I mentioned bluelines earlier.
Bluelines are full-color photographic proofs of the magazine's pages. We use them to make sure everything is just as everything should be before that last wild miracle happens, and the book comes back to us all bound and beautiful and you know you love it, you know you need it, don't even think of denying it. We check cutlines and bylines, photo credits and page numbers, headers and footers...
And, of course, we check ad placement. We can't, for instance, allow an ad for Outlaw Audio's very cool-looking new receiver [Man, I want that thing!] to appear among the pages of its review.
Because, yo, that would be crazy. The trolls would cry bloody bullshit about us selling out to the man. And F that noise.
Every now and then, though, something upsetting slips into our pages. Like, today, when I was going through the bluelines and I noticed that a Music Direct ad featuring a certain product happened to be placed directly alongside the review of that product. [Holy motherfricking no no no no no!!!]
How does something like this happen?
Well, while we did know that a Music Direct ad would be appearing on those particular pages, those of us over here in editorial (all four of us) had no idea of what material would be included in that ad — we often don't get to see the ads until they're actually in place. This is a problem, obviously. And we're working on correcting it.
For now, it's just enough that we caught it in time to make the change. Elizabeth, after uttering a few naughty words, was happy to go back and redo the entire layout.
"Yes, thank you, JA, for allowing me to do all this extra work," she said. Happily.
