You should be receiving your special combined August/September issue of the NATA News in your mailbox soon! If you haven't received your hard copy yet, it's already available online.
I've had a few members ask why we combine the August & September magazines into one double issue, so I thought this would be a great time to explain. The main reason is because our production cycle is interrupted by the convention in late June every year, so that takes away an entire week of working on the magazine. (The same people who produce your magazine are instead producing a daily convention newspaper during that week, so the magazine must wait.)
If we didn't combine the issues, we would be rushing to return from convention, process through thousands of photos, identify hundreds of people in those photos and then write, edit and design the entire thing in just one week! Anyone who works in publishing knows that rushing through a magazine at that pace inevitably leads to errors, and we didn't want that. Instead, we decided to combine those two issues into one very thick magazine that comes to your door a bit later but contains double the fun of a regular issue!
Your August/September NATA News features an 18-page photo story from NATA 2014 in Indianapolis, which is something we always enjoy putting together. Believe it or not, it is really hard to narrow the thousands of photos we have from our convention into only 18 pages! You can find even more photos from Indy in our online library, NATA PhotoZone.
One very important upcoming event is our presidential election, and the current magazine contains detailed profiles of each candidate on p. 37. They answered questions about their goals if elected president, and we detailed their employment and volunteer history so you can see the experience that has prepared them for this important role. To watch the videos of the candidates delivering their speeches during Face Time 2014 in Indy, see this previous blog post.
Another important component of this magazine is our Fall Buyers' Guide, which details all the companies who support NATA as corporate partners and is designed to be an invaluable shopping tool as you buy supplies for your AT facility.
Now that this issue has gone to press, we are busily preparing the content for our October issue. We're very excited about our first-ever "secondary school" themed magazine! We collaborated with the NATA Secondary School Athletic Trainers' Committee to address issues relevant to ATs in the secondary school setting, including tips for success, how to develop a comprehensive policy and procedures manual, managing concussion conflicts, understanding professional ethics and more. We hope this one will stay on your shelf for years to come!
As always, thank you for reading. If you're interested in contributing to the blog or magazine - or if you just have ideas you would like to share - feel free to contact me at jordang@nata.org.
Posted by NATA News Editor-in-Chief Jordan Grantham.
