An award-winning magazine

I don’t think I’ve ever won an award. An award that holds some weight at least. C’mon, that perfect attendance award in first grade doesn’t exactly do wonders for my resume.

But holy hell, my waiting has finally paid off, my lack of award-winning is deceased, and I’m set with awards until my future Pulitzer 10+ years down the road.

That Girl! is the first place winner in the 2008 AEJMC Student Magazine Contest for team Start-Up Magazine Project.

In 6 months, a 15-person team of undergraduates developed a prototype that competed with 21 other entries in a nationwide competition against undergrad and graduate universities. And we won. And we beat graduate students from Northwestern University’s Medill journalism school, what I consider one of the top graduate schools for journalism.

I am utterly in shock.

This is what Judge Nick Fauchald, senior associate food editor at Food & Wine, had to say about what set That Girl! apart from the other competition.

From the business plan to the design and editorial content, this magazine successfully identifies and caters to a very specific, very difficult audience: 7- to 12-year-old girls. The students displayed an astonishing handle on their projected readership, and it showed through especially on the playful, actionable design; I especially liked the “Just for You” page of cut-and-save content. The articles are perfectly geared to That Girl!’s young readers, and the advertisements are appropriate and easily distinguishable from editorial. Promotion strategies were innovate, especially the viral marketing and online opportunities.

FYI, he called us astonishing.

Even though it’s not exactly “my” award, I’m claiming 1/4 for myself: splitting 1/4 with the best designer for 7-12-year-old girls Holly Gibbs, another 1/4 with our young girls expert and editor-in-chief Nicole Orr, and the final 1/4 to the rest of our class and our team, the best copy editors we’ve got and the ones who sacrificed an all-day Saturday to make sure the photo shoot ran smoothly.

But all that aside, we wouldn’t have won without our detail-obsessed adviser. At the time we may have hated those do-overs, but it really makes it worth it now. Betty Cortina pushed us to do our best, better than our best. Betty Cortina made us into the magazine staff we are.

You might not be able to look at the actual magazine(some sample pages available at Holly Gibbs web site, but you can get an interactive experience of That Girl. (I still totally get chills when I see our video.)

Next stop, New York City and cover of Forbes 500.

Holy shit we won!!!!

Blogging for Creative Loafing

I guess you can say the past couple of months were temporary brain freezes. The truth is, the last month of my third year at University of Florida was consumed with designing, writing and editing. But my brain was frozen from anything that wasn’t That Girl!

That Girl! is the go-to guide for the wireless girl. That Girl! is the first ever, fully integrated media brand for young girls ages 7-12. That Girl! is a magazine, a Web site and a mobile service.

That Girl! started as a project for the UF Spring 2008 JOU4510 Magazine Management and Publication class. But it ended up as something way more, something way bigger than any of us could have expected. (With many thanks to an unbelievable professor, professional and friend.)

I was no longer a student; I was the managing editor of That Girl! Along with my two dear friends and tireless colleagues, Editor in Chief Nicole Orr and Creative Director Holly Gibbs, we took on full responsibility of seeing this prototype through to the very end.

Yes, there were long days. Yes, there were all nighters. Yes, there were early mornings spent sleeping in front of a professor’s door. But my God was it worth it when we saw our project, out magazine hot from the press.

But, the semester ended and we dispersed away from Gainesville for our summer plans: Nicole at Wesh 2 News in Orlando, Holly at Florida Engineer in, okay well she didn’t leave Gainesville, and me at Creative Loafing in Atlanta.

So in a way, I’m back. Back to my life, my music, my writing. I moved home for the summer, at the office 2 days a week, and not doing a whole lot more, so I plan to write as much as possible about whatever is possible. I suspect a majority of that will be done through Crib Notes, CL’s music blog, and printed in the newsweekly, but I won’t stray for too long away from “a little blood…”

But for now, it’ll be linked to my articles online, like my first.

But, That Girl! isn’t over. It’s just on break. So be on the lookout for us on cover of Forbes 500.

Where is the line drawn?

I got a taste of a social life last night that didn’t involve pop-culture television, and it tasted like Amaretto-soaked berries in ice cream.

The past month or so–and that’s being generous–all-night binge drinking and 2a.m. IHOP visits have been replaced with sleepovers in the computer lab and 60-hour work weeks. I still hold my college student status, but lately my actions have shifted that classification toward professional. And if you strip away the class project label and lack of a Bachelor’s degree, professional is a more appropriate word.

I don’t know of any other groups of students slaving over a full, working magazine prototype that will potentially be pitched to investors. I don’t know of any other students who organized a three photographer photo shoot with seven setups including a seven-outfit fashion spread on a 20 acre farm with 12 7-year-old girls. I don’t know of any other students being advised by a magazine professional who has successfully helped launch two national magazines.

Yeah, this has turned into something way more than a “class project.”

But last night was our night off. For three hours, we toasted our tinis and tasted our tapas with New York magazine editors. For three hours, we were Gainesville, Fla.’s scaled-down version of Sex and the City.

And it was fabulous, just fabulous.