Eat well, write well, live wonderously
EDITOR AND BLOGGER TURNS THE DESIRE TO CORRECT INSTEAD OF BE THE CORRECTED INTO A FOOD AND DRINK MAP OF THE MIDWEST.
By HANNAH VONGREY | Design Chief
Foodie, family man, and The Heavy Table editor James Norton is a University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate who has married his passion for writing and love of food to create a highly envied lifestyle. Norton has made his way through various jobs and writing positions to get where he is today. As the editor of an online magazine that reviews and shares intimate details of regional restaurants and other foodies, Norton has formulated a way to balance life, work and everything that falls in between. The Heavy Table, the publication Norton edits and publishes, aims to depict exactly what options are out there without a bias or critical analysis. While most publications follow a strict style guide, Norton has decided his magazine will follow the AP style guide but in a modified way to assist the magazine’s preferences and needs. He is proud of the accomplishments of the magazine and how far it has come since the beginning. If he weren’t in this position today, he wishes to be the owner and chef of a small, less than 20 seat bistro.
How did you get to where you are?
I’ve always been interested in writing. Since I was in my teen years, and sort of the path to writing the things I wanted to write was by being involved in a publication in an editorial way. I first started in the school paper, I was 16, and they just butchered it. I was so angry about that that I went out with some friends and started a new publication. That was an interesting feeling in high school having editorial control; having editorial meetings and figuring out what to publish and why. It was a very interesting way to jump into things and I found that I really liked it. It transitioned into working at the school paper in college; it was a way I could keep writing and stay employed in the writing world. I found that I quite liked editing as well, they’re different skills but they’re complimentary skills and I enjoyed trading off between those two rolls.
How do you balance work with social life?
For me it’s less challenging because food is something that I love to do. There is a lot of opportunities to bring friends and family into restaurant revealing, into product reviewing. My schedule is completely flexible. If I have a friend in from out of town, or I need to take care of my son because he’s not feeling well, I can usually shove stuff off and make time. I’m in a really enviable position in that (I have a) super flexible schedule and really fun work that I can share with people. That’s not a struggle.
Tell us an editing “horror” story.
(As an editor at the Christian Science Monitor, I was working with a correspondent over in Iraq. I edited his work and he called me from a satellite phone because he was so mad with my edits.) This guy was literally putting his life on the line, doing this reporting, and he was frustrated with how the piece had turned out even if it was a minor change, I can understand how he got so frustrated. So much of his tension and fear, in terms of where he was then in his life, he kind of vented it on me. I was cool with that, I understood that, and he was, later, incredibly apologetic and my response was “Look dude, you were literally out there risking your life, I understand.” It kind of resolved okay but it was a rough work day, I’ll tell you that!
“I think being in freelance is a very difficult position because you don’t really have any power or standing with an organization.”
Tell us an editing success story.
I feel like I should be able to come up with something really inspiring, but I actually don’t dwell on my successes very much. This is going to be a real general answer, going back to my time at the Christian Science Monitor, but this extends work I’ve done for The Heavy Table as well. I’ve always had really good luck working with freelance. I think being in freelance is a very difficult position because you don’t really have any power or standing with an organization and I think editors tend to bulldoze over you and rewrite your stuff and that introduces a lot of errors and it really strangles the writer’s voice. I have always done my best, regardless of where I’m working to respect freelancers and where they’re coming from and try to work with them as equals and say “here’s some suggestions, here’s how this piece can get better, take a look, let’s work on the copy, let’s be partners in this.” I’ve worked with a lot of good stories both at The Heavy Table and Christian Science Monitor, taking that attitude, that’s always something I’ve been really proud of and something I’ve really worked to cultivate in myself.
Who has inspired you/impacted your career?
If anything the positive things of editing in high school were working with my peers, working with my friends. In college there was the directors of the school paper, and some of those guys were pretty good, pretty helpful. There was this long tradition of journalism at the Cardinal, at Wisconsin, and it really formed a lot of my ideas. At the Christian Science Monitor, my first boss, the head of the online division, Carla, she was great! She had worked at CNN before and gave me a lot of insight on what makes news timely and what makes it important. My desk editor at the International Desk at the Monitor was fabulous, soft-spoken but really smart, and I think was really influential at teaching me how to work with people I think was the most important thing. It was a set of soft skills, but they’re really important to have as an editor.
