A Little Back Story on Manual Magazine's December 2008-January 2009 Issue

Manual Magazine just released its December 2008-January 2009 issue, aptly calling it their "Blog Issue" since a majority of the articles on that issue focused on blogging, social media and bloggers. In that issue, there are four bloggers that were featured: Coy Caballes, Markku Seguerra, Mike Abundo and myself.

I really feel honored to get featured, but there's a little back story behind that blogger feature that deserves some blog ink: The issue was supposed to highlight more than four bloggers. Manual Magazine even was gearing up for at least eight bloggers in that issue, as evidenced by the blurb in their website for this month's issue:

As you can see, they initially allotted space for eight bloggers for the issue.

Last October, I was notified by blogging maven Jayvee Fernandez about Manual's planned blogger feature for a forthcoming issue and that a photo shoot was scheduled in their home in Parañaque. During the shoot, Jayvee, Markku, Coy, Fritz Tentativa, Juned Sonido, Kevin Codamon, and I were interviewed and photographed by the Manual Magazine staff. It was an enjoyable shoot as we all spent a that time lounging and hanging out . We were then informed that the feature will appear in the December 2008-January 2009 issue. A few weeks after, I learned that fellow bloggers Anton Diaz and Rico Mossesgeld were going to be included in the feature.

But early this month, I got a text message from Jayvee, saying that the blogger feature, as it was being written by multiple writers, suffered major deadline issues and that features on some bloggers would not be able to print. It was disappointing news, but I wanted to know more information how it came to that.

A few days later, I called up Manual Magazine Assistant Editor PJ Caña to learn more. He said that the writer who was assigned to do the articles on Fritz, Juned, Kevin, Anton and Rico just resigned and that writer was not able to complete the articles before he left. PJ was apologetic of the outcome and he then shared how the magazine's editorial staff were then faced with a judgment call-- either publish the finished articles with four bloggers or scrap the whole thing. Ans as we see in the issue, the editors chose to publish the blogger feature.

Sayang. I seriously feel the bloggers who were left out are more accomplished and authoritative than I am. Who has not read Our Awesome Planet, checked out Kevin's babes or seen Juned's photos? It was an unfortunate turn of events that could have made Manual Magazine's Blog Issue much, much better.


Tags: Manual Magazine