Get To Know MINUTO!
Pegasus Student Voice does not stop with the activities that help in the development and promotion of the magazine. Last semester, I had the opportunity to meet the editors of another youth magazine. It is MINUTO, a magazine in print form, led by two young people, Andrej Kostovski and his partner, Simon Mihajlovic.
Many thanks to teacher Pero who contacted the editors of this magazine, in order to meet and conduct a short online interview.
What exactly is MINUTO?
“Minuto” is a luxury magazine for young people that focuses on the most modern topics in the world and their implementation in North Macedonia.
Now that you know what MINUTO is, I will share part of the interview I conducted with the two young founders and editors of this magazine.
MINUTO started off as a magazine for young people, firstly focused on teenagers, especially boys and their interests, but later on they had to expand the “target group” for bigger popularity, so today their target group are people from thirteen to thirty-five years, said Andrej.
After we got to know each other, both sides introduced who we are, what we do and what the magazines focus on, I realized that we have one big similarity, i.e. the topics covered by MINUTO in their magazine are dedicated to music, sports, fashion, lifestyle, interesting stories that people want to share, successful young people, mental health and interviews and collaborations just like this.
I asked them: “What was your inspiration to start this magazine?”
“Many ideas crossed our mind, firstly we wanted to start our own business in some way or another. We thought that magazines are such a good business to start with, plus they can be profitable as well. Also we felt like we needed to create something fun, something interesting and educational for our peers” – Simon explained honestly and clearly.
My opinion is that they are already successful in what they envisioned, their copies are selling quickly everywhere, and indeed this “business” is very useful for young readers, quite instructive and educational, and also entertaining in some way.
“The hardest part was opening and starting the magazine, then finding the right way to distribute the magazine itself and also to find a stable and good printing production.” – said Andrej. But as we see, they managed to overcome the above obstacles and are now quite successful plus the quality of the printed copies is one of the best, similar if not better than VOGUE.
I also asked them how they deal with negative criticism, comments directed at the magazine and what they do, if it hurts them, if it gets into their head and makes them think, and if it demotivates them. They answered me really diplomatically, that there have always been and will be such people who will not support those who start, create something new, but they are few, unlike those who like it, those who support innovative young people in society. The strategy they use for negative comments from the audience not to influence and demotivate them, is that even though they know that such people exist, they devote their attention to the people around them who appreciate their work and support them. “Always look on the bright side” is not said for nothing, it really should be applied to young people (in this case, we Pegasus Student Voice journalists) we will not give up so easily from work that does fulfill us, what we do with love, just because of a few negative comments from the side. But, of course they accept suggestions for improvement or if something should or can be changed for the better, ideas are always welcome.
Before the end of this interview, I consulted with Andrej, as experienced in these areas, how we could improve our magazine, what we could change or add, we exchanged opinions and ideas as two personalities from the field of journalism.
This short but productive conversation with the editors of MINUTO was really useful for me as an editor of Pegasus Student Voice, because I still have a lot to learn in the field, but I am really grateful that I had the opportunity to discuss these topics with two young people who are still very successful in their work.
Huge thanks to Andrej and Simon for agreeing to this interview, for honestly and richly answering all my questions and most importantly, for teaching me new things and motivating me even more to continue as a young journalist, and you should also be an example of success.
Until the next collaboration!
