For this week’s magazine of the week, I had to go no further than the bookcase in the MBIP World Headquarters Main Operational Office.
I thought this week I’d write about a magazine that totally changed my life and was the thing that steered me towards New York City. The magazine was one that I created, published, edited and wrote for three years, People Of Peoria later shortened to POP magazine.
I’ve written about this magazine before, but thought it would be fun to zone in on the first issue and how it came to be.
Here’s the crew that put the first issue of People of Peoria together.
From the left: Jeff Putnam: Photo Editor/Assistant Editor; Jim Kelton: Art Director/Layout Editor; John Ingles: Layout Editor; I was the Publisher and Editor and last but not least, Jim Wombacher: Swamistuff Editor.
Basically Jeff Putnam was in charge of the photography and he took a lot of the photos in the first issue. Jim Kelton designed the logo and the front cover and laid out pages in the issue. He also picked out the fonts to use for headlines and did some art for the inside of the magazine. John Ingles also did page layout for this issue. My brother Jim drew illustrations and helped me with some of the writing for the front and back columns. I thought of all the column and article ideas, wrote the cover stories and other feature stories and columns and I paid for everything.
I paid for it from the money I had made from the Idiot Trivia game I created back in 1985 with my friend, Greg Owens and from what I was making at Fleming Potter, where I was working the night shift as a four color film stripper.
This is the masthead that liested all of the people who worked on this first issue. There was no internet or email back then, so I was constantly on the phone with people and driving to pick stuff up and meet with all these different people who were working with me on the magazine.
We started working on the issue in May and it came out in August. Those three months were a blur of writing, doing layouts, talking with people on the phone, going places for different articles and working my night job.
Pure insanity but total excitement. I didn’t know it back then, but I was slowly getting addicted to the rush of a constant deadline!
Here’s the cover for the very first issue of People Of Peoria. It came out in August of 1990.
Previously, I had spent five years producing goofy games and books with my friend Greg Owens and I quickly learned the value of getting on local morning radio shows back then.
Peoria had a lot of local morning radio shows in 1990 and they each had an audience from different slices of Peoria’s population. I figured if I did an article on all of them, it would be interesting to people who listened to their shows and I would also create a cover story that would have a wide appeal to most of the people living in Peoria.
I decided to write the cover line of “P.O.P. “Mugs It Up” With Some Of Your Favorite Morning Radio Personalities” and take their pictures in a police mugshot fashion. Jeff Putnam took the photos and Jim Kelton designed the cover. I wrote all of the copy and I’ll write more about the cover stories in the next section.
My brother Jim drew caricature photos of all of the morning radio personalities who were part of the story. I spent a morning observing each one of them during their shows and talking to them during breaks. I took notes while observing how they did their shows and asked them about their stories about how they got into radio and what led them to Peoria.
After I had done all of this, there was just one tiny little problem. I had to write the stories up!
I had never written a feature story in my life at this point and I had no idea what I was doing. I just pretended like I did.
I remember people asking me, “So you’re a writer?”
And I’d smile and look back at them with all the fake confidence I could muster up and reply, “Yeah, of course I am.”
Of course I wasn’t a writer back then, but I was a really good liar! And sometimes that’s all it takes to get you to the next day in this stupid thing we call life that we all live every day until we don’t anymore.
Joe Walsh released an album in 2012 called “Analog Man.” One of the songs on it was called, “Lucky That Way,” and it includes this verse:
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“I'll let you all in on a little secret,
If I can share with you a thing or two,
If you just act like you know what you're doing,
Everybody thinks that you do.”
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I laughed so hard when I heard that verse because it took me all the way back to that first issue of People Of Peoria.
I had no idea what I was doing, but I just acted like I did and to my utter amazement, no one questioned it!
I started studying articles and columns in People magazine and Rolling Stone and just kind of copied how they were done. I figured out you needed something in the first paragraph to draw people in, then throw all the facts and quotes in after that and then try and have some sort of a snappy ending.
I realized that writing feature articles and columns were just like telling a story. I’ve always had a big mouth and I love to tell stories and I realized it’s just taking that ability and channeling it through a keyboard. It’s a pretty simple thing once you figure it out.
I’ve always said that the hardest part of writing is handing someone your article and having enough dumb courage to believe that they’re actually going to take the time to read it!
I remember showing the articles I had written for that first issue to people and I was amazed that everyone said I was doing a great job with the writing for the magazine! I really felt like I had fooled everyone and in a way I did!
After the issue came out, I got on all of the morning radio shows to promote the magazine and they all gave me a lot of time on their shows since they were on the cover of it.
We also got an article in the PJ Star and all three local TV stations had stories about the magazine on their news shows. There wasn’t another local magazine like this in Peoria at the time, so it made for a good news story.
The issue sold out and was a big success. I was thrilled for about seven minutes and then realized we had to do this all over again for the next issue!
So I started making phone calls, thinking of story ideas for features and columns and working my night job. And I was craving that sweet deadline!
This would be my life for the next three years. It was non-stop madness!
This was the very last issue of fishwrap that came out in November of 1993.
By this time I was still working at Fleming Potter and I was also writing freelance feature articles for the Pekin Daily Times. The magazine led me to that daily newspaper and I learned how to write for a family newspaper and that led me to meet Dick Stolley in New York City. And meeting Dick inspired me to move to New York City for 19 years.
Then I moved back to Peoria in 2012 and started this blog which is now in its 13th year! Funny how the circle spins around.
It’s been one crazy-ass ride and it all started with that first issue of People Of Peoria!
Thanks to everyone who worked with me on it and everyone who bought it and encouraged me to do something I had no idea of what I was doing!
Now I have to go and get tomorrow’s blog going. That deadline fever never stops raging! Thanks to all of you for reading and we’ll see you tomorrow!
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