00:00 So a lot of people ask us, what does it take to produce a magazine?
00:03 We're the longest-running automotive magazine still being published today.
00:05 So in this episode of Hot Rod Unlimited,
00:07 we're gonna take you to our offices and show you what we do on a day-to-day basis to publish Hot Rod magazine.
00:12 We're in our El Segundo offices, and we also share these offices with Motor Trend magazine,
00:28 Car Craft, and a slew of different enthusiast magazines.
00:31 So let's take a look at what it takes to produce Hot Rod.
00:34 I'm David Freiberger. I'm the editor-in-chief of Hot Rod. As editor-in-chief, the buck stops here.
00:53 Essentially, the whole team contributes ideas and input, and we have a meeting every week,
00:58 but when it comes down to it, I decide what happens in the magazine, on the website, in the videos,
01:04 everything that has to do with the Hot Rod brand, which is also events. We run Drag Week, Power Tour,
01:10 we're doing a Homecoming event. There's just a lot to do all the time as it revolves around
01:14 content and activities that need to reflect the Hot Rod brand.
01:18 So this is my desk. My title is associate editor, and as associate editor,
01:22 I help to produce content, kind of like staff editors, but I'm kind of a low man on the totem pole,
01:26 so I'll do a lot of paperwork and do a lot of the sections of the magazine, like the new product section,
01:32 buyer's guides, I'll assemble a lot of the readers' rides,
01:35 and I also answer the phone calls from people just trying to reach the magazine.
01:39 A lot of people think that it's kind of like a dictatorship, where David decides every single thing that goes in the magazine,
01:44 but that's not necessarily true. We all kind of work together to produce really cool stuff every single month.
01:49 I'm Mike Finnegan, and I'm one of the staff editors at Hot Rod magazine.
01:52 My primary job here is to write stories about technical subjects, things like
01:57 4,000 horsepower turbo engines and the latest and greatest suspensions out there for cars and trucks.
02:03 Most of these tech articles come about by going to different shops, meeting people, finding out what they're building, and
02:08 then camping out there with my camera and taking photos while, you know, somebody builds an engine or paints a car or something.
02:15 I come back here, strap into the chair for way too long, and edit the photos, write the story,
02:20 pass it off to my co-workers who proofread it and make me actually
02:23 sound like I know what I'm talking about and can spell correctly, and eventually it makes its way into the magazine and goes to print.
02:29 I'm Brandon Glowgly. I'm a staff editor here at Hot Rod magazine. I've been here for almost two years.
02:33 One of the great things about this location is we have a massive photo bay. It's on-site.
02:37 We can go back there and have a light box over the whole car to get really good light, and you control all the variables,
02:42 unlike a location shoot where you've only got a little bit of time to shoot because the sun's going down.
02:46 Having that here is a big advantage.
02:47 My name is Alana Sher. I'm a staff editor here at Hot Rod.
02:50 Basically, a staff editor writes all different kinds of stories from lighter tech pieces to feature stories. We all do web work.
02:58 I also do a lot of the social media, so if you've ever
03:01 followed us on Twitter or on Facebook, that's usually me, unless it sucked, in which case I'm gonna say it was Jesse.
03:07 I'm Tom Taylor, and I'm a staff editor. I write and I take photos, and
03:11 because I'm the old guy, I kind of do the more historical stuff.
03:15 I like the fact that I'm making money doing something that other people just do for fun.
03:20 The main thing I spend every day doing is making the magazine happen, which involves
03:25 coming up with issue plans, a whole list of stories that are going to be in each issue, and deciding who's going to write them.
03:31 Sometimes it'll be an idea from a staffer.
03:33 Sometimes I'll assign something to a freelancer, and those stories come in and they get read a bunch of times.
03:39 I read the manuscript, then it gets sent around for the whole staff to read.
03:43 Then our art department lays it out into what we call a laser,
03:46 which is an actual presentation of what it's going to look like in the magazine.
03:49 That gets read by everybody, and ultimately it gets shipped to the press, but before it gets printed,
03:55 we have another opportunity to look at the whole magazine in its entirety,
03:58 before it actually gets printed and shipped to the subscribers into the newsstand.
04:02 The most important page of the magazine is always the cover.
04:05 It's the most prestigious page, and it's also the one that is going to make or break our sales on the newsstand any given month.
04:11 It really makes a huge difference what car we present there,
04:15 and what blurb we put on there, as to how many people buy the issue.
04:18 Hot Rod has a fantastic archives from back in the days when it was owned by Peterson Publishing, right here in the building.
04:24 So when I get to do these historical articles, you know, I can reach back there and find stuff taken in the day.
