We continue our brief series of blogs of behind the scenes looks at the ASA by a look at the ASA’s most widely viewed publication, Amstat News.
If you are an ASA member, then you have grown accustomed to seeing Amstat News arrive in your mailbox every month. It is the ASA’s member magazine, and we’ve been publishing it monthly for forty years. (Well, we published it 11 times a year until 2000, and monthly since then.) If you are an old-timer like me, then you remember the plain brown paper and spare look of the early editions, nothing like the forty eight full color pages we print now.
Amstat News is professionally and lovingly produced each month by a team of people in our Communications Department. Managing editor Megan Murphy oversees every part of the production process. Melissa Muko Gotherman and Kathryn Wright coordinate production and do the graphic design. Val Nirala makes sure we write clearly and with style. Claudine Donovan manages the advertising. Several other ASA staff members contribute to the production of the magazine.
These staff members are never just producing one magazine. Right now they are working on the March edition, but articles have been planned and “dummied” into place for several upcoming issues. Articles are constantly being solicited and received. By the time one issue has been put to bed, the next one is well underway.
Furthermore, they really produce two magazines per month, the print version and the online version. While the articles are often (but not always) the same, they have to be formatted differently for the two versions, and the online version needs to have links, tags, and other identifiers added to it.
The production of Amstat News could be a full time job for many people, but the ASA’s communications team also coordinates the production of the online and print issues of CHANCE, a non-technical quarterly magazine for anyone who has an interest in the analysis of data and sound statistical practice. And beyond that, they produce a whole range of other important communications tools, including collateral print material for JSM and the Conference on Statistical Practice, the Statistical Significance series and the education department’s career resource documents. In addition to the print design they manage ASA’s Facebook and Twitter accounts and STATTr@k. Val Nirala takes care of the JSM Proceedings.
Communicating information with and about members is one of the core activities of the ASA. Much of our ability to do this is the result of the professional and timely work of the ASA Communications Department. Of course, the team would be the first to tell you that without the articles contributed by our members, we would have no Amstat News. If you are interested in contributing to the magazine, drop me a note (ron@amstat.org).
In 2014, the American Statistical Association is celebrating its 175th anniversary. Over the course of this year, this blog will highlight aspects of that celebration, and look broadly at the ASA and its activities. Please contact ASA Executive Director Ron Wasserstein (ron@amstat.org) if you would like to post an entry to this blog.