By the time you read this, the tough decisions will have been made
W
e have a funny rule in our office, a kind of Murphy’s law: the first Yom Tov piece to be submitted is the first piece to be bumped when we make a final grid.
It was a production manager who first noticed the pattern and put it into words, but over the years the humorous quip has often and regretfully been proven true.
We start planning our Yom Tov magazines months in advance (we’ve already started compiling our ideas list for Succos 5780!) and some of our more industrious and/or organized writers get moving on their assignments deep in the winter. There are always those one or two pieces that are submitted sometime in Shevat, get edited and approved, and sent into graphics before anyone starts thinking about a shalach manos theme.
But as we get closer to Pesach, and we go through our lists and charts, the rhythm gets faster and the urgency more intense. And suddenly all those advance plans get new scrutiny. Is the balance right? Do we have enough heavyweight pieces? What about the light, fun, entertaining material — is there enough of that? What about something visual; readers like beautiful photos. What about something current?
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