Here’s a roundup of some of the most inspiring ideas I’ve seen lately.

1. Learn from this incredible profile.

I love the recurring Master Class profile from Fast Company’s print magazine. It’s a beautifully packaged glimpse into an unusual career. The profile above is of Aki Carpenter, a museum exhibit designer known for her work on the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

It shares fascinating insights into the challenges of the career itself and digs deep into what’s required to rise to the top of the field. More than that, her ideas are insightful even if the last time you saw a museum exhibit was during a school field trip.

If “profile of an alum with a quirky career” is part of your story arsenal, study this piece to see how you can make your profiles even better. (Can’t read the text? Check it out here.)

2. Make the case for your print magazine. 

Many schools have been sending out alumni magazines for a century (or more). It is — without question — the flagship publication for your alumni and donors. But that doesn’t mean everyone sees it that way. If you’ve got to persuade the higher-ups of the value of your print publication, here’s an exhaustive guide on the case for print, with real research to back it up.

3. Get some analog loot.

One of my favorite things to do during the holiday season is to get plenty of stuff for myself. Here are a few things that I think that you guys, a buncha word nerds who appreciate real-world stuff like magazines, might enjoy as much as I do:

• First: these A+ grammar pencils (slightly less grammar police-y than most).

• Second: approximately one million colorful sticky page markers in a handy book, perfect for marking the pages of the magazine story concept you have been meaning to swipe for your own publication.

• Finally: the most recent Best American Magazine Writing book from the annual series. Get plenty of inspiration by reading the best magazine writing that was done last year.

4. Think about how you want readers to feel.

Plenty of institutions have mission statements for their magazines (which is important). But the very best of them also do more than just methodically execute on their magazine’s big ideas. They also evoke emotions. They create a mood or a feeling in readers from the moment they pick it up.

Here’s one example: Michael Grossman, the founding creative director of Saveur magazine, talked about developing Saveur from scratch 25 years ago. Specifically, he shared what he wanted people to experience when they picked up the magazine.

He said, “I felt strongly that Saveur should appear as if it had been around for 100 years, as if it weren’t a publication we were inventing and, instead, one whose legacy we merely sought to uphold — the kind a worldly great aunt might save in slipcases.”

WOW. I mean, I will be honest, that is a slightly weird image at the end there, but it is very specific. Immediately, you can imagine the vibe of this magazine that had not yet been created.

Here’s the question you should ask yourself: What do you want your readers to feel when they pick up your magazine? And how will you work to achieve that goal?

We’re less than 60 days away from the 2020s! And what better way to focus on what’s ahead than making some predictions?

I’ve been reading the alumni magazine tea leaves over the past several months, and here are some of the big shifts and changes that I think we’ll be seeing in alumni magazines coast to coast.

Can I predict your magazine’s future?

1. Class notes will make a comeback.

Remember the argument that class notes were no longer essential “because everybody’s on Facebook?”

That’s just not true anymore. Social platforms may be as popular on ever, but they’re splintering fast. In the past two years alone, for example, Facebook has shed more than 15 million users in the U.S. — and many others are on the platform in a merely cursory way. The drop is especially steep among younger users.

Sure, maybe your alumni are moving over Instagram or Twitter or Snapchat or TikTok, but are they really bringing along all of their old university pals along with them in the transition?

Class notes might be the best new (old) way for your alumni to see what’s happening with their classmates and peers.

There’s a reason that those who’ve deeply invested in class notes for their school say that ditching them would lead to “World War III.”

Those who are willing to put in the time can revive class notes, an alumni magazine staple, and reap real benefits.

2. Stories of true connections will earn traction.

More than ever before, schools are having to justify their sticker price. Online education platforms including Udemy and Coursera offer the knowledge of the classroom at a fraction of the price. Billionaire Peter Theil thinks college is so worthless that he pays brainy students to drop out and pursue their ideas.

But is college really just about packing students’ minds with knowledge and getting them ready for the workforce?

Schools will need to remind their alumni that the value of the institution isn’t just the degree — they may still be enjoying benefits from their time at the school.

• How many of your alumni found their best friends or spouses or business partners at your school?

• How many alumni learned to deal with people who were profoundly different than they were, thanks to the weirdo they roomed with their first year on campus?

• How many found a mentor who said the right thing at the right time, a handful of words that gave them confidence to pursue the difficult thing they’d been considering doing?

How many of these experiences would they have had sitting in front of a laptop watching an online course?

Alumni should be reminded of — and encouraged to remember — the valuable parts of a college beyond books and Bunsen burners. Those are the human experiences that come from packing together a diverse group of people in one place during an important part of their lives.

