Contacting DT mag; help please from those States-side

[doctordarling]

This actually relates to dressage! but in a peculiar and round bout away. I’m an art historian, with a side gig in writing about horses and art for an equestrian science-orientated horse journal here in Oz. I do a regular feature on the horse in art, reading these both as an historian, and a dressage rider/owner. I love it! its where everything dovetails together.

I’m working on a feature about the importance of diagrams and visualisations in the teaching of dressage. Starting with Stubbs’ anatomy books and going down the years to things like the ‘Anatomy in Motion: the Visible Horse’ and Horses Inside Out – [US/UK respectively where they paint the muscles on the live horse, I’m sure you’ve all seen these].

Couldn’t possibly leave out Jean MacDonald’s graphic [and occasionally bizarre!] illustrations for Sally Swift’s ‘Centred Riding’. Of course they are protected by copyright. I wanted to end with Dressage Today’s ‘Solutions’ page drawings, illustrated by Sandy Rabinowitz.

I’ve emailed DT, messaged them, for weeks [having published much over the decades, I do leave time for permissions, which can always be tricky].

Do you think I should just straight up telephone them? My deadline is looming. The timings are strange calling from Australia. Has anyone contacted them recently? any tips.

ps: I have some good images I can use from Wikimedia Commons, if all comes to naught.

[Mondo]

I suspect your contact issues are related to most businesses (and I would guess that includes DT) are shut down essentially due to COVID-19. At this point, I would think a phone call would be your easiest route. Not sure where in Oz you are located, but I have occasional business calls with a colleague in Melbourne. His 7 a.m. Tuesday morning would be my 2 p.m. Monday afternoon. I am on West Coast of US, so assuming DT publishing folks are on the East Coast, you would add 3 hours to the US time of day I gave. In the example above, it would be 5 p.m. on the East Coast of the US. Hope this is helpful.

[Foxglove]

I would call. I used to freelance years ago (before WWW). I’d give a publication about 90 days to sit on a story, then I would call. Only rarely did I have any kind of assignment --usually I’d just submit to the most likely to buy it magazine – I had one article about cancer treatment for cats that was rather new [in 1995] --didn’t hear back, didn’t hear back, didn’t hear back —finally called the cat magazine. Editor said that the in-house staff were passing it around as quite a few had experienced cancer in their cats and were interested in reading it —yeah, ok, cool, but $$ is nice too! It was published, finally. So call.

[flynride]

The print magazine Dressage Today has ceased publication. Some of the content has moved to DT Online; other content is now being included in Practical Horseman magazine.

That said, feel free to e-mail your request to me at jbryant AT usdf.org and I will be happy to forward it to the DT Online editor and to Sandy Rabinowitz.

Jennifer Bryant
Editor, USDF Connection

[doctordarling]

Thanks so much all and patic. Jennifer! Will forward the email now. If DT are working from home and the office is closed I’m not going to get through anyway. They’re in Boulder, or were. I’m in SE Australia so its a 15.30 hour difference, with a small window of cross over. ddx

[doctordarling]

All sorted now. Thanks everyone. ddx