It’s not a design gimmick. It’s a design element. So shaddup.
Oberlin Alumni Magazine:
Johns Hopkins Magazine:
Denison Magazine:
The Florida Engineer:
Sawdust (Stephen F. Austin State University):
The Penn Stater:
Kenyon College Alumni Bulletin:
The University of Chicago Magazine (no extra charge for the diseased intestine photo):
We have a running joke in our office about someday publishing the Johns Hopkins Magazine swimsuit issue. If you know us, know the magazine, and know the school, you grasp the irony, or perhaps the absurdity, on several levels. There is not much that could be classed as unlikelier. But a candidate would be Notre Dame Magazine putting out a special style issue.
For years, Notre Dame has been many wonderful things, but style conscious, style attentive, stylish . . . no. The magazine has reflected its boss, Kerry Temple, and its staff: deeply smart, thoughtful, sober, concerned with matters of mind, heart, and spirit, respectful of what endures and unafraid to question what, perhaps, ought not to endure. I like seriousness when it is in league with an active mind, and that’s how I think of Notre Dame. So even though I’d been tipped that something different was on its way from South Bend—my whisperers are everywhere—when I dug the spring 2012 issue out of my mailbox, I still laughed in surprise.
Starting with the cover, the special issue was brilliantly executed. The cover expertly mimics the fashion magazines that find their way into my house (courtesy of my glamourpuss wife): design, typography, tightly cropped portrait of London Vale, a Notre Dame alumna now working as an actress and model. The TOC lists 18 stories in the feature well, and they range from Kerry Temple’s opening essay, which is typically fine work from him and scores points for employing the word “galoot” and the phrase ”a budding boy immersed in puissant femininity”, to Liam Farrell’s reporting on Notre Dame grads working at GQ, to a nicely pointed note from vice president and associate provost Daniel J. Myers about the sartorial shortcomings of university faculty, to a “live” report from fashion week by Arienne Thompson. Interspersed are pictures of Notre Dame students wearing their clothes.
I sent editor Temple a note asking him about the issue, and he replied, “In the past couple of years, I’ve enjoyed a couple of cable TV shows, Project Runway and What Not to Wear, which I watch with my wife, of course. So one evening I was talking with Arienne Thompson, the Notre Dame grad who writes about fashion for USA Today, and we got to talking about those shows and clothes and what she writes about. And we talked about her writing a piece for us, with the working title, ‘You Are What You Wear.’
“Then, one day early last fall, I was talking into the office, thinking about that, and the phrase jumped into my head: ‘Notre Dame Magazine’s First Annual Fashion Issue.’ Like Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue or ESPN’s body issue. The juxtaposition of Notre Dame Magazine and fashion just made me smile. Preposterous.
“So at our next weekly staff meeting, I put it to the staff and talked about how the executive editor of GQ is an alumnus, then about Linda [Przybyszewski's] book about fashion, and what Arienne Thompson might write, and what I wanted to say, and it all rolled out from there. Pieces kept falling into place, the momentum got going, we thought it’d be fun to spoof fashion magazine covers, then mimic iconic clothing ads, and we just kept laughing and saying, ‘Let’s do it.’”
(Ed. note: Because I know you’re all wondering, Linda Przybyszewski’s name is pronounced LIN-duh.)
A sampling of the good bits, for me, would include this from Paige Wiser’s essay “An Embarrassment of Clothes”:
Sure, you could blame the ’70s. But when are parents going to step up and take some responsibility? Why don’t they just admit it? “When we dress our kids, we don’t always have their best interests at heart.”
I wasn’t the only fashion victim. Look closely at a photo of any small child dressed up in a sailor suit or reindeer antlers, and you’ll see an unmistakable message in their eyes:
“Help me.”
And this from screenwriter Jamie Reidy, about the suit he bought from Macy’s for the premiere of his first movie:
Then I felt the tightness in the lower back of my suit jacket. I tried to poof it, like a concert pianist prior to sitting down on his bench. But my jacket did not budge. This would have been fine if it had no vents. But it did. Standing on Hollywood Boulevard, merely two first downs from the media lights and red carpet, Jenn [Reidy's girlfriend at the time] confirmed that two strings crisscrossed the bottom of the jacket flaps: an X marking the spot of my fashion fiasco.
She didn’t need to say the words: That wouldn’t have happened at Neiman Marcus.
And this, from Daniel Myer’s list of 20 popular faculty styles:
[Style #3]: Why tuck in my shirt? I’ll just have to do it again tomorrow.
[Style #7]: That hole burned by 18 molar hydrochloric acid isn’t that bad. Why waste a perfectly functional pair of pants?
