What did people think of the article about disabled people succeeding despite their handicaps? One editor praised the writer; another said he was pleased that Mpls.St.Paul magazine had taken on such a serious subject; and the designer pointed out how cool the images were. Visually, yes, these black and white photos taken from unusual angles were striking . . . yet I felt disturbed. I had to speak up.
“These photos are really powerful, but they make their subjects look weak,” I said. “Look at the guy in the wheelchair. He’s dominated by it; he even looks trapped. But if you know anyone who uses a wheelchair, it’s liberating. I have a friend with ALS. He’s not wheelchair-bound; his wheelchair gives him freedom.”
The room was silent for a moment. The designer fumed. I had been invited to the issue debriefing because editor Brian Anderson took seriously the business of grooming summer interns into potential magazine journalists. Perhaps I had scotched my future there, but so be it; I had to express what I saw.
Ah, Brian said, that’s a very interesting perspective. Thank you, Allison. And we all turned to the next piece in the most recent issue.
The designer quickly let her anger go. And, during what turned out to be our years working together at MSP Communications, I was able to give my opinion on visuals and page layout to her and other designers much earlier in the process. That didn’t mean that I was always correct or even swayed people—I was primarily a wordsmith, after all. But I continued to speak up and was heard as I worked my way up from intern to editorial assistant in charge of the events calendar and list-y stories (“Top 10 Ski Areas in the Midwest” and such) to managing editor at Twin Cities Business Monthly and later Mpls.St.Paul.
And during that time, years before Lean In Circles, I was fortunate enough to be a part of a group of uppity women editors from publications around the Cities. We gathered monthly to talk, to nosh, to drink wine and to plot our breakouts to the next level. Encouraged by each other and such colleagues as the late Brian Anderson, we spoke up and made our voices heard: important, whatever the risks.
Allison Campbell Jensen 