Let’s talk about crowdsourced storytelling.

The premise is simple: you throw a question or a prompt to your readers. You wait for some incredible responses to roll in, throw them all together, and voila, an instant, free story.

Right?

If you’ve ever done a crowdsourced story, you know the promise that I’ve described above is…not reality.

I’ve helped create a lot of crowdsourced feature stories over the years, and I’ve learned both from the successes and the failures of these projects. And now I want to give you my playbook if you’re ready to try one.

Step 1: Understand the big picture benefits and drawbacks of crowdsourced storytelling

Before you get started with a crowdsourced story idea, it’s important to get crystal clear on what they can do, what they can’t do, and when it makes sense to do them.

Know what crowdsourced storytelling is not

Done well, crowdsourced storytelling is rarely easy or fast — even if you craft a question quickly and end up with lots of responses from your audience!

In fact, in some cases, storytelling that relies on crowdsourced responses can be more time-consuming than a regular, reported story. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it! It just means you should go in knowing what to expect.

Understand the actual benefits of crowdsourced storytelling

The real benefits of crowdsourced storytelling are nuanced.

If done well, you will hear from alumni and other members of your community who you might not otherwise have considered contacting. It can bring unexpected and delightful stories to the surface.

A good question or prompt can also offer a reason for people in your alumni or advancement offices to reach out to folks in your community that you’d like to contact.

As an example, I’ve been working on a story for a client called “Reasons to Love Grinnell.” As part of the project, we included a prompt on the back page of one issue of the magazine. We also put the request out on social media.

At one point in the process, I learned that someone in the development office used the prompt as a way to connect to an alum. The alum shared her story about the reason she loved the institution. It was a great way for that development officer to connect with the alum in a meaningful way and build on that relationship.

Step 2: Build a question that’s designed to get many strong responses

If you’re going to devote space in your print magazine to a prompt — or if you’re going to try to nab people’s attention as they scroll through their social media feeds — you want to make sure you’ve got the best possible question!

Developing a question that leads to a large number of interesting responses isn’t easy.

Here are a few ways to develop a question designed to succeed.

Do a pre-test

How do you know if you’ve got a good question? One way is to test it before you send it out into the world.

To start, create a question and then answer it yourself. Ask your colleagues to share their answers, too.

Can you think of a variety of different ways you might answer the question, or are there just one or two obvious good answers? Is it a question that seems good, but somehow only generates generic responses?

Here are a few questions that I’ve seen schools use to generate lots of feedback:

• What great concerts did you see when you were a student?
• Tell us a story about the job you worked in college.
• What advice would you offer to students today?

What makes these questions work?

They often evoke memories, strong feelings, or interesting stories. They’re also the kinds of stories that can be unique to your publication. No one else is going to ask your readers about their campus jobs or first concerts! These are meaningful questions for your readers that they may not have thought about before.

Use the question to show people what you want

In some cases, it’s fairly easy to craft a question that people will respond to with a huge variety of stories. For example, I’ve done a story for many clients about whether or not alumni changed their names when they got married (here’s one in Macalester’s magazine).

This is a topic that many people start thinking about more seriously during college, and because so much has changed over time, the generational perspectives are fascinating! In general, getting responses to this question isn’t exactly like pulling teeth, so a simple, “Did you change your name when you got married? What led you to your decision?” is sufficient.

But for other kinds of questions, it can be helpful to provide guidance about answers within the question itself. Here’s one example of a question that generated lots of feedback:

“Sometimes a place deserves a love letter as much as a person, and we want your help writing one. What are your reasons to love Grinnell? Share the very tiny (a specific snack from the JRC?) to the very large (a Grinnell pal gave me a kidney!) things that make Grinnell amazing for you.”

We worried that a more general question would generate more general responses (I loved my professors and friends), and we wanted to make sure that respondents got specific.

They did! They shared what made them proud of the school’s history, specific walking paths on campus, exact residence hall lounges they loved, and moments that epitomized the best of their college experience.

A good question often offers a handful of examples so people can see the range that is possible — and come up with answers that are uniquely their own.

Seed wisely

Social media is a tricky animal. On the one hand, a good question can generate dozens — sometimes hundreds — of responses.

Still, someone’s gotta be the first person to respond. When you post on Facebook or Instagram, a question with zero comments can lead otherwise eager respondents to hold back.