04:30 It's just a goldmine, and there's always something new popping up every day.
04:34 This job is a lot more desk work than you probably think.
04:38 I am welded to this thing 10 hours to 15 hours every single day when I'm in town.
04:43 But the good part is when I'm not in town, because we're out in events, looking at cars, racing stuff,
04:48 and really, that's the fun part of the job.
04:51 But I also like it when I get here, and I get to craft words and pictures and present them in the most delicious way,
05:00 so that readers will like them as much as they possibly can.
05:03 My favorite thing about working for Hot Rod is I don't sit at a desk all day long.
05:06 I'm actually rarely at my desk.
05:08 I'm constantly either in the studio or out somewhere or covering events.
05:13 You're just constantly, constantly busy.
05:15 I like being busy. It keeps my mind sane.
05:17 Probably the best day at work ever so far has been purposely pit maneuvering my boss, David, with a Dodge Ram van.
05:23 People ask what is the craziest thing that I've done as editor-in-chief of Hot Rod,
05:29 and you know what? We do stuff all the time that is pretty whacked.
05:32 Like, we took a C4 Corvette and cut it all up to see if it would go faster when it was lighter.
05:38 That was a big outrage on the internet.
05:40 But we've done some legit stuff, too.
05:42 Like, I hooked up with Lingenfelter and drove one of their new cars 202 miles an hour on what was essentially a farm road.
05:49 That was pretty crazy.
05:51 But the thing I really like doing is racing at Bonneville.
05:54 We have a car that we run there that goes 260 miles an hour.
05:58 I've actually been that fast in a stock-bodied car.
06:01 I'm pretty proud of that and the records that we hold at Bonneville.
06:03 So I showed you guys where we spend half of our days working on the magazine and our cubicles,
06:09 but now I'm going to show you the really cool thing.
06:11 This is our tech center.
06:12 Here's where we spend our other half of our days working on our project cars.
06:15 We share the tech center with some other magazines like Motor Trend Magazine and Motorcyclist Magazine.
06:19 And I heard Brandon and Mike are working in here, so we're going to go check out and see what they're doing.
06:23 We are working on the world-famous F-Bomb.
06:29 This is probably one of Hot Rod's biggest projects.
06:32 You've seen it in the Fast and the Furious movie doing wheelies on dirt and killing bad guys.
06:36 And she runs hot, so we're taking the hood off.
06:38 The tech center is probably the main reason we get so much work done here at Hot Rod.
06:41 It's chock full of stuff from Snap-on tools, Lincoln electric welders and fab equipment,
06:47 lifts from Direct Lift.
06:48 We've got Pete's Bar over here, which is a place where we can relax.
06:51 And it's named after our founder, Robert E. Peterson.
06:54 And I've personally slept on these couches numerous nights after building cars all night long
06:59 and testing parts and thrashing to get stuff to racing events.
07:02 So we've showed you what we do on a day-to-day basis here at our offices,
07:09 but we can't leave you just yet until showing you some of the perks of the job.
07:13 [ENGINE REVVING]
07:16 [MUSIC PLAYING]
07:20 Everything we need to test parts, build cars, go racing, have Jesse make a bunch of noise.
07:38 Yeah, yeah.
07:38 Let's do that line over again.
07:40 [MUSIC PLAYING]
07:43 [LAUGHTER]
07:45 Jerks.
07:45 Craziest thing is when we had naked Thursdays, but we don't do that anymore.
07:50 I don't know.
07:50 Some-- I don't know.
07:52 [MUSIC PLAYING]
07:55 We've got lifts from Direct Lift.
07:56 We've got Jesse making noise again.
07:58 Jeez.
07:59 What?
07:59 It's hard.
08:00 You've gotten old.
08:01 You hear that?
08:02 Anything I have to say about Fry Burger, if he found out, I'd probably get fired.
08:06 So I probably should just not say anything about him.
08:09 You want to go to lunch?
08:10 You want to go to lunch?
08:11 You want to go to lunch?
08:11 [LAUGHTER]
08:13 What?
08:14 Who likes Camaros anyway?
08:18 [LAUGHTER]
08:20 I took acting in high school.
08:22 Did you?
08:22 The only thing I remember doing well at was they had--
08:25 somebody had to write out a scene of an animal, and you had to act it.
08:30 And I was a dragon coming out of a waterfall.
08:32 [LAUGHTER]
08:34 Sounds really weird, but I did a really good job of shaking my-- and I don't remember.
08:39 Uh-huh.
08:40 God, that conversation got out of hand.
08:42 Uh-huh.
08:43 Sorry.
08:44 [LAUGHTER]
08:50 Can that be at the end?
08:51 No.
08:52 Oh.
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