One of my primary duties at brass is finding, planning, writing, and photographing our cover stories. There are a ton of great young people out there to profile, but it's not always easy to narrow down whom to select. Who makes it on the cover is decided by numerous in-staff discussions and depends on several factors like: how do they fit with our other recent cover subjects (we want variety), does their story inspire, are they relatable, and does their story teach our readers anything?

Step 1: Identify the subject

For each of our four cover story slots per year, we compile a list of potential cover candidates, and contact them by phone, email, Twitter, Facebook or, in a few cases, a face-to-face request, to see if they are interested in being profiled by us. 

Finding a person or group that meets those requirements can be tricky and you never know where the perfect candidate will turn up. In just the last year, our publisher Bryan Sims happened to meet Carrie Atkinson at an entrepreneurship group meeting in Portland, we saw Captain Elliott Neese on TV and contacted him through his boat's website's contact form, Andy Po grew up in the same town as our video editor Vanessa Ciccone, and Andra Govere was brought to our attention by a chance encounter with a dental hygenist whose son happened to be dating her. 

We've also had numerous suggestions from our readers, and always want to hear about whom you think we should profile. Seriously, send us your tips.

[Edit: Photo above right--Behind the scenes of the Captain Elliott Neese photo shoot.] 

Step 2: Plan the angle

Once we have someone on board as a cover story, myself, the editorial, design, and video departments meet to come up with a plan of action for how we want to approach telling the story in words, pictures, design, and video. We plot out themes, scout locations, and brainstorm profile angles. 

Step 3: Interview and shoot

With a plan in hand, I contact the cover subject and let them know what we are thinking and make sure that they are comfortable with our ideas. I then schedule a time for us to interview them, shoot video and take photos. Sometimes we do that all on one super stressful day, other times we have the luxury of spreading the workload out over several days--it all depends on availability and travel restrictions.

For example, with Congressman Aaron Schock's cover story we had one hour total to interview him, shoot the video and take photos between his meetings on Capitol Hill. I've never been so stressed out in my work life. It didn't help that that was the very first cover story where I was the one responsible for planning, writing and photographing. On the other end of the spectrum, the cover story we are currently working on for February was photographed, interviewed, and filmed on three seperate days over several weeks. 

Step 4: Produce the content

When the photos, video and interview audio are in hand, we (the design, editorial, and video departments) get to work writing the story, laying out the article, and producing the profile video. It's certainly a team effort, with lots of collaboration between individual staff members and departments. 

William Kamkwamba is my personal favorite cover story. Meeting him was one of the highlights of my life and career.

The best content is always produced after lots of discussion, constructive criticism and brainstorming. Out of everything I do at brass, working on the cover stories is my favorite part. Meeting new people and getting to tell their stories is the entire reason I got interested in journalism and magazine writing in the first place. 

--Jens 

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