When I’ve done stories for my own alma mater, I’ve tried to start the comments section with a relevant story or comment. When I’ve worked with clients, I sometimes asked them to do the same, or to recruit an alum who’s happy to weigh in early.

This approach can make sure you’re giving your prompt the best possible chance to succeed.

Step 3: Decide on your next steps

Hopefully, after you’ve thrown your question to your audience, responses have rolled in. Maybe the question has been as successful as you’ve hoped, maybe you’d like a few more responses, maybe it’s nothing but tumbleweeds. Now what?

Collect and — this is important — CURATE

To craft a truly meaningful story from a prompt, it’s necessary for you to be both a collector of responses and a curator of them.

When people make time to read a magazine, they want to feel like they’re getting the best of the best — not a firehose of both the good and bad responses that they could easily get in any social media comments section.

Cut the mediocre responses, edit the rambling ones, and reach out to folks whose responses need a bit more context or detail.

I know that for many of us, it’s fairly rare to hear from lots of people, so it can feel painful to leave anything at all on the cutting room floor.

While you should definitely thank people for responding, you don’t have to give every respondent space in your print magazine.

Start with the crowd, but don’t end there

As an editor, you should view the responses that you get from a request as a starting point, not an ending one.

Analyze the best responses, then think about what you’re missing: are you hearing from folks from a variety of class years? Does it truly represent the demographics of your alumni or institution?

If not, who can you reach out to in order to get a more representative response? What kinds of answers would be helpful to fill out your list, and who could you contact to get them?

For example, in this story for Macalester Today, “The Professor Who Changed My Life,” social media requests generated strong responses from alumni who shared stories about the professors who had made a lasting impact on them.

But what we needed to create a story for the magazine was additional insight from professors. We used the alumni responses as a starting point to decide which professors to contact for the story.

If you want to create a story from your prompts that truly feels like it earns the right to be in your print magazine, be as thoughtful about your sourcing as you are from a more traditional story.

Know when to fold ’em

Sometimes, despite your best efforts, you can’t collect enough responses to move forward. This is true even if you’ve asked a great question, even if you’ve tested it, and even if the exact same prompt worked for another school just like yours.

I recently worked with a client where I confidently suggested a crowdsourced story that I’d seen work at at least four other institutions. And with her institution, it flopped!

Maybe her school was just a little different. Maybe the story idea no longer felt relevant. Who knows?

Whatever the case, we got nothing but crickets when we sent the request. It happens! It was disappointing, but we both agreed it wasn’t working and we moved on. We’ll try again with another prompt in the future.

4. Craft your story

By now, you have a sense of the range and number of responses, and you can build from there. Here are some ways to think about it.

Go small but beautiful

For years, TCNJ Magazine ran a two-page spread of crowdsourced stories in each issue. It required just a few responses to work perfectly.

Go minimal

With a sharp intro, subheads, and thoughtful design, you can pull together a few pages of responses for a simple, easy-to-read feature, like this best advice piece for Grinnell Magazine.

Use responses as a starting point for a traditional feature

This Smith Alumnae Quarterly story about last names, for example, started with crowdsourcing and ran as a narrative feature.

The editor got so many responses to the prompt that we also pulled together a sidebar to showcase the wide range of unique stories from alums.

Consider a themed roundup

In this piece I did for Grinnell on career changes, “The Great Awakening,” we crowdsourced the best stories and then conducted follow-up interviews with a handful of respondents.

You wouldn’t necessarily know that this was a crowdsourced story — but we couldn’t have found our sources any other way.

5. Continue the conversation

Once you’ve posted your request, collected responses, written and designed a story, and sent it out to the world, you may feel done with that project.

Yet for many alumni, the story they read in your magazine may be the first time they’ve seen anything about the topic! Your story will likely prompt many ideas, memories, and stories from your readers. Create a call to action so they can share those stories with you.

You can see that we did just that at the end of “The Great Awakening.”

If you hear from your readers, you can simply collect the responses and thank those who wrote in, or you can run some in the letters to the editor section.

The point of this last step is not necessarily to create additional stories for your magazine, but to give your readers an outlet to share their experiences and feel heard. This is one of the incredibly valuable (but often overlooked) roles of an alumni magazine.

