If you consider Redbook a major magazine.
I recently read this article on Yahoo (WARNING! Fluff) and I’m interested in the study mentioned here:
I have a mailing address and e-mail for comments on content so what I would like from you is some advice on how to best approach them.
Do I have any hope of getting a simple, straight up response, or am I better off trying to track down the study on my own?
Does the article cite an author with an e-mail address? I think I’d just write directly to him/her if it was available.
E-mail to their letters-to-the-editor page and ask for the source of that survey. They may answer vi e-mail or in print, but they will likely answer.
I have the author’s name but no e-mail address.
If I send an e-mail including the name of the article, the author’s name and the quote I included with the OP, will that be sufficient?
Sorry if I’m being dense about this, I’d like to actually get a response and I suspect letters to the editor get thrown in the trash pretty quickly. I’d like to be able to ask for this type of information more regularly.
A few specific details…
Am I better off writing from a personal e-mail rather than a generic yahoo account?
Should I…
Include a standard mailing address?
Try to be business formal or just ask for a cite?
Include commentary or specify why I want the cite, or just say I want it?
Gush over how much I like the magazine and how I gave away twelve subscriptions for Christmas and request the cite as a BTW?
Gush over how much I like the article and mention that the cite will be carved into the walls of a two story shrine I am erecting in honor of the literary accomplishment?
It’s pretty likely it’s from the Sex in America survey that UC did in 1994. Everybody quotes that.
1 Robert T. Michael, et. al., Sex in America: A Definitive Survey (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1994), p. 1, 131.
2 Edward O. Laumann, et. al., The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 364, table 10.5.
For your specific question, it’s hard to say because it will vary with the magazine and I know nothing about Redbook.
A good editorial staffer will forward your query to the article’s author, who may or may not respond. Any serious query should be handled in this manner. Say please.
And include a self-addressed, stamped envelope if you want a snail-mail response.
Out of curiosity, Is that something you recognized from experience or were you able to use information from the article to find it?
Would I be more or less likely to get a response using the United States Post Office? I’m assuming that the Magazine will forward my question, so if I did send a SASE, it wouldn’t make it to the author anyway. But I’m pretty biased in favor of e-mail.
I would try e-mail first, and if I did not get a reply, then I would try snail-mail.
But in the Days of Yore, the assumption was that if you did not enclose an SASE, they would just throw it away.
When I was a magazine editor I would forward e-mails like that directly to the authors (who were usually freelancers I never met in person). It would be entirely up to them whether and how they responded. If a request came by paper mail, I would still send an e-mail to the freelancer, but it might take me a little longer to get around to it.
None of this would have mattered to me.
Get to the point right away - as in the first sentence. Magazine editors are usually busy people and appreciate concise writing. That doesn’t mean they don’t like getting their egos massaged when time permits, so put the gushing after your request. It probably won’t increase your chances of getting what you want, but it may make someone feel a little better about their job. (If you can make it look sincere, that is. Sometimes obvious flattery can be insulting.)
Having also worked as a freelancer, I say gush away. There’s a chance the writer will see what you’ve written to the editor and appreciate it and therefore be more likely to help you.
Thank you for the insight. I really appreciate it.
I sent a very brief e-mail. If I get a response, I think it will likely be the article Exapno cited, but I wouldn’t have found that study on my own.