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Editor's Blog
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 Hello, I want to take this opportunity to introduce myself; I am Susan Belknapp, the new managing editor of OC Family magazine and ocfamily.com. Kimberly Porrazzo is shifting her role to focus more on the expansion of Churm Media’s digital reach for all its brands. I will now be overseeing the day-to-day and monthly operations of our two family titles, OC Family and Inland Empire Family and their respective Web sites. I am looking forward to sharing my thoughts and experiences, great finds and fun times with you through this blog. I have been writing for OC Family for almost four years, but I’m a bit of an anomaly as a family magazine editor in that I’m single with no children. File that under: Life doesn’t always work out how you plan it. Oh well, you do what you can and hope there is a greater plan. I am extremely close to my extended family and lived with my sister while she was pregnant with my two nephews. I was in the room for both of their births and have seen them almost every week of their lives. They are now 18 and 15. I also have an 8-year-old nephew who is my brother’s son. He and my sister live in the same housing tract and she takes care of him after school; his mother passed away when he was 4. I have a very broad network of friends and family whose children I am very close to and have experiences much of the conflicts, joys and struggles of child rearing through them. When you think about it, men have edited women’s magazines for generations and the intrepid Helen Gurley Brown helmed Cosmopolitan well into her 70s, hardly representative of her publication’s demographic. I have my degree in film and have written a novel and a couple of screenplays (one that shows signs of production life every now and again). My freelance and magazine work has a strong lifestyles focus, but bottom line, I write on just about every subject that under the sun. On a typical day in my previous position as associate editor for OC Family and our sister publication OC METRO, I might write back-to-back stories on how to properly swaddle a baby, an analysis of the quarterly financials of a multi-national semiconductor company and the hottest new restaurant in Newport Beach. But that’s why God invented Google, right? If you can research, understand and relate, you can often write a strong story on a subject you had little or no prior knowledge of. I tell young writers (frequently college interns) who sometimes get a look of panic in their eyes when I ask them to write a story about managing a toddler’s tantrums or bringing home baby for the first time, that it’s okay that you don’t have previous, firsthand knowledge, because you can often be more open to what your experts are telling you. We’re all learning and growing and sharing this journey everyday. I hope that ocfamily.com continues to be a great resource for parents (and aunts, uncles, grandparents and anyone in the community that is helping raise our children). I’d love to know what you’re thinking and what you’d like to see featured in our magazines and Web sites. We want to make this a fun yet informative place to visit regularly, where you can laugh and learn, get ideas and share resources and maybe gain a little inside scoop. If there is subject matter you’d like to see covered, please send me a message at sbelknapp@churmmedia or tweet me at http://twitter.com/susebelk and I’ll do my best to get the word out to you when we are seeking sources for a story. I’ll do my best to update three times a week on subjects sometimes serious and sometimes fun. I’ll try to find a few great YouTube videos just for laughs and if I come across a great product, restaurant, resource or vacation option, I’ll share those with you too. |
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RSS SubscribeReaders Feedback:
Hi Susan, I just submitted some feedback on the IE family site, please provide me with some feedback on this: My dream is to be an editor/writer for a publication, and I love this magazine. How do I pursue this? Thanks!
| Comment at 2/3/2010 |
I am very excited to see all that you are going to bring to this great magazine!
| Comment at 2/5/2010 |
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