Over the years, I’ve gotten many questions from editors about how to bring the stories from their print magazines to a wider audience. From social media posts to dedicated magazine websites to email blasts, there are lots of ways to think about bringing a print story to new eyes.

Today I want to talk about an approach that I don’t hear about as much.

Yet in the right circumstances, it can be an incredibly powerful tool to create an even bigger impact with your print magazine story.

The idea is simple: reprints.

One of the reasons I love reprints is that you can put them in the hands of the exact audience that is primed to appreciate it.

Even better, almost all the work your designer did to make it look perfect on the page — from the photo size to the sidebar placement to the font for the opening spread — is retained. Often, these reprints can be used multiple times over the course of years. This evergreen potential offers all sorts of possibilities.

Let’s go through a few examples — and how you might consider something similar.

IDEA #1: Highlight a new building

Smith College’s new Neilson Library was a big deal when it opened — and Smith Alumnae Quarterly’s Christina Barber-Just devoted more than 20 pages of her magazine (though not the cover) to the facility and its offerings in a recent issue.

Director of constituent communications Lars Asbornsen saw a way to take those 20 pages even further.

“He pulled it right out of the magazine and reprinted it on heavy cardstock as a standalone publication,” Christina says. “Copies were given to members of the Smith board of trustees when they were on campus recently, and library staff made fantails of it in three locations so people can see it and pick it up. I loved seeing a big editorial project repurposed in this way.”

Amazing! This is a great way to highlight a story, bring it to an audience who cares deeply about it, and extend the life of the story beyond the current issue.

IDEA #2: Offer a “starter kit” to new alumni

Some time ago, Capstone developed an “Alumni Starter Kit” for the Naval Academy’s alumni magazine, Shipmate.

The story was designed to re-introduce some of the many opportunities its alumni association and foundation offered.

While the story was useful to the broad alumni community more generally, it’s also specifically useful each spring for an entirely new group of people: graduates. To extend the life of the story, the Naval Academy’s Jimmy DeButts says that “PDF copies of the story were printed and distributed to members and families of the Class of 2021. The story showcased the variety of ways the Alumni Association is prepared to assist alumni.”

Again, this is a story that is perfect for an issue of any of your magazines, but actually becomes more valuable over time as you bring it to new grads. It’s likely to be relevant for years — and can be used as a template when the time comes to do an update.

IDEA #3: Go big for an event

Recently, Grinnell College, a Capstone client, ran a two-page essay written by a current student who met and did a research project on Edith Renfrow Smith, the first Black woman to graduate from the institution.

As part of the project, the writer was able to persuade the college to name a gallery in the student center after the 107-year-old alum (!!!).

Later, for an event celebrating the naming, she and her research advisor worked with the communications office to create a poster-size reproduction of the essay that was displayed in the space.

Notice that absolutely none of these things would have been “better” by sending people to a website or encouraging people to watch a video.

It’s truly meaningful to put something real, thoughtful, and beautiful in people’s hands. Your magazine does that a few times a year — and you can extend that reach through reprints.

Over the past couple years, print magazines have gone through the wringer. Many schools have trimmed pages from their publications, decreased their frequency, or put them on hiatus. (You can see the report I published on this trend here.)

But that wasn’t the case for Barry University, a private Catholic institution in Miami.

Recently, they decided to add a twice-annual print magazine to their alumni and donor communications strategy.

I had to know more.

I called up Bernadine Douglas, vice president for institutional advancement at Barry, to ask her more about the decision.

Here’s what she told me about that process. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You came to Barry from Berea College in Kentucky in 2019. Where was Barry at when you arrived?

They had been without a vice president of advancement for at least three years, and they had [eliminated] the magazine even before that.

They had been peeling away different marketing activities as cost-cutting measures to focus primarily on programs and services that had a direct impact on students and staff. They did away with the university magazine. They didn’t go digital — they just did away with it.

Because they weren’t seeing value in it?

They decided they didn’t need the expense of it. At the time, it was seen as just another marketing activity.

At what point did that change?

In 2019, a new president came in with a clear charge from the board to build back up advancement — it had been a mistake to divest from it.

That’s when you were hired to help the school achieve that larger goal. So then what happened?

[The institution] was in the enviable position of having significant savings, and so we talked about what’s going to give us not the quickest return, but the best return? [Among other things], we decided pretty quickly and pretty overwhelmingly to invest in a university magazine.

