know if they pay well. I don’t know if they pay on time. I don’t even know if they hire freelancers, but I’m going through this anyway so you can see how I approach a potential new to me publication, and the opportunities your regional magazines may provide for you.

• Arkansas Times. I found this glossy magazine in the lobby of my hotel, and the cover story is “The Best of Arkansas.” All pretty standard for a regional magazine (fun fact: I used to work for the guy who started the “Best of” trend, which is a great way to drum up advertisements in the summer). There are profiles of local people and businesses, events, and some political content. It also looks like they have an online only publication. Not a bad place to consider if you have an idea here (not even necessarily if you live in Arkansas. Sometimes these magazines will take pitches from writers if the subject has a connection to the area). Here’s the masthead.
• Arkansas Wild. Another glossy magazine I found in the hotel. I couldn’t track down a website for this one, just a Facebook page, which is a little odd. But! It is published by…Arkansas Times, and the editors all have arktimes.com email addresses, so they seem very connected. This one looks slicker, with higher quality paper and better photography. That doesn’t mean they pay more, but something to note. If I had a local story I wanted to pitch, I’d drill down more into what each publication runs to see if I can grasp the difference, then go from there.
• Hot Springs Diamond Lakes Vacation Guide. I got this one in an Arkansas Welcome Center because I wanted a few more ideas of what to do when I visited the area. This is clearly a travel bureau publication, with more listings than features. That doesn’t mean they don’t hire writers though. According to their masthead, it’s published by CJRW, an advertising agency that was kind enough to write a case study about their work for Visit Hot Springs. If I wanted to write for them, I’d send a letter of introduction (LOI) to CJRW directly.

Even if you go after regional publications, that doesn’t mean you can’t pitch local stories to national publications. That was my whole thing for a while, and I stepped back up to do it again last week when I wrote two Jersey Shore stories for The New York Times (more on that in a future newsletter).

The quality of regional magazines can vary widely, but the right ones can be great clients, if it’s a match for you.

Thank you Arkansas for your hospitality and the idea for this newsletter.

 

Recent Bylines

“On the Jersey Shore, there’s a flag for everything” for The New York Times

“What’s the deal with all the flags on the Jersey Shore?” for The New York Times

“Why the Supreme Court’s ruling on Bostock was just the beginning for LGBTQ+ rights” for HR Dive

“Maximize your community bank’s digital experience” for Independent Banker

“Why mentorship matters even as new grad hiring levels off” for HR Dive

“African American history taking a new view of the Declaration of Independence” for Princeton Alumni Weekly

I was also interviewed by the Wall Street Journal for “The Financial Lessons I Learned as a New Freelancer”

What I’m Reading

• Curled Up with an Earl (The Byronic Book Club #2) by Amy Rose Bennett. Back to regency romance! This one was aggressively fine and perfect to read on my road trip, whether that was stuck in a shut down highway for two hours (sigh) or on the day on my trip where I decided to do absolutely nothing.
• See You in the Piazza: New Places to Discover in Italy by Frances Mayes. Another entry in my attempt to read every book about Italy written in the English language. I knew going on that I’d probably be annoyed by Mayes’ a bit, as I was with her more recent works, including A Place in the World. But this one wasn’t that bad to listen to as an audio book on my drive, even if there’s no real narrative through line other than “LOOK AT ITALY!” It’s not really a travel memoir but a travelogue, which was a bit boring, but helpful to me as I’m scheduled to go back in Italy in September, and I booked one of the hotels she mentioned. But yes, there’s still some annoyance. She writes about how lots of people fall in love with Europe, but not everyone buys an abandoned villa like she did — without a mention that one reason she was able to do so was because she got a divorce settlement from her very wealthy ex-husband. It’s not a character flaw that others don’t, Frances! Most just can’t afford to. I also had questions about her residency/visa situation, which maybe should be addressed somewhere in the book. I found a sort of answer on a podcast transcript.
• Skink No Surrender (Skink #7) by Carl Hiaasen. Skink is recurring character in Carl Hiaasen’s Florida-weird books, but I didn’t know he popped up in one of his YA books until I found this one in a Little Free Library. This novel follows Richard, a teenager trying to find his runaway cousin. Heavy stuff! But I liked it, more than some of Hiaasen’s books for grownups. Related: the Apple TV+ adaption of Bad Monkey is coming out August. Finally!

 

What I’m Watching

• Filling in the Blanks. This is a documentary about one man finding out his father wasn’t really his father via a DNA test, which leads to an exploration of what artificial insemination was like in the 1950s and 1960s. It was okay. I’ve read/heard better reporting on this, including through Dani Shapiro’s memoir Inheritance and podcast Family Secrets. Matt Katz also just released his podcast Inconceivable Truth about a similar journey (I may be biased though since I helped Katz propose to his wife via a profile I wrote of him for New Jersey Monthly).

 

Nail Polish of the Week

Give me a Lido Kiss by OPI. I usually wear read when I have important meetings, and I had one yesterday (not health or work related – I’m fine!) This red is on the bright side with a little sparkle. Perfect for a hot summer day.

 

Until next time,

Jen A. Miller
Notes from a Hired Pen ebook series

Like this post? Buy Jen a Coffee!

Bookshop.org links are affiliate links.