Experience Life Writer's Guidelines
Hello, Experience Life writers (and potential writers), below you’ll find
some points to keep in mind in your current and/or future work for Experience
Life magazine. If we have talked by phone, we may have already spoken to you
about one or more of these topics, so please forgive any redundancies.
This document contains basics on audience, content,
deadlines, sources, etc. Please read editor in chief Pilar Gerasimo's essay, "Six Packs and Sex Lives" (download PDF), and also take a look at a back issue or at content here on our Web site (www.experiencelifemag.com)
before
you launch into your project (or pitch us on a new one). It will
help you get
your head around the publication, its voice, etc.
General/Audience
Experience Life is a progressive
health/fitness/quality-of-life magazine (we call it “a healthy-way-of-life
magazine”). It’s also the membership magazine of Life Time Fitness — a large and
rapidly growing health and fitness organization with 70 industry-leading
facilities located throughout the country.
Our magazine is published 10 times a year (January/February, March, April,
May, June, July/August, September, October, November, December) and has a
circulation of 610,000+.
About half our circulation goes to member-subscribers of Life Time Fitness
who receive the magazine at their homes. We currently have several thousand
additional nonmember subscribers and are gaining several hundred new
subscription requests each month. We also have controlled circulation to select
mailing lists, and in communities where new LTF facilities are opening, as well
as to various businesses (doctor’s and chiropractor’s offices, etc.).
Since May 2003, Experience Life has been available on select newsstands
(Borders, Barnes and Noble, B. Dalton, Waldenbooks, etc.).
The magazine is written for a general audience of active, educated,
discerning people who are interested in good health and passionate about
self-improvement, well-being and living a good, satisfying life.
Our audience is a balanced mix of women and men (approximately 60 percent
women and 40 percent men) and there’s a large age range, but we aim our content
at people 30 to 45. Many of our members and readers have at least one child at
home, so we address family angles and life-balance concerns regularly. Although
we avoid printing anything so racy that it would outrage a parent who found
their kid reading it, we do assume an adult audience. Mentioning sex as a fact
of life is okay, going into detail about it isn’t.
Content
These are our main feature content areas:
- Health, nutrition, wellness:
Achieving and maintaining a healthy weight; eating well; supporting and
optimizing the body’s natural processes; natural beauty and body care.
-
Athletics, fitness, exercise: Building strength, muscle, flexibility, endurance;
developing athletic ability, body confidence and physiological know-how.
-
Quality of life: Expanding and deepening life-wisdom; sparking insight and
broadening perspectives; inspiring personal development and achievement;
supporting healthy life choices.
- Adventure destinations, travel, outdoor
experiences: Celebrating our health and hard-earned bodies by getting out in
exciting locations; seeing and doing extraordinary, exhilarating things.
Our assigned departments (in every issue) include:
BODY TALK:
Form
& Function (fitness education)
Smart, safe, effective fitness-education
tips from leading trainers and physiologists help you develop a balanced
training regimen that builds strength, flexibility, speed and endurance, while
safeguarding you from injury and setbacks.
Fitness Fixes
(overcoming fitness obstacles)
Expert fitness trainer on overcoming fitness
obstacles.
Success Stories (inspiration/experience)
Real-people profiles
of individuals who have changed their lives for the healthier.
HEALTHY EATING:
Nutrients (nutrition know-how)
A wellspring of
no-nonsense, in-depth advice about wholesome foods, vitamins, minerals, dietary
supplements and diet-balancing strategies. Find out how to optimize health,
energy and athletic performance — and steer clear of dangerous, money-wasting
fads.
SKILL SET:
Head Out (adventure/travel)
You’ve done your time at the
gym. Now you’re ready to get that body out in the great wide-open for some fresh
air and adventure! Natural splendor, breathtaking views and heart-pounding
experiences await — in places that only your body can carry you.
Full Speed (multisport/adventure racing)
Triathlon, multi-sport and
adventure racing lifestyle, training and tips.
NAVIGATIONS:
Life Balance
(time/priorities/choices)
Fresh perspectives
to help you
make the most of life’s challenges and opportunities in several key
areas: home, work, community, money, spirituality and relationships.