Are we going against the grain [by adding a print magazine]? I don’t think so. We were going against the grain in the years before that [by not having a magazine], and it wasn’t working. We realized we had some catching up to do.

I understand that you have a lot of different things to do as you build an advancement program. But it sounds like you felt you had lost ground with your alumni and donors without the magazine?

Right! It’s not just like we can go and get MacKenzie Scott [to support us.] [Advancement] is a long game, and if you’re not committed to making the investment and staying in an uncomfortable place, it won’t work. Good presidents, good institutions — they understand that, and they’re willing to allow us to develop and grow. It might be minimal at the start, but it will pay off in the future.

A literal payoff?

Yes. At Berea, under the leadership of Kim Brown, we were attributing about a million dollars in gifts to the magazine every three to five years or so. It was a significant direct mail piece. We had a remittance envelope in it, we had ads about giving in there, and we even thought about making soft asks in the stories that we tell. I feel very, very strongly that you’ve got to show ROI, you’ve got to show how engagement leads to more gifts.

Wow! A million dollars is really incredible.

Berea is an extraordinary place with a huge culture of giving, and not just from alumni, but from friends. It’s not unfamiliar to them to see those solicitations, those envelopes in the magazine. It’s about giving that culture time to take shape, being consistent, and not backing away from that. We also had one issue that was essentially an honor roll, which was completely focused on philanthropy.

Oh, those honor roll issues are a bear.

People really want to see their names on that list! Honestly, the things that worked 50 years ago, whether we want to think about that or not, are still effective. Even for the most dated of us, even for the most digital of us. We are all motivated by [recognition]. It’s why Peloton gives us badges. Badges and honor rolls work! Can we modernize it? Sure. But the rules are the rules for a reason.

Was it hard to make a case for adding a print magazine?

It was easier than I thought. I had a supportive president. The cabinet — they were nodding their heads and saying ‘Yes, we do need this kind of outreach. Not having it has really hurt us.’

We need to repair relationships [after failing to have significant outreach to alumni and donors for years]. The magazine, for us, is a step toward repairing those relationships with our alumni and our friends.

Can you say a little bit more about the magazine as a way to repair relationships?

Maybe I’m being a little dramatic, but I think when damage has been done in a relationship, whether that’s institutionally or on an individual level, there first has to be an acknowledgement of the other person’s feelings. Does that mean we’re going to have an editorial in the magazine that says ‘We’re sorry?’ No. But what I hope alumni feel when this magazine lands in their hands is, ‘They’re really trying. Let’s see what my alma mater is doing.’ And maybe they’ll start to get excited.

I love it. You’ve got a really big job ahead of you! But it sounds like the print magazine is something you’re happy to invest in to help you achieve your long-term goals.

This is a slow, steady climb: repairing relationships, building engagement, building pipelines. If we’re just looking for quick hits, we’re going to fail.

My job is to build an enterprise that is going to last. And I really see the magazine as a way of doing that. My cabinet sees it as a way of doing that. And my president sees this as a way of doing that.

_______

Guys, I love these insights about the larger role your print magazine can — and in many cases, must — play for your institution.

It can build relationships and it can repair them. It can support your institution’s larger philanthropic efforts over time, and it can provide tiny psychological boosts to those in your community who have stepped up in support each year.

Your print magazine can serve many purposes, and you can adjust the storytelling you do to help achieve those goals.

The most important takeaway, in my opinion, is the idea that done right, a print magazine is a great investment over time. You’ve got to make a long-term commitment to it.

Your relationship with your alumni should last a lifetime. And a print magazine is one smart way to maintain and strengthen that relationship.

When I was a junior, I applied for an internship at my college’s alumni magazine.

I was one of exactly two candidates — and I didn’t get the job.

Four years later, I was on the Sibley-winning team for an alumni magazine.

It was a pretty good trajectory.

For years, I told myself my alma mater had made a grave error in not hiring me when I applied, since I was an obviously brilliant thinker in the field of print alumni magazines.

But that wasn’t the reality. I was a pretty crummy candidate!

To be fair, I did get the internship the following year, when I was the only candidate who applied. I am proud to say that I was better than nothing.

But I digress.

The difference between my 20-year-old self and my 24-year-old self was that I had started systematically studying alumni magazines — and print magazines more generally — to figure out what made them tick.

