Interview with Peggy Sijswerda
Tidewater Women, Tidewater Parent
by: Kaley Lentini

            Virginia resident Peggy Sijswerda managed to travel across the world, earn multiple degrees, care for her three sons and write a memoir, all while successfully creating and publishing two monthly magazines for the Tidewater area of Virginia.

            Sijswerda graduated cum laude from Radford University in 1979 with a Bachelor of Science Degree in English.  She then attended Old Dominion University, where she graduated summa cum laude in 1984 with a Master of Arts in English.  In May 2005, Sijswerda obtained her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction from Old Dominion University.

 Sijswerda quit her job as a full-time Virginia Beach teacher in the spring of 1990 to create Tidewater Parent, a magazine about children and parenting.  After successfully developing the magazine, she and her husband sold it and used the profits to travel around the Netherlands with their three sons.

            After returning to Virginia, Sijswerda launched Tidewater Women, a monthly regional women’s magazine, in 1999.  She edits and publishes the magazine from her home in the Sandbridge area of Virginia Beach. 

            Sijswerda agreed to sit down for an interview to discuss her experiences.  The following questions were selected from an hour-long interview on Oct. 10, 2005 in Sijswerda’s home in Virginia Beach.

Q:  You have been involved in the media business since 1990 when you became the publisher and editor of Tidewater Parent, and you continue to be involved in the media today as the publisher and editor of Tidewater Women.  When did you first become interested in working in the media?

Sijswerda:  Well, it was kind of luck, I guess.  I was working as a coordinator for a high school exchange program.  I moved from the exchange program into the AuPairCare program … I was traveling up and down the East Coast in that position, and I came across these parent magazines that the bigger markets have like Atlanta and Orlando and various places up and down the East Coast.  I was looking for something to do.  I’m trained as a teacher, but because I was busy raising children, I didn’t want to work full time.  I wanted to do something that I could do from the home.  I learned desktop publishing when I worked as a [public relations] director for a property management company at the beginning of the PC explosion.  I knew how to do desktop publishing, and my husband was also thinking about a career change.  I knew he could do the sales and handle the distribution, and I could do the editing and the layout.  It was really a perfect set-up.  We did that magazine together … It was really just a good fit for me to do the sort of desktop publishing thing.  In fact, it was just at the time when people could really do it.  Before then, it just wasn’t feasible for people to have their own little magazine …

Q:  How did your Bachelor of Science Degree in English from Radford and your Master of Arts in English from Old Dominion University prepare you for a career in media?

Sijswerda:  … I think having a strong English background is just essential.  You know, the ability to know grammar and recognize problems with grammar and edit articles in such a way that makes them readable … The ability to have really good and strong English, grammar and writing skills …

Q:  How does your degree in creative nonfiction aid you in the publishing and editing of Tidewater Women?

Sijswerda:  It allows me to expand the kind of articles that I do … The degree certainly helped me, again, with my ability to edit and make sure the articles are readable … My own writing has evolved, I think.  I do a lot of travel stories for Tidewater Women, and I also freelance travel stories for different magazines … With my own writing, I’m definitely showing improvement as a result of this creative nonfiction degree.  I think I’ve just learned really what good writing is as a result …

Q:  You have taken courses, including courses in desktop publishing and photography, at Tidewater Community College.  How did these courses help you in your career?

Sijswerda:  The photography definitely is important if you’re thinking about having a magazine because, especially with digital photography, it’s just so easy to go out at the last minute.  You know, a lot of stuff is done at deadline, and you’re scrambling to get things done … I actually do a lot of my covers … What makes this a very viable business for me is that I do a lot of the work myself.  You know, if I was out there hiring a photographer or having a graphic person do my layout, it would obviously mean less profit in the business … I wear almost all the hats in this business.  I’m editor.  I’m the layout person.  I’m the bookkeeper … You could start a magazine and subcontract out the layout, but it’s more money in my pocket when I can do it myself.  I definitely think desktop publishing is very important for anyone who’s considering this line of work.

Q:  What advice can you give college students who are interested in working in the media regarding their education?

Sijswerda:  I think it’s wonderful, first of all, how colleges and universities have developed these communication programs.  They didn’t exist when I was in college … You’re lucky to be able to take classes in it because they didn’t have as many classes in communication when I was in school … Make sure you take a lot of English classes and grammar classes and writing classes … I think for anybody going into any field, including business, the ability to write well will serve you the rest of your life and provide more opportunities for you …

Q:  What inspired you to create the magazine Tidewater Women?