Education is expensive! But hopefully you can show alumni that it’s still worth it.

Imagine doing a story like this for your school, but instead of stars and stand-ins, you share stories of mentors and mentees, best friends, or alumni and students.

3. Campus news sections will (deservedly) die.

A frequent question I hear from editors is “What should I do with my campus news section?” They want to know how to tell timely stories with a three-month lag.

Here’s the secret: there is no way to tell timely stories with a three month lag. Kill the section!

Nobody needs to see 10-week old stories about a volleyball tournament or a long-past alumni event.

Campus news sections made sense 25 years ago, when it was all but impossible to get regular updates any other way. Today, you can get campus news online or in email blasts.

Take cues from top-notch print quarterlies like Nautilus, which replaces “news” with short takes on a variety of issues, or Denison Magazine, which uses its front pages to dive into beautiful packaged features that are typically linked to recent recognition that the school has received (here’s one on researchers; here’s another on journalists and writers).

Save your print magazine for what it does best: telling beautifully crafted and packaged stories about your school and its people.

4. Unfocused print alumni magazines will continue to see big cuts.

For decades, print alumni magazines were able to get away with sloppy positioning, lackluster storytelling, and ho-hum design. When it came to sharing information with far-flung alumni, what other options were there, really?

But along came the web, social media, and all sorts of shiny new tools.

Alumni magazines headed to the chopping block as schools began pouring resources into these new platforms. Schools trimmed their magazines’ page counts, scaled back the number of issues, and slashed budgets. Some magazines ceased publication entirely.

Honestly? Some have deserved it!

Some magazines featured rehashed content, poor design, and mindless boosterism. Some schools had no desire to make a good print publication, and it showed.

That said, online magazines are no panacea. I have yet to hear from an editor who’s found a sizable alumni audience online, no matter how beautiful the site or how brilliant the content.

But I’ve *definitely* heard from folks whose efforts to move content online have fallen flat. (See my interviews with an editor who helped develop a magazine app and one whose print magazine was scrapped in favor of online content as part of larger sustainability efforts — but revived after alumni raised their concerns.)

Print magazines are “boring” compared to lots of tech out there today. But they work.

I’ve had the chance to review plenty of statistically significant surveys from colleges that have found that their alumni magazines still get plenty of attention.

The reality is this: paper, print, and mailing costs will continue to rise. Magazines will continually have to earn their keep by focusing relentlessly on their audience and delivering beautiful and engaging stories, art, and design.

I strongly believe print alumni magazines, done well, can and will remain the flagship communications tool for alumni and donors. Research shows that good alumni magazines get and sustain readers’ attention.

If you’re reading this post, you probably actually care about your magazine! And that’s a great start.

But if you don’t have the proper goals, focus, and support, your magazine could be headed for extinction as well.

***

What do you think? Agree? Disagree? Let me know your predictions for the coming year!

Erin

When I started out in alumni magazines, I learned lots of smart things about writing good profiles, creating packaged features, and making a magazine that was beautiful and compelling.

But I also internalized a few truly terrible ideas that it took me years to unlearn.

I was not smart.

In fairness, one of the big reasons I hung on to those bad ideas was that so many other people seemed to live by these unwritten rules!

But you don’t have to.

Read on to find out some of the pervasive myths of the alumni magazine world — and why it’s time to ditch them in favor of something better.

Myth 1: Your publication competes with major media for your audience’s attention.

Backstory: I remember going to a conference more than a decade ago in which a speaker made the case that your alumni magazine had to be as good as anything else on your coffee table: The New Yorker, People, Real Simple — major powerhouses.

If your magazine was sitting on a coffee table with those magazines, would someone in your audience pick it up?

No?

Then you better aim higher.

Later, that idea expanded beyond magazines to anything that could capture a person’s attention. Would your audience choose your magazine? Or would they choose the latest episode of the Real Housewives? What about that ridiculous “Yeah” Tik Tok video?

According to these experts, your magazine — with a half-time staffer and a freelance designer — has to compete with billion-dollar behemoths that are churning out endless hours of clickbaity content, guided straight to your eyeballs thanks to sophisticated artificial intelligence.

No pressure!

Reality: While I appreciate the idea that alumni magazines should always be looking for ways to improve their writing, design, and art, to suggest that people think of your magazine in the same way they think about a Netflix show or story in the New York Times is…absurd.

How do I know?

Consider your own media habits.

I’ll share some of mine: I love the Hollywood Reporter and The Good Place and a dozen different high-profile podcasts. These are big, expensive ventures!

