by W. Livingstone
Miss Aiken
SOME job titles conjure up vivid pictures of the people who hold the jobs. Editor in Chief? Geronimo or Crazy Horse with blue pencils. Managing Editor? A cross between a traffic cop and the bank officer who says "yes" or "no" to your loan applications.
But what about Editorial Assistant? Is that a fancier way of saying secretary? Not at STEREO REVIEW, where the four editorial assistants collaborate with the editors in ways that go beyond what could be expected of a clerk, secretary, or Man Friday.
All four do a lot of typing, filing, and photocopying, but each has specialties that make his or her job unique, and every issue of the magazine bears the imprint of Barbara Aiken, Rocco Mattera, William Neill, and Fran Rosenblatt.
The senior assistant, Barbara Aiken, came to the staff in 1972 as secretary to Larry Klein, who was then Technical Editor. A native New Yorker, Miss Aiken had previously worked for a couple of hotel and hospital unions. Her first job in publishing appealed to her "because it was less repetitious than secretarial work for the unions. I had more freedom here, and the job presented a greater challenge because there were many new things to learn." In time Barbara learned so many administrative procedures that her desk became the nerve center of our technical department, and in 1977 her job was reclassified. She now presides over files of press releases, product photos, and technical drawings, and she logs in manuscripts and sees that contributors get paid.
Vast quantities of hi-fi equipment pass through our offices every year, and Barbara tracks the progress of each unit from the factory to our office to the photographer's studio to Hirsch-Houck Labs and back again. Understandably, this re quires a lot of time on the telephone. When asked to write a description of her job, Barbara listed among its requirements "an effective telephone personality plus a sense of diplomacy and knowing when to be persuasive and when to be firm and aggressive." She works most closely with Technical Editors David Ranada and Gordon Sell on such projects as soliciting equipment for testing or roundup reviews and requesting product photographs for technical articles. She also works with Associate Editor William Burton in gathering information for our four annual directories and buying guides (sold on newsstands).
The hardest part of her job, she says, "is working for three creative (sometimes temperamental) editors who, when under pressure, give orders that are difficult to understand or interpret." The part of her job she likes best, however, is the stimulation of working for those same three creative (sometimes temperamental) editors.
Barbara has developed so many first-name friendships with hi-fi manufacturers that she is STEREO REVIEW'S official hostess at such functions as the luncheons the magazine gives at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. She is the social secretary of the technical and administrative staff in that she keeps track of which editors cover which press conferences.
Making our hotel and travel arrangements to CES in Las Vegas and Chicago when 100,000 other people are competing for choice room and flight reservations re quires that Barbara shift into firm and aggressive mode. When she is functioning as travel coordinator, her position is best described by the title of Mick Jagger's latest album: "She's the Boss."
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Source: Stereo Review (USA magazine)