I learned from lots of editors and writers and designers. I reverse-engineered the most successful stories and magazines. And with the support of my bosses at both Grinnell and Carleton, I tested many different ideas in the pages of those magazines.

I got better!

It’s been more than 20 years since I got my first gig in the field, and I’ve never stopped studying alumni magazines.

I’ve developed a lot of ideas about what alumni magazines can and should do.

This is what I believe about alumni magazines.

1. You should aim to have an amazing magazine.

All in, your school invests — easily — six figures into your publication each year, and likely many multiples of that.

Use every tool available to you to make it worth that investment.

2. Printed, mailed publications reach alumni more effectively than anything online.

Most of your alumni probably have fond feelings about your institution.

But in their day-to-day lives, they don’t think about your school that much.

The vast majority of them don’t visit your website (let alone a specialized magazine site), see most of your social media posts, or open that email that got filtered to their updates tab.

Most of them will see the magazine you mailed. You determine when your readers get it, what it looks like, and what content is in it.

For most of your alumni, your print magazine will be the main — if not only — way they hear about your school.

Optimize your magazine first when you’re thinking about communicating widely with your alumni. Then worry about all the other ways they can engage with your magazine’s content on social media, websites, and email.

3. There’s always another way to think about a story.

One of the big challenges of a magazine is keeping those annual stories — retiring faculty or graduating seniors or homecoming— fresh. How do you tell those annual alumni award winner profiles in a way that allows you not to get bored?

The good news is that print magazine storytelling can so much bigger than straight narrative formats and traditional photos.

Take advantage of all the opportunities that are available with a print magazine format to think bigger and to think differently.

What if you told that 200 word profile in 20 words? What if one year you told it in 2,000? What if you illustrated those headshots, packaged everything up into a list, or tried a quiz format?

Try something new in this issue for those “must-do” stories that make you bored. Doesn’t work perfectly? That’s okay! You can take another stab at it next year.

4. You should take at least one “big swing” in every issue.

A good magazine has plenty of structure: a certain set of departments, a handful of features, class notes, perhaps a few ads.

This approach makes sense.

You want the reader to understand what they’re getting, not feel confused with every turn of the page.

But within that structure, you should find ways to take some big swings.

Maybe it’s an ambitious “24 hours at the university” photo essay. Maybe it’s a giant story package on a big anniversary that you aim to make — *gasp* — fun. Maybe it’s hiring that writer or illustrator you’ve admired from afar to take on a story you think they could bring something really special to.

While it’s true that not everything will work out flawlessly, a lot will end up working out better than you think!

You can take the lessons from those big swings and apply them to future projects. You’ll have those amazing pages in your portfolio — and in your institution’s printed history — forever.

5. You should learn from the best — and put your own spin on it.

One of the strangest conversations I ever had with an alumni magazine editor was well over a decade ago. I pitched her a story and showed her clips from other alumni magazines that had published my work.

As I sat across from her in her office, she paged through the magazines I’d brought, and then sniffed, “How could I hire you when you work for our competitors?”

I was confused: colleges and universities don’t compete with each other for their alumni.

And that’s great! It means that you can study alumni magazines from across the country and adapt them for your own institution. You can study consumer magazines you love and imagine how their work might apply to your magazine.

Of course, you should find your own twist! Your institution really isn’t like everyone else’s, and neither are your alumni. But that doesn’t mean you can’t learn from others. You don’t have to start from scratch. Study the very best stuff out there.

Then make it your own.

6. You should sweat the details…

Recently, I was working with a client and saw spreads from their magazine in design. The designer had used a photo that I found powerfully captivating.

I wasn’t sure why I couldn’t look away, but then the designer described what made it work — a combination of the rule of thirds and light and leading lines.

At the time, I wasn’t able to articulate what made the feature spread and its photo so magnetic. I only knew that it was irresistible.

It reminded me that it’s important to use every tool in our proverbial toolbox to make a magazine great.

For example, I know how powerful a good headline can be in getting someone to stick with a story. I know how changing up story structures can surprise and delight readers. If you’ve been reading this newsletter for awhile, you do, too.

These details affect readers’ enjoyment of the magazine, too, even if your audience can’t always say exactly why.

All of these tiny things take time to get right, and the payoff isn’t always clear.

