Arizona State University

How Capstone helped W. P. Carey magazine revitalize its stories

“The Capstone Pitch Subscription is great for any alumni magazine editor who needs an extended team of experts with a fresh perspective.”
–Shay Moser, managing editor of W. P. Carey magazine

The client: Shay Moser is the managing editor at the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. Part of this role includes managing the W. P. Carey magazine, the twice-a-year publication for the W. P. Carey School. It reaches 100,000 alumni and ASU community members.

Since arriving at the magazine in 2017, Moser had leaned on her strengths to make the publication as good as it could be: She’d tightened up processes, built a better style guide to improve consistency, and amped up the already-strong design.

The University’s president had noticed, specifically praising W.P . Carey’s publication as one worth emulating.

The challenge: The magazine’s design and process were strong, but Moser knew the magazine’s content would benefit from fresh eyes and a new approach for some of its sections.

“We knew we could be more creative with how we presented our columns and features, specifically our lifestyle features and profiles. We wanted to make sure stories were nostalgic, informative, and inspirational.”

The solution: Moser came across the Capstone site through a link from another blog, and was immediately impressed.

“I visited the Capstone website and read every blog post, soaking in all of the specific and relevant alumni magazine advice. I also signed up for the newsletter.”

When Capstone offered its pitch subscription — an annual membership that offers a year’s worth of targeted feature pitches for alumni magazines — Moser was immediately intrigued.

“I could see that Capstone understood my challenges as an alumni magazine editor. The features that sold me? Tailored pitches, a customized aspiration road map, and the fact that you and your team would take care of every detail. The pitch subscription offered a fresh perspective and new ideas from experts who understood me and the business of alumni magazines.”

The result: After building a customized aspiration map that helped provide overall direction for the publication’s feature well, Capstone developed a pitch sheet based on the upcoming magazine theme, “The Future of Money.” Moser chose two pitches from the initial pitch sheet. Capstone writers, editors, and researchers made sure the stories were delivered on time, on budget, and complete with headshots that Moser could use if she wished.

“I greatly appreciated Capstone’s attentiveness, quick response, checking in with me to make sure we were on the same page with story angles before and during the writing process, and especially how you and your team fact-checked everything, got all interviewees’ approval and headshots.”

Moser’s team is small, but Capstone helped expand the possibilities of her magazine through a partnership designed to do outstanding, custom work for her publication.

“It was like having a bunch of assistant editors of our publication because you have a whole team that supports you, and y’all support me!”

As Moser gears up for the next issue, she expects to hand off two complete features to the Capstone team.