You can’t do that in an alumni magazine, can you?
I remember the first time my boss and I broke the law.
Well, okay, it wasn’t the law, but it sure seemed like one — an alumni magazine law, anyway.
I’d just started out in alumni magazines, and my boss assigned a feature story to a freelancer about challenges in the field of child welfare, complete with a list of alumni and faculty expert sources.
When the (excellent) draft came back, there was a source we didn’t recognize in the story. Was she a professor? We checked the directory — nope. An alum? Nope. A parent, maybe? No again.
We went back to the writer — who was this mystery individual?
Just someone who would make the story better, said the writer. She had been recommended by an alum, and she had some great quotes. What was the big deal?
Well, for one thing, alumni magazines aren’t supposed to feature people who aren’t linked to the community in some way!
But the writer was right. The source did make the story better. And all of the other sources were alums and parents and faculty.
My boss and I talked it over. She talked to her boss.
And we decided to run the story with this non-college source.
It was fine! Nobody said a word, and the story went on to win an award.
Although we rarely included non-college sources in future issues, it was a good reminder that some of the rules we had always followed were much more about tradition than requirement.
What “laws” do you follow in your alumni magazine? And why?
There are a lot of unwritten rules in alumni magazines. Some of them are there for good reason. And others? Well, you can decide.
Here are a few rules I’ve seen broken successfully.
Myth: You can’t make a tiny campus news story a cover story.
Reality: Sure you can! The thing that makes a cover story a cover story is that it appears on the cover.
Once, when we realized we had pretty lackluster feature story images for an issue, we ran a goofy photo of the creator of the school’s inner tube water polo club.
It’s true that the story was not Very Important, but the cover did exactly what it was supposed to do: it captured people’s attention and earned the coffee table.
Myth: You can’t talk about failure in an alumni magazine.
Reality: Of course you can. Consider Wellesley’s cover story, “When life doesn’t measure up,” HBS’s very smart “The F Word” and Grinnell’s “Is less than perfect enough?”
I love stories like these, because they upend the preconceptions that even your readers have in their heads about what an alumni magazine is or the stories it should tell.
Myth: You can’t have a “literary” alumni magazine.
Reality: In 2021, Carleton College created a special fiction and poetry issue.
Myth: Every page in an alumni magazine needs to earn its keep, do a job, and serve a purpose.
Reality: When I saw Smith College’s stunning redesign, I was especially intrigued by the full-page spreads that separated the front of the book, feature well, and back of the book. Six full pages that only served as a separation between the different sections of the magazine! It was shocking and bold. It was a luxurious visual pause. Amazing.
Myth: You must treat every source in a roundup (award winners, alumni profiles, highlighted researchers) “equally.”
Reality: A story or a profile can be compelling at any length — a sentence, a page, an eight-page package. Creating profiles of varying lengths and visual weights makes a package more interesting for a reader, while still treating everyone featured respectfully, as evidenced by this beautiful package, “The 32.”
Myth: Every issue of the magazine needs to have class notes, obituaries, and campus news.
Reality: In a special issue for Kenyon’s bicentennial, the team jettisoned almost everything that had even a hint of timeliness in favor of an issue that felt enduring — a true keepsake.
Myth: There is a proper sequencing for every section of your magazine, and it looks like this: cover, TOC, campus news, feature well, class notes, obits.
Reality: A new trend of back-page tables of contents — see HBS, Stanford Business, and Minnesota State University, not to mention this tongue-in-cheek inside back cover TOC for Kenyon — shows that there are many different ways that you can structure a publication successfully.
Some rules are still worth following
While I’ve shared lots of examples here of ways that publications have creatively broken some of the conventions that are commonly followed in print alumni publications, that doesn’t mean that rules aren’t worth following at all!
Clear structures, well-crafted pages, and a strong editorial vision that always keeps its audience in mind is what makes an alumni magazine feel intentional rather than chaotic.
The best magazines don’t break rules just for the sake of it—they do it thoughtfully, with a clear purpose in mind.
So, what are the “laws” you’re following in your alumni magazine? And which ones might be worth reconsidering?
