Not My Magazine

When the responsibility of handling The Edge (then still named Success Today) was thrown at me, I considered the task as a personal mission to create and conceptualize my kind of vision of what should be a magazine, themed politically, looks like.

I must admit that I created a lot of enmity in the hearts of my peers as I stubbornly ventured to accomplish this personal mission. Not once did I make 'enemies' among them -- though this enmity as my superiors would soon say to me was a product of a misunderstood man like me.

I heard this several times: "Ern, the magazine is not yours."

It meant I should not slave myself or fight everybody and go against them hard just to create a 'visionary magazine' that I thought of.

Now, after several months of working on it, I learned to let go and get some people have a say on how the magazine would look like. It even came to a point when I no longer care. I just let them do the job on the magazine, totally distancing myself or if possible severing my relationship with the magazine.

I don't know whether my interest has already waned, or I just got tired of my don Quixote's mission to produce a magazine according to my vision.

Anyway, I'm just a green horned 'editor.' There are still a lot of things that I have to learn in producing a good magazine.

Now, I barely hear anybody calling the magazine as mine. Which is something good. All I have to do now is focus on my articles and write-ups, and not getting my job complicated with post-production and everything else when in the first place I don't know anything about. I stepped back a little and let myself learn from the people around me. I'm not a god in the first place to know everything.

Tomorrow, the fresh hot copies of The Edge will be out. And usually, my boss give the credit to the editor if the final product of the magazine is very good.

Will I take the credit for it?

I doubt it. It is appropriate to pass the credit to those people who really worked on the post-production of the magazine. And, certainly, my participation in that aspect is at the minimum.

If there is something that I would be happy or proud about the magazine is the write-ups that I did for it, the good damage controlled that I applied so the magazine would look and exude as a political magazine, plus the line-up of articles that I conceptualized for it. The looks, the design, the details beyond the text of the articles are for my peers to take credit for.

Ah, it has been a long road on The Edge's production. And, I hope, all the mistakes and lessons to be learned has been noted and hopefully will not be repeated in the succeeding issues.

Romantizing about my own magazine, at last, is finally over. The Edge is simply not my magazine. I am only working for the magazine.