Sijswerda:  Well, I had done a parent magazine and, you know, even though I’m still active in parenting through sons, I think I was at a stage in my life where I began to see that women sacrifice a lot for their families … A lot of women never really get to fulfill themselves.  I think I was inspired to do this because I wanted to provide women with the inspiration to seek what they want from life and not be afraid to change their career if they are in a boring job that they feel like they can’t escape from … They should leap into the unknown even if it means that they have to get rid of their material possessions … The theme of the magazine is to try to celebrate life and be fulfilled as much as you can.

Q:  The mission of Tidewater Women is to inform, entertain and inspire, as well as to serve as a resource for goods and services needed by area women.  What are three important issues women of Tidewater should be informed about?

Sijswerda:  Well, I think health would have to be at the top … Women are very involved in being healthy and being aware of health development … I’d say careers and, alongside that, education would be another important component … You should enjoy life in the moment because you never know what might happen … The travel articles that I do are my way of celebrating life in the moment and enjoying living, so I try to do that as much as I can … Enjoying life [is another important issue] ...

Q:  What do you want to inspire women to do through Tidewater Women?

Sijswerda:  … To be who they want to be … To seek the life that they want …

Q: How do you believe Tidewater Women entertains women in the area?

Sijswerda:  … I know that the calendar of events entertains women … The travel stories are another way of entertaining people … Even if you can’t travel to Amsterdam, you can almost feel like you’re there if the travel story’s well written …

Q:  Which part of Tidewater Women’s mission do you think is the most important?

Sijswerda:  … I think informing because it’s through information that people can make decisions … One of the things that obviously is important about writing a magazine like this is the advertising … When you have these niche publications, you provide a service for the consumer because they can look at ads that are a little more targeted to them and make decisions about goods and services they need.   I think of it as a resource in that way, so that’s also bringing information.

Q: What are your responsibilities to the public as the publisher and editor of a magazine that has a circulation of 20,000 people?

Sijswerda:  Well, I certainly think accuracy is important.  I have a responsibility to bring good information.  Of course, that filters through me as the editor.  I determine what’s good information …

Q: How important do you think it is to have a magazine for women in the Tidewater area?

Sijswerda:  … It’s a magazine just for women … It’s all about women, and I think it’s really important that women feel respected and feel important.  This is a way of celebrating women … I certainly want women to feel that they could do things that, in the past perhaps, they couldn’t feel they could … It’s great to see women moving in more directions than they used to …

Q: Each issue of the magazine has a different theme.  For example, October’s theme is arts and culture.  How do you decide upon themes for issues?

Sijswerda:  Well, that’s been an evolution … It has a little to do with selling the advertising because it sort of allows us to target specific kinds of businesses that fit into that theme … In order to make it a little bit less daunting task, we’ll have an issue like health or arts and culture … And that way we can target advertisers … I’ve tried to choose themes that I think are relevant to all women …

Q: What are some issues you haven’t yet covered in Tidewater Womenthat you would like to include in the future?

Sijswerda:  Women in politics … I’d like to maybe focus on that.  I think women get involved in politics, someone once told me, when there’s an issue really dear to their hearts that they want to take a stand on.  Along those lines, women in government … I never run out of ideas …

Q:  What improvements can be made to Tidewater Women?

Sijswerda:  Well, I definitely think I’m close to a redesign, which is always a good thing with a magazine to give it a new look … I’d like to go with an enamel-coated cover … I’m using a little more color … I would love to see it have a little more upscale appearance … It might be nice to include some creative writing … That would be a good way to celebrate local women’s accomplishments … I’d like to bump up the circulation … There’s a possibility that we’ll start a magazine on the peninsula.

Q: What is the most difficult thing you deal with when owning your own business?

Sijswerda:  Well, it’s easy to get distracted by laundry or children and dogs … You always know that you can do better, so there’s always this constant sort of voice in your head saying you know you could build this business to be even bigger and better … It’s hard to maintain a balance where all the aspects of your life are happy … Sometimes I think I should be working more on this business, and other times I’ll think I’m working too much on this business, and I should be spending more time with my family.  But I think that’s typical of every woman who has a career …

Q: What advice do you have for women who want to break into the media business?

Sijswerda:  … You have to be the best writer that you can be.  Writing is just the most important thing … I don’t think people can take enough writing courses.  Even if you take some creative writing, that’s going to open you up to the possibilities of writing … If you can stand out with a little bit of freshness in your writing, it will serve you in any job … You can learn to be a good writer, and I think that’s the most important thing … If you’re gong to be in a profession that’s so rooted in the written word as communications and media and journalism are, than you have to be a good writer.