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Become A Smashing Editor

Guidelines

At Smashing Magazine we cover a very broad range of subjects. To be able to do this we rely on people taking on editorial roles within their subject of expertise, helping the Editor in Chief to ensure that articles are useful, and accurate.

The Smashing Cat is heading back to New York.

We are currently looking for more subject editors to join the team. To be a subject editor you need to know your area well, and be able to pinpoint the important topics to cover. You should be connected within the community for that subject; happy to contact people and ask them to write for Smashing, helping them to come up with a good article idea. You should be able to be a friendly point of contact for authors as they work on their article — happy to make suggestions, check for technical or factual errors, and guide the article to be useful to our audience. If you haven’t edited before, it’s likely that you already write technical articles, and understand how to structure a good piece.

The Commitment

We are looking for people who would be willing to commit to delivering one or two completed pieces a month. This would involve:

  • Contacting people you think would be a good author for Smashing within your subject area, aiming to bring new and diverse voices rather than always the same names.
  • Explaining to them payment terms, and sharing our guidelines with them.
  • Helping them come up with an outline for their piece.
  • Sharing and getting approval for the topic from the Editor in Chief.
  • Being the main point of contact for your authors as they write, suggesting things for their piece, and checking for technical errors.
  • Being responsive to emails from your authors. We ask you to reply within a day or two unless you have let us know you are unavailable due to vacation or other commitments.
  • Keeping the Smashing editorial team up to date with progress via the Notion board.
  • Ensuring the article is complete with all the elements we need for publication before sending it for final review.

The time commitment varies between articles and authors. Some authors will need very little help, others may need more handholding. We tend to find it all balances out in the end. The most important thing is that you are responsive to author questions, so they are not left hanging, and keep us updated so we have an idea of what we have incoming for the schedule.

From Our Side

  • You will be paid promptly for each accepted piece.
  • We will help you along the way. We work as a team and you can always ask for advice about an article you are working on.
  • We don’t expect you to do copy editing, fix grammar and so on. As we will do this on accepting the content.

Key Subject Areas

I’m currently looking for new editors in particular for the following areas.

  1. Accessibility and inclusive design
  2. Performance
  3. Practical web and UX design
  4. Modern JavaScript ecosystem
  5. Popular JavaScript frameworks (Vue, React and their ecosystem)
  6. Professional development and “soft skills”
  7. Tools for web development

Get In Touch

If this sounds interesting, drop me a line at vitaly@smashingmagazine.com and tell me:

  1. The subject area you would be a great fit for, and why.
  2. Your previous experience in technical editing or writing. Links to things you have written or edited would be helpful.

Last updated 20 July 2020 by Vitaly Friedman (Editor-in-Chief)