But I also religiously read the magazines produced by a couple of the nonprofit organizations I support. I read my neighborhood newsletter seconds after it lands on my doorstep.

Why? Is that four-page monthly neighborhood newsletter — which features grainy photos and clip art — “as good” as the latest season of Serial?

It’s the wrong question.

That newsletter is amazing not because it has tons of resources, goes viral, or has world-changing ambitions. It’s amazing because it’s relevant and useful to its very specific audience.

And creating a publication that is relevant and useful to your very specific audience? That’s your job for your publication, too.

You can’t do what BuzzFeed is doing. You’re not supposed to!

But you can do work for your alumni and donors that is fascinating to them. It’s the work that only you can do, by virtue of the fact that you know your school and you know your alumni.

Don’t focus on what everyone else is doing. Focus on doing great, relevant work FOR YOUR AUDIENCE.

Myth #2 You should be laser-focused on featuring successful alumni.

Backstory: It’s pretty standard to use an alumni magazine as a way to share the stories of successful alumni. That’s the way you help your readers feel proud of their alma mater, right? All those smart, high-achieving alumni, straight from your campus to the top of the wooooorld!

Sometimes, this superstar-focused philosophy of storytelling is even baked into the magazine’s mission statement.

I definitely saw that reasoning guiding the work at some of the magazines I worked at years ago.

But the mission statement didn’t always align with what our audiences wanted. And that misalignment bubbled up in a number of different ways.

As one example, when I was on staff at an alumni magazine, I was constantly floored by the “stories” alumni would ask us to write about.

They wanted us to write about the four generations of alumni from a single family. They wanted us to write about alumni who’d randomly run into each other halfway around the world. They wanted us to write about the alum who’d put a note on another alum’s windshield in a grocery store parking lot 500 miles from campus.

In a word: uggggggggggggh.

Did they not know that our alumni base featured Academy Award winners, surgeons saving lives, and CEOs of billion-dollar companies? Sorry, guys, your dumb windshield alumni encounter doesn’t count as a “story.”

Right?

Reality: Wrong.

When I had the chance to see, in real-time, what alumni from my own alma mater appreciated on the college’s unofficial Facebook page, I realized that *I* was the dumb one.

Take a look:

The exact thing that I thought was the dumbest story in the world got hundreds of likes and dozens of comments.

Just because I’d taken some journalism classes and spent time writing for newspapers, I assumed that I knew what readers wanted.

But I wasn’t listening to what actual readers were telling me they wanted!

The reality was this: I learned that alumni wanted to read things that helped them feel connected to fellow alumni. They wanted stories about real humans, and failure, and the unexpected twists and turns that had been hurled at them since they’d graduated.

At the magazines I’d been working at, we’d been sharing highlight reels of superheroes. Readers liked some of that. But they also wanted more than that.

You don’t have to spend pages talking about failure or little moments like the one I’ve noted above. In fact, your alumni might want something totally different!

But the only way to know for sure is to listen to what alumni are telling you what they want, in both direct and indirect ways.

Find ways to deliver that to them.

Yes, you should share the things that your institution needs you to share with your readers. But give your audience the things that they actually want, too.

Myth #3: Awards are the correct standard to measure the success of your magazine.

Backstory: Maaaaaaaan, I love awards. Early on in my alumni magazine career, I was part of the editorial team that took home a Sibley. Since then, profiles and features I’ve written for a handful of schools have landed many awards.

I’m really proud of the work I’ve done, and I’m so grateful for everyone who was focused on making the work as good as it could possibly be.

There’s no question that awards can help you bolster your case for your magazine’s value with your bosses. And I’m not gonna lie: it’s nice to have some hardware.

But along the way, I noticed something interesting about the stories that didn’tcatch the eyes of judges.

Reality: The stories I’ve done that have landed awards showcase big-deal alumni or real progress on a vexing problem. They’ve definitely resonated with judges! But judges aren’t your audience.

I have done a lot of stories that haven’t won a thing — but they’ve generated a dozen letters to the editor, or sparked a conversation on Facebook, or led to actual gifts.

I’m incredibly proud of those stories, too. Those stories might be more valuable in some ways than the ones that won awards. It’s not just about dollars and cents. (Though that can be a part of the equation.) It’s about the way those stories put the school on their audience’s radar in a meaningful and positive way.

Here’s another example: I’ve seen schools make incredible investments in class notes. I’ve also seen colleges collect dozens and dozens of alumni memories to develop a feature package honoring a beloved, retiring coach. These things don’t feel flashy! But they’re an incredible amount of work, and alumni love it.

To an outsider — to a judge, even! — this work looks…really boring, honestly.