Where do you get the idea to write a new piece?
Many sources. I see stuff as I travel around town, as do our writers and our friends. We read other publications thoroughly. And sometimes our readers tip us off.
Who is your typical target audience? How did you decide or figure this out?
25–50 years old, living in the greater Minneapolis-St. Paul metro, well-educated, curious about new restaurants, prone to talking (or blogging or posting on social media) about them — in a nutshell, influencers, as opposed to the general public. We’ve always been interested in moving the people who move the people rather than reaching the largest possible number of readers — it’s the only way for a small independent publication to make a measurable impact, I think.
“I think there is a huge emphasis on the importance of first person narrative and the writer’s point of view, and I don’t care about that.”
Advice for writers to be published in your publication?
The thing I really look for is people who pitch me stories and want to write for us. An ability to see from the perspective of our readers. I think there is a huge emphasis on the importance of first person narrative and the writer’s point of view, and I don’t care about that. I don’t want first person, I don’t want the writer’s point of view. I want, in the case of The Heavy Table, the diner’s point of view. I want to know why something is important to our readers, important to the scene. But the context is, so people can bring me story ideas at the end of the day and say “this idea is good because this restaurant is the first of its kind and the chef knows this about these things that we haven’t seen yet, and I want to talk about it.” That is awesome. What I don’t want to hear is “oh yeah, I went to this place and it was awesome, it was great!” Take the first person out. That’s just me, that’s certainly not every editor, that’s what my slant is. I want writers to think like our readers, and think about our readers.
What advice do you have to someone getting an internship? What do YOU look for?
My advice would be, to the sort of under-person jumping into this deal, “Do your best to get your head around something that is new.” For me, I was in my early 20s and was jumping into professional journalism. I was publishing online, publishing my magazine, and it gave me a lot of insight to simple stuff like HTML and page views and traffic and that kind of stuff. That made me desireable to an employee, it gave me knowledge I could share with people that were ahead of me in terms of writers or editors. So I’m not sure what it would be right now, probably something in the social media realm, but “learn something new-tech and feel like you own it. I think that’s something you can bring to any organization and say “I’m a person who can do this, and while we trade I’ll give you access to these new skills, you give me access to your organization and let’s make it happen!” I think that really helps.
Do you hire hire people regularly? Do you have internships? Or is it all freelance?
It is 100% free lance. Even I, in theory, am a freelance writer for Heavy Table. At some point we may have enough budget, and it may make sense to now get offices and hire for full-time salaries but part of the reason The Heavy Table has lasted, at this point, six years, is because we’ve been able to run a fairly stripped down budget and get done what we need to do with some of a team of freelancers that contribute semi-regularly. There’s kind of an e-mail nexus, we do get together sometimes for meetings or for meals, but it’s pretty decentralized and informal. That has really made it possible to continue with what we’re doing. And we pay pretty well in terms of the kind of work that we’re doing; if you look at CityPages or you look at Eater, they tend to pay what we pay or less. But bringing on full time staff or one full time staffer is a huge commitment. You start to take out loans and I think the financial thing becomes more serious. I think right now we’re pretty low to the ground and it’s working out.
Do you look at other publications to compare your food reviews and theirs?
We do read other publications to stay current, but we avoid reading reviews before our own have come out — it’s very hard not to be influenced / biased by other people’s takes, and we try to rely upon our own observations and experiences as much as is possible.
Norton has not gone to culinary school, he hasn’t opened his own restaurant yet or even claimed the title of “food critic”. Norton does, however, carry himself in such high esteem and with great confidence in his work that he has made his way through what may seem like a difficult business. Not only does he oversee the reviews that go into his magazine, but he also writes these articles. This has given me a new flame of inspiration to follow my desires.
The process of getting to where he is today wasn’t laid out for Norton; he worked in every field that would produce result. To me, someone who doesn’t know how to get where I want to end up, and to those who don’t even know where they want to end up, Norton is an example of hard work paying off in the long run. Similar to Norton, I hope to create my way through my passions and determination. No job is unattainable. No job is better than I can do if I put my heart into it and work every day in a new way to reach my destination. This conversation got me fueled to keep going in the direction I’ve started and to ask questions along the way.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
