Living the Dream with Scene

Carolyn Burt and Conlee Taylor interview Resident Mentor, Michael Gonzalez at CSUN Student Housing on March 15, 2022 in Northridge, Calif. *Sam Landau | Scene Magazine*

Being a part of Scene Magazine has been something I’ve looked forward to since I first transferred to CSUN. Throughout the semester our staff has been hard at work, both in drafting our articles and learning what it takes to create a magazine.

Coming from a newspaper background, it’s been a nice change of pace to have a little more time to really flesh out our articles.

Personally, I feel like I’ve hit the jackpot when it comes to teammates. Page Designer, Conlee Taylor and I are co-writing a piece focused on CSUN Resident Advisors and the impact they have on students. I say it every time we have a class critique, but Conlee is a rockstar. She has found amazing sources for us to interview and keeps our team on track.

The Dream Team, consisting of Sam Landau, Carolyn Burt, and Conlee Taylor meet via zoom to discuss their next steps on March 29, 2022.

In addition, we’ve also partnered up with Sam Landau to photograph the piece. The three of us have begun referring to ourselves as “The Dream Team”, and yes shirts are already in the works.

As any college student knows, group projects can be hit or miss. I think what’s helped us work so well together is that we each have a genuine interest in the topic that made us want to work on this article. On top of that, they’re both just delightful people to be around.

Besides writing articles, most of us on staff also hold an editorial role. These positions range from photo to copy editors. Because I hold the position of Managing Editor for the Daily Sundial, CSUN’s student news publication, I was excited to take on more of a creative role for Scene.

Conlee Taylor and Carolyn Burt discuss their post-interview notes at the CSUN Student Housing on April 7th, 2022 in Northridge, Calif. *Sam Landau | Scene Magazine*

Being Online Editor has been a chance to experiment with web design. Right now my main task at hand has been transitioning out previous staff’s content to have a new home on the site. To do this, I’ve created landing pages for these issues. My goal is to make this process easier for future staffs to be able to take over the site and add their articles.

Some other updates I’ve made is a new homepage that includes a teaser for our upcoming Spotlight issue and behind-the-scenes posts from our social media team. I’m also working on our staff page which will include headshots, bios, and links to the work from everyone on our staff.

But the final thing I’ve been working on is this, Behind the Scene. My goal with this blog is for our staff to share a behind-the-scenes look at what it’s been like working on a magazine. This will be both an opportunity for our audience to read more about the process, and for fellow staff members to see what everyone’s been up to.

There’s a lot that goes into this publication, and I hope you enjoy hearing all about it.