As we say in our masthead, we’re a daily blog for bookish, clever women. Would you like to know what goes on behind the scenes to bring all this wordy goodness to you every day? Read on!
We plan things a week in advance, by making a rough schedule for the week with a cell for each slot during the day. About half of our writers have regularly scheduled columns, I fill in all of those before I send the schedule out to the writers that write on a wider variety of topics or like to play it by ear, and they fill in the slots they want to write. Finally, the editors and interns go over the schedule and take any unfilled slots. I ride standby, and will fill in for emergency vacancies that pop up during the day.
We try to make our schedule have a certain flow, we start the day with lighter stuff, then move into news and issues, then always try to finish the day with something fun. We try to arrange it so our most popular features show up during our heaviest traffic times, but as of late all our times are heavy traffic times.
As we get articles in from the writers, the editors make sure everything is formatted correctly and POM makes sure there are commas where there should be commas and no ill-placed apostrophes, then we schedule each post according to the calendar.
When the calendar falls apart, for any reason from a last minute change to a server that refuses to acknowledge daylight savings time, whoever is in charge that day rearranges things until it looks smooth enough on the outside.
We publish a lot of first-time writers and we’re always looking for submissions from women (and some men) with interesting stories to tell, women (and some men) who have a particular expertise and anyone who’s always wanted to write.
Most of our story ideas come from the writers themselves. Editors will pass along interesting stories or ideas, but for the most part each writer picks what she/he wants to write about.
Since we have a team of editors, interns and writers (you can find them by the little letters in front of their names in the comments. ‘P’ is for Persephoneer, or our regular members), we try to divide up all the tasks. While some of us are minding the schedule, others will be out making comments and answering emails. We’re like a big group of sister wives, without the religious connotations or a common spouse.
We always love hearing from our readers, whether they want to write for us (see our Contribute page if you want to join up), ask questions or let us know if there is something we can do better.
7 replies on “Ladyguide: How Persephone Gets Made”
Probably the least important part of this post, but I had never noticed the little letters before!
That’s one of my favorite features. They’re so cute. Except now I always try to pronounce the little letter with the username, so, for example, you are wanna carey.
Hmm, are we keeping our magical offices with the gourmet coffee cart and glitter lounge a secret?
I would also like to point out that I refrained from adding an Oxford comma to Ophelia’s post, because I know she doesn’t like them. Our teamwork transcends style guides!
Aawwww … teamwork ftw!
I want to go to the secret glitter lounge.
Transparency for the win. But Ophelia you didn’t indicate how many coffees, teas, sodas and other caffeinated products are consumed. Or how many hairs you’ve pulled out of your heads.
Or how often she gets last minute emails from the writers going ‘well, I know I said I was going to write this thing for tomorrow but…’
SO MUCH CAFFEINE. Plus lots of deep breathing when the machinery goes wonky on us.
I average two cups of coffee and probably a sixer of Diet Coke a day. All the healthy Persephoneers just got a chill, and they don’t know why.