Every now and then a web resource comes online and you just have to say WOW! That’s exactly what I said after seeing a recent Twitter from Norman Hollyn that said: “For some fantastic articles on editing go to the Editors Guild Magazine site. Interviews, tips and more. ” It was followed by this link: http://snipurl.com/rmai5. That link takes you to the Motion Picture Editors Guild webpage of current and past issues of Editors Guild magazine. There’s currently issues going as far back as when the mag was just a newsletter in 1994. Click the cover to get a list of contents and then click the link to read the article, that simple. There’s no fee and not even a sign-up process.
It’s amazing to me that the Guild would make such a great resource available for free. This is really editing pay-dirt for those who want to work in television and features as there’s probably an article on one of you favorite movies, television shows and editors somewhere in the archives. There’s interviews, feature articles, tech tips, columns, letters to the editor, crossword puzzles and more. Some of the earliest issues don’t have all of their content online but here’s hoping the curators keeping adding that content as time goes along.
I want to say thank you to the Guild for placing this content up, free of charge for interested parties to read. This type of thing is exactly what the Internet is perfect for. It’s preserved for future generations, easily searchable for research purposes, and provides endless content for the interested editor to kill some time. I’ve been throwing links of interesting articles over to Instapaper for a quick save (thought it’s a secure site and won’t allow for Instapaper offline reading it does save the link). And it’s the perfect kind of thing for magazines, especially trade publications, to do. Gone are the days when you would order physical printed back issues of magazines. The Internet makes the information world instantly searchable, usually for free. Very few people are going to buy old print copies of mags these days and wait while they are shipped. And since there’s so much free info out there even paying for content is often ignored in favor of free options. I hope the Guild continues to keep these archives free as there’s a lot of editors out there (like me) who have never had access to such a wealth of content about our chose craft. It being freely accessible means a lot more people will be reading it.