ABSTRACT
Ideas and information are the raw materials of a journalist’s craft, which involves coming up with ideas on a punishingly regular basis. Much of the rest of the job is about seeking out information so that it can be marshalled into shape for the use, or the entertainment, of the reader. Here I will look at these two processes before a brief discussion of commissioning. This is relevant in this chapter because it affects and is affected by what happens to the ideas and information: it is relevant in this book because a magazine journalist is more likely to be given some responsibility for commissioning early in a career than would be the case in newspapers.