But your readers will feel them. They’re the things that will vault your magazine into a category from “worth skimming while hovering over the recycling bin” to “worth taking to the couch and reading for the next hour.”

Sweat the details to make a magazine you are truly proud to send to your readers.

7. …but not the awards.

Look, I know I started this whole thing off by bragging about the Sibley I got a million years ago.

It’s a great shorthand to suggest “Hey, I know what I’m doing over here!”

But remember that judges for most awards are experienced in print magazines, and maybe even alumni magazines, but not your unique institution.

There are lots of stories that your readers might love because they’re steeped in your institution’s lore and values. Those stories might be things that judges simply might not “get,” because they’re not alumni!

The reality is that the most important constituents for your magazine (not the only ones, but the most important ones) do not care if you won the Fanciest Magazine in the Land award. They only care if the magazine is something they love.

Yes, awards can signal to your bosses that you’re doing good work. They’re fun to win, and I would never discourage someone from entering a magazine or a project that they’re proud to have worked really hard on.

But if you don’t win, that doesn’t mean you’re not putting out an amazing publication. The accolades that matter most are the ones you get from your readers.

Awards are great, but they’re also less important than you might think.

8. You should talk to your readers — lots of them! — all the time.

I’ve already said you should focus on doing great work for your readers. So it makes sense that you would spend time actually interacting with them and learning from them.

There are many ways to do this: through formal surveys, through prompts, through letters to the editor, through conversations prompted by a class notes entry.

Be curious about your readers and their desires for your magazine!

As the editor, you’re always in control. And sometimes, the proverbial customer isn’t always right.

But many of your readers will have incredibly valuable insights about what works in your magazine, what doesn’t work, and what could make it even better.

Listen to them. Have conversations with them. Save the praise you get from them to remind yourself of the value of your work. Be willing to consider the criticism you get from them. And respect the time they took to share their thoughts with you. They’re the reason you’re doing this work.

9. You should find ways to measure your magazine’s impact.

Let me first acknowledge the obvious: measuring the impact of a print magazine is really hard and imperfect.

But you should do your best to try.

You can use CASE’s alumni magazine readership survey tool. You can measure engagement through letters to the editor, class notes submissions, and nostalgia prompts. You can track giving through reply envelopes. You can conduct focus groups.

None of these, on their own, can tell the complete picture. And the reality is that you probably can’t do everything on this list with all of your other responsibilities — especially not for every issue.

But that doesn’t mean that you can’t start with one or two things on that list, and aim to make improvements over time.

Those numbers can help you see where you might need to make changes. They can help you build a case for more resources for your magazine. And they can help you show the value of the magazine you’ve worked so hard to create.

10. Your magazine should have a great personality.

Your magazine goes into the homes of your alumni, and it should be a like an incredible and charming guest. It shouldn’t be the equivalent of the person at the party who drones on endlessly about how great they are.

Because unlike a braggy partygoer, your magazine can get tossed into the recycling bin the second it becomes boring and self-important.

Remember that you can occasionally tell stories that go beyond the next new building, the big donor, and the prestigious award. You can also tell stories that are human and relatable to the many thousands of regular, non-superhero alums in your ranks.

Earn your way to the coffee table by making your magazine a joy to read, no matter what the story topic.

Without exception, the winners of CASE’s Robert Sibley Magazine of the Year are gorgeous and well written.

But this year’s winner was something I’ve never seen before: short!

In a tight 28 pages, SF State Magazine is as ambitious as any magazine out there, and it accomplishes as much as many publications twice that length.

 

 

To find out more about how editor Steve Hockensmith earned the field’s highest honor this year, I asked him to share what makes his magazine tick.

Want to read more from Sibley-winning editors? Scroll down to the end to get links to interviews with past Sibley winners and a Sibley judge.

Now, on to the interview!

First, tell me a little bit about your school and your magazine.

San Francisco State University is part of the California State University (CSU), the largest four-year public university system in the country. In the last academic year, San Francisco State enrolled a little more than 27,000 students, more than half of whom will be the first in their family to earn a bachelor’s degree.

What does your magazine team look like — how many people are on your staff, and what kind of outside help do you get?

We have a small planning committee drawn from various departments within the University Advancement division, then most of the content is created by staff members.

We use a freelance designer as well as freelance photographers and illustrators, but at this point all the writing is done in-house with one exception: Our “My SF State Story” page is a personal reflection written by a University graduate.