Insight (wisdom/introspection)
Where the mind goes, the
body tends to
follow. So take a few moments to adjust your thinking.
Set your intent and renew
your commitment to your highest priorities
using the power of imagination,
introspection, contemplation and life
wisdom.
Renewal (rejuvenation/stress-management)
Feeling drained,
ditzy,
overworked or under-appreciated? Pulled in too many directions
or pushed to the
limit? It’s high time you reduced your stress,
rejuvenated your body and
recharged your batteries. Start here, right
now.
Contract Rights
Life Time Fitness assumes first North American print
and electronic rights to written materials and works for hire; it assumes
exclusive rights for six months from date of publication. You retain other
rights, with certain exceptions. Review your writer’s contract for details.
Contact Kari Burton, kburton@experiencelifemag.com, with
questions or concerns regarding contract terms.
Reprints and Clips
What we mostly are concerned about is exclusive print
and Web rights for at least six months. After that, you can resell the article
(as submitted, not as edited). Please note: If we have substantially edited,
added to or otherwise altered the article and you still wish to use the piece as
a clip (or otherwise represent it was your independent work), please ask us
first. Editors typically do not like receiving clips that are not substantively
representative of a writer’s own quality and style, and we don’t wish to
encourage that practice. When in doubt, contact us with questions.
Resources/Sources
- We typically supply at least some suggested
resources for assigned articles, and encourage writers to develop additional
resources as necessary. If the resources we suggest don’t pan out, be sure to
let us know — particularly if you are hitting dead ends and need help finding
additional resources. Same thing if you feel the resources we’ve given you are
off-base.
- We do expect writers to show a fair bit of journalistic initiative
(i.e., to do some digging, sort out various perspectives on a topic), and we
strongly encourage Web research as it invariably turns up a wider, more flexible
and more timely array of resources.
- Quoting from books, studies, journals, authors, health and fitness
experts, and other expert/ qualified sources is great. As a rule, do not use
quotes from secondary sources (i.e., other writers’ interviews or articles),
unless the statement is significant enough to warrant mention.
- Quotes and anecdotes from everyday individuals are fine, too (for
colorful examples and real-life experiences, not expert advice, obviously). They
don’t have to be LTF members, but if they are members of other health and
fitness orgs, we avoid mentioning the names of their clubs and refer to them in
generic terms. Even if they are Life Time Fitness members, we don’t mention
their specific club affiliation, except in the Success Stories department.
- Although we expect you to do your own fact checking and get approvals
from your quoted sources, we like to have their contact info just in case major
changes occur and we need a new quote, clarification on a certain point, to get
a second round of approval, etc. If they don’t have email, note that and provide
a fax number instead.
- You can also quote from scholarly journals and scientific magazines
(like Scientific American), but not general, consumer-oriented health and
fitness magazines like Shape, Men’s Health, etc. (We don’t want to be recycling
stuff.) If you need suggestions on searching for or evaluating other possible
resources, let us know.
- Please supply (at the bottom of your finished article) a list of all
your significant references (quoted individuals as well as referenced books, Web
sites, etc.), along with contact info and/or bibliographic info as appropriate.
The more specific you can be, the better. For example, when citing a study,
provide as backup the exact URL you found it at. And, since it’s sometimes
difficult to find the same study twice, please print off a copy of the study and
mail it to our fact checker at Experience Life, Attn: Kaeti Hinck, 2145 Ford
Parkway, St. Paul, MN 55116
- Please fact-check your own articles and be prepared to field
additional fact-checking questions if necessary.
- If you quote a book or magazine, we need complete title, author,
publisher, year and page number info (although we won’t actually print all that
as part of reference, it’s good to have). If you quote a person, we need name,
title, organization or company, phone, email, address, etc. The more thorough
and meticulous you can be about all this, the better. Seems like a minor detail,
but it takes ages to track down if we have to do it later.