But to the people whose voices are amplified? Well, it can feel like a small miracle.

It’s fun for alumni to see their names in print. It’s cool to feel recognized and validated by your alma mater, even if — especially if! — you’re not next in line for a Nobel Prize.

Few judges are going to hand out awards for a raft of class notes or feature story built around alumni memories! Certainly, editors I’ve talked to about these labor-intensive projects haven’t received the kind of significant recognition that they probably deserve.

Yet if your larger goal is to make your school feel more like a community, to remind people of the value of your institution, and to engage with people where they’re at, this is the correct work to be doing.

Awards are great, and you probably deserve them! But your focus should stay, unwaveringly, on your audience. Serve them as well as you possibly can.

***

What myths do you think it’s time to reconsider? Shoot me an email.

Today I’m excited to explore one piece of “common knowledge” about profile writing that is 100 percent wrong for higher ed communicators.

I’ll start the story in one of my favorite places: writers and editors conferences.

When I was younger, my favorite part of these conferences were the keynote talks.

Amazing writers — Susan Orlean, Jacqui Banaszynski, Malcolm Gladwell — would stand in front of packed rooms to share the incredible stories of the people they’d met and written about, from professional athletes to explorers to world-renowned artists. (For starters). Their profiles had won every possible award.

They’d talk about the weeks they’d spent with a subject, in person, to grab that one precious detail that could make the lead irresistible. They’d talk about working with an editor on dozens of drafts to hone the structure. They’d talk about the careful work that the fact-checker did, correcting the tiniest details to ensure that the finished piece was completely bulletproof.

Listening to them talk felt magical and enchanting. I would float out of that keynote talk overjoyed with possibility.

And then I would look at my own real-life to-do list.

• I had a 45-minute call scheduled for the following Thursday with a donor who was a sales manager at a medical device company, and who I’d be writing a short profile about for the annual report.

• I had to write interview questions for a faculty member whose work was so opaque that I barely even understood her bio.

• I had to address two pages of “suggestions” that the president had added to his one-page Q&A.

WHERE’S MY KEYNOTE OFFER FOR THAT, HUH?

Maybe you’ve been there and know what I’m talking about.

Keynote advice probably doesn’t apply to your profiles.

The reality is that the inspirational stories and tactics we hear from top-tier journalists and writers don’t usually apply to our profiles in higher ed communications.

We don’t have weeks to spend with a subject or the budget to fly out to see them. We can’t go through a half-dozen drafts. We don’t have dedicated fact-checkers.

I love the work that I get to do for schools, but in all of those keynotes, I never heard much advice that felt like it applied to me.

So I spent years cobbling together my own list of successful approaches and tactics for the profiles I was responsible for on a day-to-day basis.

The reality is that some of the best things I’ve learned over the years are the exact opposite of advice offered by the gurus giving the keynotes. (I’ll share one example below.)

Slowly, I figured out how to tell some of the most difficult profiles.

I’m not talking about the ones that are so electric that they basically write themselves.

I’m talking about those “must-do” stories about the incoming president, the boring donor, the brilliant-but-not-super-articulate student.

I learned how to write difficult profiles that earned praise like this:

And this:

Here’s one example of advice you shouldn’t follow.

For years, I hung onto advice I got from top journalists about keeping my questions close to the vest.

Here is advice from a journalism website that encourages exactly that approach:

If you’re a certain kind of journalist — interviewing media-weary celebrities or CEOs with something to hide, for example — this advice makes perfect sense!

But I encourage you to put yourself in the mindset of the typical person you’re interviewing. They probably haven’t done a ton of interviews. They’re probably not working for hours with publicists to craft quotes and position themselves.

They’re regular people who are scared that they’re going to say something dumb and end up looking silly in front of their classmates and friends and colleagues. They’re worried that in the moment of the interview, they’ll forget something important that would have made the story better.

They probably just want to prepare so they can do a really good job for you.

Let them!

Yes, they might start off stilted, but it’s almost always easy to nudge people beyond their talking points, especially when they understand that you’re both aiming at the same thing.

Giving sources the opportunity to prepare by sharing my questions in advance has never made a single one of my interviews worse — and it has made a whole lot of them way better. It requires me to do smart preparation well in advance. And at the end of many of these interviews, many sources will ask if I want their notes, or if they can say one more thing that they wanted to mention.

OF COURSE I WANT THESE THINGS. You should, too.

You’ll do lots of difficult profiles over the course of your career. When anyone offers you the chance to make one of those profiles easier, LET THEM.