Temple ended his note to me about the issue, “I think we responded to an initial fun idea and so intuitively welcomed the departure from our typical heaviness, earnest examinations, and institutional duty that it got us going, kind of gave us wings. Notre Dame takes itself very seriously and the magazine reflects that, we’d been through some internal ordeals, but the time was right for us to throw open the windows and let a gust of fresh air blow through the house. And it did.”
Five things I would not know had I not been reading the Spring 2012 issues of alumni magazines:
— Seventh-day Adventists eat haystacks. Lest you imagine some of the faithful grazing alongside the livestock, haystacks are, as best I can determine, Adventist taco salads: a carbohydrate, usually corn chips, topped by beans, sometimes ground meat, cheese, chopped vegetables, and maybe guacamole or sour cream. Source: “Needles in the Haystack” by Mia Lindsey in Columns (Southern Adventist).
— People once declared Neil deGrasse Tyson “The Sexiest Astrophysicist Alive.” Yes, it’s mean to, but still one has to ask: Was there much competition? Source: “Star Power” by Rose Cahalan, in The Alcalde (University of Texas).
— For the last few years, an anonymous alumnus of Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa, has been sending $100 bills to random undergraduates just before Christmas. The students find the money in their mailboxes, with no clue as to the sender. Source: “Christmas Mail” by David Gutsche, in The Classic (Northwestern College).
— In Antarctica, astronomers launch balloons that carry telescopes to the edge of space. If the launch team succeeds in placing the balloon in a high-altitude wind pattern called the Polar Vortex, it will drift in a large circle and land, two weeks later, only about 100 miles from the launch site. Unfortunately, one telescope’s parachute failed to release and dragged the instrument for 150 miles, spewing pieces of it in a long trail of expensive debris until it disappeared into a crevasse. Source: “Balloon to the Edge of Space” by Kirk Warren, in Oberlin.
— Editor Maureen Harmon once kicked a puppy. She swears she didn’t mean to. Source: “No Miss Manners” by Maureen Harmon, in Denison Magazine.
Shawn Presley, editor of the way-too-good Kenyon College Alumni Bulletin—winning two of the last three Sibley Awards generates envy and bitterness, though the friendly, collegial sort of bitterness—pauses from working on the magazine’s next Sibley to answer the UMagazinology questionnaire.
How long have you been in your job?
I’ve been at Kenyon for 15 years. I began as the news director in 1997 and started editing the Alumni Bulletin in 2002.
What has proven to be the most significant thing you had to learn to do that job?
The best stories are the ones that involve a bit of a eureka moment. When someone spouts an idea, and the editors collectively say “we love it,” that’s usually a good story. When you have to spend an hour trying to define and develop a story, it’s not a good sign. I’ve also learned that magazines take lots and lots of planning and brainstorming.
What has been your best experience at the magazine?
Working with smart and talented people. Kenyon’s magazine is a team effort from story development to reviewing the proofs from the printer. We have big fun. I have learned a great deal from my colleagues.
What has proven to be your biggest frustration?
It irks me that it took me so long to weed out all the “who cares?” content in the magazine. I was quite devoted to covering grants, awards, and promotions in the early years. You know, that kind of “institutional news” that no one cares about except the people who are directly involved. I guess the advantage to slowly chipping away at that content was that it didn’t cause waves. In the end, no one realized it was gone. They just knew the magazine was better.
What part of your magazine never quite satisfies you, despite everybody’s best effort?
“Office Hours,” a section where we write about faculty and they write for us, is always a challenge. It’s changed greatly over the years, but I still think there are more creative ways to depict what happens in the classroom and with scholarly research. Covers are a challenge, too. We’ve hit a few home runs, but far too often I’m scrambling at the last minute.
What story are you proudest to have published?
I feel like I should name some kind of serious, hard-hitting piece about the political hot topics of higher education, but the first thing that comes to mind is a piece we called “Rural Legends.” It was a take on urban legends. In other words, it was things people think are true about Kenyon that are false. It was funny with great photography and even a superb cover.
If you could commission a story from any writer in the world, who would it be?
David Sedaris. I’d love to have him at Kenyon for a few weeks and then unleash his wacky, grotesque humor with a piece on observations about campus life. He graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. If they haven’t done it, they should.
If you weren’t an editor, what would your dream job be?
I hate these kind of questions. I’m one of the weird people who dreamed of working in public relations as a college student. In many ways, this is my dream job.
I’ve had no time to actually read an alumni magazine this week, but here are some things that caught my eye.