Rough Drafts/Outlines
We like to see an early draft or outline of work before final
copy is due (so that we can redirect or make suggestions before you get too far
into it), but sometimes schedules don’t allow, and some writers don’t write from
outlines. We try and negotiate that with individual writers, and are happy to
provide direction, feedback or suggestions at any time in the research writing
process.
That said, if you haven’t supplied an outline or draft, and if you haven’t
called to discuss where you plan to go with your piece (particularly if it
departs from the assignment notes provided), expect to see substantial changes
and rewrite requests, and allow time for that in the week following your
submission.
Deadlines
We take them seriously. We are working on very tight editorial
turnarounds, and if you are late getting us your copy, our job very quickly
becomes the fourth circle of hell.
Changes/Approvals
Depending on how things look, we may do one or two
rounds of changes with you (meaning we may ask you to make changes or fill in
holes and resubmit) and/or we may do additional copy changes on this end.
If we’ve asked you to make substantive changes and don’t see them adequately
handled in your rewrite (and particularly if we don’t have time to send the
piece back to you again) we may “have at.” Whenever possible, we strive to
retain your original structure, content and tone. We do, however, reserve the
right to make sweeping changes if we see them as necessary. And sometimes we do.
Please don’t take changes personally. We frequently add and delete whole
sidebars, chunks, subheads, blurbs, captions, etc. We may rework quotes.
We may cut or add copy. In other words, we may edit.
Pet Peeves
Copywise, there are three things that drive us nuts (please
reread this section before you draft your copy and again before you submit it):
- Weak Quotes: If we are quoting, it should be a solid, interesting and
well-worded statement. If it is just a basic idea, paraphrase. If it is an
awkward quote, try running a cleaned-up version of it past the source for his or
her okay, or ask for rephrasing. Please do not give us a quote that repeats what
you just said, or that makes the point in a vague, rambling way, or that makes
the speaker sound like a bumbling idiot (even if you believe that to be the
case!). We have never had a source resent or reject the rephrasing of a point
that makes him or her sound smarter than he or she is, but we have had several
take umbrage with being “made to sound stupid” in a supposedly “accurate” quote.
Unless you are quoting the President or something, please give your sources a
break (and a little spit and polish when called for).
- Rambling Structure: If you don’t write from an outline, at least make sure
you could create an outline from your finished product. Don’t make the reader
(or us) work too hard, please. Remember: “Introduction, body, conclusion” is
only as boring as the writing therein! Avoid abrupt or arbitrary “and another
thing” transitions. Figure out what the reader really needs to know and is
likely to be curious about, and present it that way (preferably in that order
and in some kind of cohesive, flowing manner). Provide subheads at appropriate
points, even if they are lame. We’re happy to swap them out for better ones, but
we’re not okay with not getting them at all. It’s comforting seeing that you
have a structure, evolution and some transitions in mind.
- Bad endings or clichéd endings: Endings are hard. We know. But please do
your best to end on a strong, compelling note, ideally one that ties your story
together, or speaks for itss basic premise. Ending on a strong quote is fine.
Referring back to the beginning of the story is fine. Ending on a lighthearted
or funny note is fine. But please, please avoid stuff like “In conclusion … In
the final analysis … When all is said and done …” Hey look, we’ve all done it,
but we figure we should all do it less. When in doubt about your conclusion,
call to ask.
Review
You will generally have an opportunity to review an article at
least once (and occasionally twice) before it goes to print. During this review,
we ask that you do your final round of fact checking, confirm quotes
(particularly tweaked quotes), triple check name and company spellings, book
titles, Web addresses, etc. We also want to make sure you are happy with the
piece overall. If you aren’t, please let us know so we can work it out.
Bylines and Bios
All feature articles get bylined. Some (but not all)
departments get bylined, too. It just depends on room, content, etc. If you feel
strongly about being bylined (or not being bylined) for a particular piece,
particularly one that has been heavily edited, please let us know.
Last Thoughts
When in doubt about anything, ask. Always, always feel free
to call or email with questions or if we can be of help in any way. Okay. That
is about it. Thanks for taking time to read this. We’re delighted to be working
with you. Happy writing!
Many thanks,
The Staff of EL
(Get to know us here!)
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