Extra Credit Topical Blog Post

I attended the Magazine Club meeting to hear three editors from the San Francisco Panorama who are also a part of McSweeny's, a publishing company. The San Francisco Panorama was a project undertaken by three men: Jesse, Brian and Chris and the idea was to create a newspaper in a more innovative way. The Panorama was about 350 pages and in a sense it was magazine style with an immense amount of large graphics and a more youthful feel than the average newspaper. When talking about their inspirations and aspirations for the final project, Jesse stated that they took into consideration "things paper can do that the internet can't". All three of the editors stressed teh idea behind "having a print physical object in your hand is different than on a screen, no matter how big the screen is", as worded by Chris. Chris also stressed that the Panorama was an example into "putting effort into the way information is portrayed" inferring that this as an art has declined. Brian placed a lot of emphasis on the graphic design aspect of the Panorama. He believed it was necessary to "give the reader something they might want to keep and hang up on their wall".
Overall, I saw the San Francisco Panorama as a succesful project and experiment, and it is unfortunate that they will not be doing it again. It definitely gave me a bit of inspiration to follow my passion for journalism. The stories they featured were "subjects that got less exposure" and/or "subjects magazines have covered but in a more extensive way", as Chris put it, and I really admire that. The Panorama awakened that concept of writing for society and things that truly interest the people. It showed that the news does not always have to be about tragedy and the economy. There are other aspects of our world that are less covered, it is just up to the new generation of journalists to cover them in a more innovative way such as these three editors did.