Lovely photo essay by Dan McMahon, “It’s the Little Things,” in the latest Kenyon College Alumni Bulletin.
Took me a while to get to this, but Bentley Observer Magazine out of Bentley University in Massachusetts has a new look. Susan Simpson is editor.
Old:
New:
Always pays to keep an eye on the juxtaposition of image and text, especially when the text is about the appointment of a new president for the state system:
(Apologies to Perspectives at the University of Missouri-Kansas City for having a little bit of fun at their expense, but honestly, who among us hasn’t done something similar?)
And while I’m in the mood for snark, some stories that deserve to go on five-year hiatus:
Finally, I will have much more to say about this later, but for now, how great is this?
Worthy of mention from the stack of new magazines tottering on my desk:
Washington State Magazine puts out its 10th anniversary issue—how ya doin’, kid?—and editor Tim Steury delivers a pretty good mission statement:
At the core of our mission is our attempt to explore and report on the roles WSU and its researchers, scholars, and alumni play in society, how we examine, weave, and mend the social fabric. . . . Because of their periodicity magazines can seem fleeting. WSM emerges every three months, supplanting the subjects of its previous issue in favor of the new and pressing. But if we’re doing this right, that flight is momentary, adding steadily to the layers of our collective story.
Caltech’s Engineering & Science is looking sprightly these days. I love continuing the cover illustration inside on the table of contents, and the asteroid census. Click on the images for the full effect.
Douglas L. Smith edits, Jenny K. Somerville art directs.
My current favorite deck, from “The Big Book About the Big Whale” by Ruth Alden Doan, on the back page of Hollins (Jean Holzinger, editor):
A chapter on whales. A chapter on white. A short story dropped in the middle. And a plot line involving a crazy man chasing a gigantic, oddly hued mammal. Why bother?
Finally, yesterday I lauded Beth McNichol’s story “Family Matters” in Carolina Alumni Review, but said there did not appear to be a link to an online text. Well, try this. Be advised that something squirrelly happens if you’re using Safari as your browser. A very limited empirical test showed that Chrome works just fine, though.
So, any bets on what snares the cover of the next issue of Kentucky Alumni? C’mon, chance a guess.
Carolina Alumni Review, in its March/April 2012 issue (Regina Oliver, editor), reports that dog handlers now bring therapy pooches to UNC’s library to provide a bit of solace to students cramming for final exams. Yes, the image of the spread is here because I wanted to run the adorable dog photo. Yes, that violates the babies-and-cute-animals-are-cheating rule. I’ll wait while you click to expand the image, show your office mates, get all doe eyed, then come back here . . . . . . . . . . OK, that’s enough. Now, credit to Oliver and writer Beth McNichol for the cover story “Family Matters” (no link at the moment), an honest exploration of legacy admits—children of alumni who want to attend North Carolina, are expected to attend North Carolina, but don’t always get into North Carolina, and perhaps should not always get into North Carolina. From an institutional standpoint this is dicey emotional and political ground, and McNichol does a good job with the story. Her opening provides a sample of her lively prose:
One week after we had our first daugher, who is now 7, my husband and I had a serious discussion about commitment.
“Look,” I told him, flush with 2005 pre-national championship game fervor and my fair share of postnatal hormones. “I know you didn’t go to Carolina, and I know that you’d rather watch MythBusters than a basketball game. But I am going to need your help with this.”
I pointed to the slumbering child in the bassinet, who wore a Tar Heel onesie.
“She has to love Carolina,” I said. “I’m going to do everything I can to instill this in her, but I would really appreciate it if you would, from time to time, help push my agenda. Talk it up a little. Get on board with some sporting events and the like. Tell her she’s going to school there one day. OK?”
McNichol delves into the numbers—the percentage of alumni offspring who gain admission versus the percentage of non-alumni kids—and the fact that whether you are a Tar Heel alum or not doesn’t alter the fact that if you live in the state, you pay the state taxes that support the school and expect a fair shake from admissions. She quotes extensively admissions people who seemed to be doing their best to honestly respond to her questions and articulate however much, truthfully, it matters that your parents have UNC degrees. She also discusses—and due credit to Carolina Alumni Review for putting this in the magazine—an example of appalling parent behavior when the son does not get in, and the aggrieved father, an alum, whose first three kids got into Chapel Hill but the fourth did not, on two tries. The story notes legacy students who question whether they got in on merit or because a parent was an alum, and quotes the parents of a rejected kid who wrestle with their respect for fair admissions and their understandable wish that, in the case of their own kid, their legacy status had landed her a spot. Finally, McNichol comes back to her own ambivalence.
