Margaret McGuire
Editor, Queensland Homes Magazine

Written by Michaela Tam on 2010-10-04

Margaret has been working at Graphic Publishing, one of Queensland’s largest independent boutique magazine publishing houses for 20 years. As the Editor of Queensland Homes Magazine, Margaret provides readers with inspiration for their abodes in every edition. Margaret’s extensive experience in the magazine publishing industry has granted her with an exceptional understanding of Brisbane’s media landscape and a valid opinion on the future of print media.

Describe a typical day in your role as Editor of Queensland Homes?

It depends where I am up to in the production stage – in the very early stages it involves working out the features, and then distributing them, some go out to freelance writers and most of them are done in-house, and we have a lot of editorials that are related to features so those have to be allocated and the advertisers contacted. The rest of the time I write a lot of the editorial content of the magazine, I supervise the layout of the houses and other features which means sitting with the graphic designers.

Best and worst part of your job?

I really like the contact with the people I speak to, I do not email much I always speak to them on the phone, whether they are advertisers, or any of the other people from whom I get material for the editorial content. It is not the worst, but perhaps the least pleasant is when you have to harass people for material to be included in a feature, but it is absolutely necessary because we have contracts for editorial.

If you had to give one piece of advice to a professional entering the magazine publishing industry, what would it be?

You need to hone up your skills on diplomacy, it is critical, and you have no idea how often it is needed. You have to be patient, you have to be willing to bend with the rules because this is a very fluid environment.

What challenges (if any), does your company face in regards to new media technologies?

It seems obvious to me that the website will expand but I see it as being an adjunct to the magazine, I do not think we are at a stage yet where people are ready to give up the actual physical sensation of picking up and opening a magazine and turning the pages. However, the big dilemma that faces us is that by very definition our claim to difference was always whatever you saw in Queensland Homes Magazine you could buy in Queensland, but with the internet we have had to decide whether to include internet shopping and we have decided we have to.

What were the main challenges you encountered to get to your position as Editor of Queensland Homes Magazine?

I started in 1991 as a part-time proof reader and because this is a small company and because Rhonda Bannister (Group Publisher at Graphic Publishing) is a woman who never ever thinks you need to be qualified to do a job, she believes most people have the capacity to assimilate information and to do the job if they want to. So really, it has just been longevity and the fact I could not have fallen into a job that suits me better, I guess it was luck really in the first place.

You mentioned you have freelancers writing for the magazine, what kind of submission would you love to see come across your desk?

Something that is a fabulous idea, the freelancer knows where to go and then can give me a clear outline of what they think and basically leave me with as little to do as possible. They need to be organised and the way to do that is to ask at the start ‘what do you want?’

What can we expect to see from Queensland Homes Magazine in the next 12 months?

We are planning to do a reader survey in the March issue because the last one showed a shift in the demographic that read our magazine, they are actually becoming much younger. We are aiming for a younger looking angle for the magazine with a couple of our features moving away from quiet clean layouts so that they are not like the magazines in our competitive range, and we are also experimenting with different fonts, layouts and content in some of our other features.