Over the years, I’ve learned – the hard way! — many different tools and tips to make difficult profiles easier. These are just a few of them. Do you have your own tips you’ve learned along the way? Let me know.

When I was an editor at an alumni magazine, one of the most frustrating experiences I dealt with was never knowing whether or not the brilliant story idea I had was going to resonate with readers.

Would a story generate lots of congratulations, letters, and other feedback? Or would it barely create a ripple?

The reader mailbag.

You’ve probably been here before.

A clever story idea isn’t enough.

Sometimes, you have a relatively simple idea that gets an incredible response.

Here’s one example: Campus myths. A feature story on all those too-good-to-be-true stories that have circulated for decades is almost always a guaranteed winner. People really want to know if that famous alum actually walked the horse up to the top floor of the residence hall, if a dorm was really designed to be riot-proof, and if those steam tunnels actually have a more sinister purpose.

Other times, you can spend hours crafting a story idea and packaging, only to see it completely flop.

Years ago, I did a story in which I tried to re-create a single class session from popular professors at a college. It was a hugely time consuming process *and* it nobody cared.

Ugh.

While it’s true that there’s no 100 percent surefire way to predict a hit or a flop, there is a method that can help. And I’m excited to share it below.

A simple test can illuminate promising ideas.

Before committing serious time and resources to a story for your print publication, you can do a simple test to find out how people are most likely to react — and even gather information to make a potential story even better.

I call it the “performance pretest.” It’s a strategic question posted on Facebook or other social platform that’s specifically designed to help you gauge what your audience wants. I’ve shared a couple of approaches below — plus the exact template I’ve used successfully to get the most helpful responses from alumni.

1. Ask a specific question on social media

Ask a related question on Facebook — or whatever social platform tends to get the most engagement from your users.

For example:

• Considering a story on campus concerts? Ask your audience which ones they remember as students and why they resonated.

• Working on a project about retiring professors? Ask your audience to share their stories about the folks on your list.

• Thinking about an ongoing series about campus buildings? Set up a poll to see which one you should use to launch the series.

• Want to do a piece on some of the school’s most iconic objects? Ask your audience to weigh in.

Their responses — or lack thereof — can help guide your work moving forward. They can also be a smart way to bring potential sources to the surface.

When I considered pitching a story on my own alma mater’s best pranks, I posted a question on Facebook and got dozens of responses. It was clear that this topic would be a winner. (More on that below.)

I noted which comments got the most likes to help me decide which pranks I would definitely need to include. A few folks even shared their own pranks that they were still proud to have executed successfully — or suggested folks they knew would have some good information.

I’ve also created posts that sank like a stone. I heard crickets when I asked for campus traditions worth writing about. That’s useful, too! Better to know it before I took up pages of valuable magazine real estate.

2. Go on a fishing expedition.

Sometimes, you don’t have a specific topic in mind and simply throwing out a general request can work, too.

I recently saw someone post a note about starting up a podcast linked to their alma mater. They wanted to know if alumni had any suggested topics. Ideas came rolling in — favorite college haunts that no longer existed, campus traditions, the history of beloved programs, campus pets.

Some were amazing ideas, some were interesting but impractical, some were off the wall. But the responses (and the responses to the responses!) were illuminating.

Follow this template for your performance pretest.

If you’re going to do a performance pretest, take an extra few minutes to do it right. Here’s one pretest I did, with a few notes on the structure I chose:

1. Give it a headline.

Posts like these tend to be a bit longer than most, so a descriptive headline can help. That way, people don’t skip a post they might otherwise like to comment on.

2. Use specific examples to show what you’re seeking.

Sometimes readers will just need a little bit of a jump start to put themselves in the right mental space to help you out. If you’re interested in learning more about campus concerts, suggest one example from a decade ago, two decades ago, and three decades ago. This approach will help people from a range of eras jog their memories so they can contribute.

3. Be clear about ways people can respond to your request.

Sometimes, people want to respond publicly! But every time I’ve offered the chance to contact me privately, people have done it.

4. Be ready with a starter comment.

In this case, enthusiastic responses rolled in right away, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes people want to contribute, but they don’t want to be the one who launches the conversation. If people don’t weigh in right away, grab a colleague or a friendly alum and ask them to weigh in on the post — you can even pre-write a response yourself! Get the ball rolling and people will be more likely to respond when they know they won’t be alone.

Share your own performance pretest stories.

What kind of performance pretests have you done to see if a story is worth pursuing? What have you learned? Let me know!

P.S. I love seeing your magazines, and I often share some of the best stories in this newsletter. Put Capstone on your mailing list so I can share your best work.

Capstone Communications
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