Everyone has a life story. At some point, that story becomes an admissions tale, sifted like sand and rock for gold. No one, including me, wants her children to be labeled silver. Twenty years ago, it mattered who I was on my UNC application. A decade from now, should it matter who I am on my daughter’s?
Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?
In the same issue, Carolina Alumni Review devotes a feature to debate over the university’s 212-year-old honor code, in light of a football player recently accused of plagiarism. That makes for a damned strong issue of the magazine, I’d say.
Also in my mailbox was Oberlin Alumni Magazine’s redo. (That’s the old on the left, new on the right; Jeff Hagan edits the magazine.) I think the new design looks great, and as an editor on a publication that is just receiving the first reviews of its own revamp, I loved this letter to the editor:
At the risk of not being politically correct—I hate the new look of our alumni magazine. In fact, I first threw it away, thinking it was some corporate investment brochure, until I saw the words “Class Notes” (my favorite part), as the pages fanned out falling into my recycling bin.
Alumni magazine editors everywhere will wryly note the unwitting irony in that letter.
Finally, under “things I didn’t know until I started receiving ’most every alumni magazine in the country”: Hobart College and William Smith College are close neighbors in upstate New York, so close they operate as a “coordinate college system” and publish a joint alumni magazine with the lovely title Pulteney Street Survey (Catherine Williams, editor). Now I know, and so do you.
Some of what I took away from the CASE Editors Forum 2012 in Atlanta:
Just did not seem like an Editors Forum without Jeff Lott and Tina Hay. Though Lott’s absence did mean I got more sleep.
The ever natty Shawn Presley’s opening presentation on getting some humor into our magazines introduced a phrase I did not expect ever to hear at an Editors Forum— “vagina cookies.” If you weren’t there, please don’t ask me to explain, but I will add that he was talking about actual baked goods. Presley, editor of the estimable Kenyon College Alumni Bulletin that has copped two of the last three Sibley awards, damn their eyes, argued persuasively that most of our periodicals need more wit, which works especially well in the front of the book. Kenyon mines Twitter feeds, campus events, the student newspaper, student parties, student interns, and bulletin boards for weird, quirky, funny, sometimes mildly raunchy bits that can enliven a page and remind readers that their undergraduate years were, among other things, great fun. Unless they attended Chicago or Johns Hopkins.
Editorial cartoonist Mike Luckovich, when he wasn’t drawing caricatures of Newt Gingrich or a nationally renowned blogger who shall remain nameless, said that by putting off everything until deadline panic forces an idea, he’s more creative. Don’t know about you, but I’m going to try that one with my boss.
Brown Medicine did a brilliant thing when it had to write the dreaded “we’ve got a new building on campus” story. It announced the new facility by producing a photo essay—portraits of the men and women who built the building. Boy, was that smart.
Tracy Mueller, managing editor at OPEN from the University of Texas’ business school, tossed out a great story idea from her magazine: students who are also parents. Could be especially good if you’re writing about undergraduates in that situation.
From the keynote: Sarah Vowell has one of the strangest deliveries in all of broadcasting/author appearances. From now on, anytime I read anything by her, I will hear her voice. (This also applies to David Sedaris.)
When it comes to a conference presentation, Tom French is a real pro. In his talk, sort of a highlight reel followed by some advice, he emphasized that the engine of any story is “what happened next?” He spoke of the “pleasure of unfolding” in a good story, and the necessity to zoom in: The more macro the topic, the greater the need bring your writing down to the micro. Another great piece of advice: As a writer, follow those who are never followed.
I came out of his session with an idea: Write about a single moment. A single moment in the lab. A single moment in a performance. A single moment before a crucial shot in a game. You are not to steal this idea. It’s mine. Mine.
Was not that impressed with Atlanta until a) I ate the fried chicken and corn pudding at Wisteria and b) went to the “From Picasso to Warhol” show at the High Museum. Lot of good pictures in a spectacular space.
Minneapolis next year? Really? I’d be very happy if the conference alternated between San Francisco and New Orleans, but maybe it’s just me.
UMagazinology will resume normal publication—that is, its normally sporadic publication—any day now with a grab bag of things I took away from the just-concluded Editors Forum. (And I don’t mean all those little liquor bottles. To quote Johnny Depp in The Rum Diary, “Are they not complimentary?”)
Meanwhile, enjoy this interview with New Yorker staff writer and friend of the CASE Editors Forum Susan Orlean. Best bit, when asked to give advice to writers:
Write, write, write, and then read. Then read some more. Then sit down and write more. And love writing with all your heart, and that will make it sing.
From The Onion newswire, courtesy of John Rosenberg at Harvard:
