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Astronomy editors head off site to brainstorm magazine improvements

Posted 10-20-2009 by David Eicher

The Astronomy staff gets things rolling the morning of October 16, 2009. David J. Eicher photo
Be prepared for plenty of surprises to come in the next few months. Last Friday Astronomy’s editorial staff joined forces with the art staff and our publisher and went off site, as we do each year, for a daylong discussion. The topics cover the entire spectrum of magazine and web site creation, and the goal is to give you the best possible product we can over the coming year. We spoke about potential stories, special issues, magazine design, covers, outreach activities with astronomy groups, trips and tours, our web site, and a whole load of other stuff.

We convened at 9 a.m. at my house about 10 miles from Kalmbach’s corporate headquarters. The morning began over lots of coffee, orange juice, breakfast goodies. Eventually we had boxed lunches and the chatter rolled into the afternoon. It was a serious analytical discussion and one punctuated by lots of laughs and a bit of silliness, as always.

So stay tuned — much came out of the discussion, and I promise some of things we spoke about will make a nice difference in the pages of your issues of Astronomy during the coming year.

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  • jimgysin said:

    Hey, folks, I hope that one of the things that you discussed was punching up your Facebook presence so that it's more than just a clone of your Twitter feed.  It would seem to be a no-brainer since FB is capable of so much more, including the ability to embed images and videos along with any entries.  If anything, I would make entries with FB in mind and then trim them down to fit the limitations of Twitter, rather than doing things the other way around.  And, of course, I would ensure that links to *both* social media sites were readily visible on all of the pages of Astronomy.com, either in the banner area or conspicuously listed in a sidebar.

    Other than that, I just re-upped for your FB page so that I can see if you start to jazz things up there a bit.  I had stopped following it when I realized that it was a halfhearted effort on your part, but hopefully that will change!  But either way, rest assured that I will continue to read your weekly newsletter and visit the main site on a regular basis.  But others might need that initial FB nudge...

    October 21, 2009 1:59 PM

About David Eicher

David J. Eicher
  David J. Eicher is editor of Astronomy and has been observing the skies since 1976. He has an asteroid, 3617 Eicher, named for him by the International Astronomical Union.
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