From intern to editor in chief
Jamie Martin explains her job as Experience Life editor in chief and the path it took to get there.
By Callie Chase
Two weeks after Jamie Martin graduated from the University of Minnesota with a bachelor’s degree in magazine publishing, she was offered an internship with Experience Life, a magazine associated with the company — Life Time, Inc. She has been there ever since. Working her way up, Martin now holds the position of editor in chief.
The purpose behind Experience Life is the reason she’s stayed for her entire career. “It’s really hard to be healthy right now in our culture, so how do we make it easier for people to live a healthier life?” Martin said. “Even if it’s one little thing. Readers always have to be top of mind.”
Q: What are your responsibilities as an editor?
A: As editor in chief, I am responsible for the whole operation of Experience Life. I oversee print, digital circulation and the business side. From a strictly editorial side, I lead our editorial team in terms of determining our overall strategy and content arch for the entire year. We have two semi-annual planning meetings where we plan five issues at a time.
I oversee all of it. I get into the copy and various stages in the process. Each issue takes about seven months of planning. Throughout that seven-month process, I typically see every article four to five times, and I see the whole package together two to three times.
I’m in the word documents and I’m editing, but a lot of the heavy lifting is done by my editors.
Q: Who is your team made up of?
A: I have four senior editors, an assistant editor, two deputy editors, a managing editor and two copy editors.
There are 10 people on the editorial team. Obviously, they all have various responsibilities, but the senior editors are the ones responsible for taking every story idea and assigning it out to the freelance writers. They do the first two rounds of edits before it moves to the deputy editors, and then it comes to me.
It’s a multistep, in-depth process.
Before we go to print, the final step is sitting down with a core group to review the entire magazine front to back. We’re looking for visuals, headlines and the entire package.
Q: What does a typical day look like for you?
A: Each day is a little bit different. Yesterday, for instance, we planned the May issue. I spent part of my day in the copy-editing files. I was in design files doing my first visual edit. I spent about three hours doing that.
Then, I spent a couple hours doing administrative work with the team; I have office hours where anyone can pop in and ask questions.
Then, I try and squeeze in lunch.
Then, we did a planning meeting for the May 2020 issue. That usually takes about two hours.
Q: What are the pros and cons of your job?
A: There’s never been a day where I haven’t wanted to go to work. I love what Experience Life does; I love what they do for Life Time. The things I love about it are the constant learning. We are constantly learning about health and wellness.
Even though it’s the same process, and that can sometimes feel redundant, it’s new stuff all the time. There’s always something new to learn.
There are very few things I don’t love about my job. There are some days when I don’t enjoy working on files at my computer, but I really love that we’re constantly getting to learn and share that with people.
Q: What is a memorable anecdote from your career?
A: Early in my career, when I was an assistant editor and fact checker, my role was progressing, and I was dabbling in more things that were digital. At the time, we had a senior editor who was also a pro athlete in rugby, and she had to take a month away from work. I was able to take over her responsibilities. This was a stretch moment for me where I got to try my hand at more of a senior editor role, and I’ll never forget a story I worked on. It was a story about anaerobic threshold and how to train with the zones, train to optimize your training, using your oxygen VO2 max and all these things to optimize how you train. I’ll never forget when that story won an award. I knew I had a hand in that. It was a local award from Minnesota Magazine, but I saw a greater potential in myself and realized I wanted to do more of this. This was where I wanted to focus my time and attention.
Overseeing an entire magazine, strategically planning months in advance and managing 10 other editors requires hard work and dedication. Martin works from administration to business, yet that is the key to her success.
