Making It: How to Become the Editor of Outdoor Life

The author and his yellow Lab, Willow, nap inside a wall tent in Glasgow, Mont. Photo by Bill Buckley

The April issue of Outdoor Life was devoted to money. How to make it, and how to save it.

Specifically, we talked about how to save your hard-won dollars by patching decoys, repairing gun stocks, and making for yourself what you could otherwise buy in the store. The second half of the feature was about how to make money in the outdoors, and we profiled six people whose livelihood comes from hunting and fishing, activities that a lot of folks think of more as a hobby or a lifestyle.

We editors intentionally left ourselves out of the conversation. Yes, we make our living off the outdoors, or more precisely, communicating about the outdoors, and part of the communications strategy was to tell other folks’ stories. But our cover model for the April issue, video host and blogger Mark Kenyon, wanted to turn the tables on us.

He interviewed me for his weekly podcast, asking many of the same questions we asked him for our cover package: how did he get his job, and what exactly does he do, and what he likes best and least about the work.

You can connect to Mark’s podcast by listening to it on his site or downloading the episode (#49) from iTunes or Stitcher.

You’ll hear about my circuitous path to my job, advice for getting started in the outdoor communications, the best and worst things about the outdoor industry, and insights into the selection of the folks we profiled in our April issue.

So, if you have a half hour or so to fritter away, check out the conversation. Hopefully, you’ll take away some useful information, or at least get some insights into how your favorite media brand is managed.