Mission/SF Magazine Freelance Project

[Marilyn Chase]

To Mission feature writers regarding the San Francisco Magazine freelance project,

As some of you know, we're working on a collaboration with San Francisco Magazine to produce a freelance feature covering a day and a night in The Mission.  The idea is to assign 5-8 of our best feature writers enrolled in J201 and J299 to key sites  -- such as the SFPD Mission Station, the SF General ER, parks, churches, schools restaurants and bars, arts venues, crime scenes -- where they'd embed, report, or and do interviews. 

 The goal is to produce a cluster of stories and images -- interwoven 100 to 500 word sketches and vignettes -- that tell the story of today's Mission, its energy and its evolution.  SF Magazine's Articles Editor Nina Martin is interested in what she calls a "kaleidoscopic" piece depicting all facets of cultural diversity and the coexistence of Old Mission families, traditions and street rivalries with the new settlers moving into the neighborhood.

Helene and I have held two meetings with Nina, who is excited about the project and would like a status report  on who's doing what by early February.  The piece would need to be finalized and edited here at ML by February 28 for submission to the magazine. Then the magazine editors plan to edit the project in their style during the month of March.  The magazine gets shipped in April and would be in the May issue. Magazines have long lead times.

What's in it for you? Writers whose work gets published in San Francisco would get bylines, clips, contacts and a share of the freelance fee for writers and photographers whose work is used in the publication.  We understand that the magazine pays a kill fee if the package doesn't run in the magazine.

Mission Local would continue to operate normally through this time, with students in J201 and J299 doing regular features for the website.  ML would retain rights to run your proposed San Francisco Magazine stories on our site too regardless of the magazine publication, according to Nina.  

To get started with planning for this, let's meet as soon as everyone is back in town -- ideally 4 pm on Mon. Jan. 21 at Mission Local. That's the day before classes officially start. Please let Helene and me know if you can make it. Everyone who's on board should bring ideas to brainstorm on venues and vignettes to  write and photograph.

Thanks & Best,

Marilyn

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Marilyn Chase

Lecturer

Graduate School of Journalism

University of California at Berkeley
Mobile: 415-999-3508
Email: chase....@gmail.com