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Janel Johnson (Class of 2011)
Janel Johnson follows the subTerrain paper trail
Before my internship at subTerrain -- a literary and visual art magazine -- I accepted the conventional wisdom that the age of paper was over and traditional print magazines were dying. Ditto for Canada Post. I figured if I wanted to experience working for a print magazine, I better hurry up while they still existed! On my first day at the subTerrain offices in East Vancouver, Editor Brian Kaufman met me at the door and showed me around the office. Sandwiched between the sunny front offices of Talonbooks and a warehouse space, the subTerrain space wasn't so much an office as a claustrophobic paper maze of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves piled with submission envelopes, books, and stacks of magazines. Wedged between the bookshelves were two computer workstations used by the ever-changing kaleidoscope of interns and staff. A work table at the centre of the room held postage and ink stamps while functioning as a traffic circle for the other office occupants: Moka, an affable Ducktoller, and Toby, the 100-pound Labradoodle. I took a seat at the work table and began my first task at subTerrain, processing the mail. Brian picked up the mail every few days from the Main Post Office and brought it back to our office in a plastic tub. Mail days were the most fun at subTerrain because they reeled in the latest offerings from publishers across the continent. We admired, rustled, flipped, and browsed and our way through them. Brian even liked to sniff them to determine the paper quality and printing process. Most of the incoming mail, though, was unsolicited submissions. It became my job to process them. I stamped them with the date, logged them into a book, then placed them at the bottom of the to-be-read pile, which was sometimes piled one foot high. The outgoing mail at subTerrain included rejection letters, ad billings, renewal notices, and of course, magazines to new subscribers. Managing Editor (and Print Futures grad) Pat Mackenzie and I spent so much time calculating postal rates we joked that Print Futures should offer a course on it! The importance of correct postal codes took on a new sense of gravitas for me as I learned that Canada Post refused to deliver mailing lists with too many errors. The subTerrain office, which I first thought was a chaotic jumble of books and paper, turned out to be a highly organized environment where every type of stationery, size of envelope, stamp, and paper clip had a specific space and function. Canada Post, subTerrain's lifeline to the world, hauled in the raw materials -- submissions -- and placed the final product -- visual art and writing -- into the hands of subscribers. After my internship, I attended several magazine seminars where I learned that because print magazines work well in tandem with electronic media, they're making a comeback. I'm relieved to know we'll be able to rustle, flip, browse, and sniff our way through magazines for a long time to come.
Janel Johnson has continued to work with subTerrain since her 2008 internship. She will graduate from Print Futures in 2011. Cover credit for Issue 49: John Laurie.
Posted April 2010