I oversee the copy, and our creative director, Barbara Stein, manages all the visual elements and develops the overall look of every issue. We also have a photo editor, Paul Asper. (Paul is a talented photographer himself, which comes in really handy.)

All of us have many other duties — marketing materials, newsletters, the University website — so there is no full-time magazine staff.

I loved “The New Now,” a collaboration with one of the university’s journalism classes. I have seen similar pieces, including one in New York magazine, but yours was more creative and ambitious. Can you tell me how this project came to your attention and how you were able to make the most of it?

We really lucked into that. A version of it had been posted online as part of a project for a photojournalism class, and Paul, our photo editor, saw it.

We were wowed by the pictures and personal reflections, but I was a little reluctant to adapt it for the magazine at first. We had a theme for the issue — “the future” — and I was envisioning it as bright, colorful and upbeat to contrast with the dark, frightening time we were going through. (This was in early fall 2020, as the pandemic raged and the election loomed.)

What the students had created felt a bit downbeat, since it focused on the struggles they were facing as they adjusted to life in lockdown. I got over my reluctance to include it, though. The issue was supposed to promote optimism, but that didn’t mean we should ignore the harsh reality for our students at the time.

What story are you most proud of having done over this past year? Why?

“The New Now”! Which is kind of funny to admit, because we didn’t create it. The students (and their brilliant teacher, the Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Kim Komenich) did all the hard work. We were just curators. But I guess I can be proud that we recognized the opportunity and made the most of it.

We’ve wanted to include more material from and about current students, but it’s been hard to manage, especially during the pandemic. The life-in-lockdown photo essay was pure gold that just fell into our laps.

What is something you think that your team or your magazine does really well that gives you an edge?

I’d say collaboration is the key. We’ve been pulling in more ideas and content from our communications colleagues across the University — folks who work for SF State’s various colleges — and that’s broadened our coverage, created goodwill and made it easier to keep the wheels turning during a difficult time.

Your magazine is just 28 pages. Is there a specific reason for this? (You do seem to be able to support great writing and art, so it seems like it is not primarily financial?) What are the benefits of those types of constraints?

The length is something I inherited, so I don’t know the original rationale for it. But I’m quite happy with the length and wouldn’t want more pages. It gives us room for our departments and three features, which is all we need to get across that the University and its graduates are doing cool things.

It also keeps the magazine manageable and economical for a small department with a small budget. Adding pages would give us a bit more breathing room, sure. But I don’t think it would make the magazine more impactful. Perhaps the opposite.

Your class notes are really nice, with short profiles, pull quotes, and a curated Gator bookshelf. What are some of the ways you try to make that section engaging for all readers — so they don’t just go directly to their class and skip the rest?

When I took over the magazine, the Class Notes section was four pages, and maybe half the items were submitted. The rest I came up with by following alumni in the news.

Over the last couple years, though, we’ve been getting more and more submissions, so we’ve expanded to six pages, and I don’t supplement much at all. I guess I could try to credit the section’s readability to my amazing editing, but it’s really all about our alumni. They’re just an interesting, eclectic, accomplished bunch of people!

One of the things the judges praised about your entry was its strong sense of place. Is that something you’re fairly conscious of?

Absolutely. SF State has a really unique vibe — kind of scrappy and can-do in an idealistic sort of way — and we’re always looking for stories that reflect that.

It can be tough to capture that energy on the printed page, so it was lovely to hear that it came through for the judges.

What do you pay attention to for inspiration? (Could be magazines, but doesn’t have to be limited to that.)

Barbara, our creative director, keeps an eye on a zillion magazines and websites and often brings in design ideas and feature concepts based on things she’s seen elsewhere.

I don’t do as great a job of that, to be honest. But I do pay attention to the conversations and trends on social media and try to stay in touch with the general zeitgeist. I don’t always succeed, but fortunately we’ve got some younger, hipper staff members who aren’t shy about educating me!

What is one piece of advice you’d give other editors who want to kick their own magazines up a notch?

Having a theme for each issue is really helpful, even if it’s not one you tout on the cover or overtly acknowledge in some other way. It gives you a focus that forces you to think strategically about every bit of content you or may not include.

You don’t have to be inflexibly strict about it. We’re not. But having an overarching concept you’re trying to stick can lead to a more memorable magazine.