Although literary arts magazines are still the most popular type of stu-
dent magazine, many others share the spotlight. Students have learned
to take advantage of the magazine’s longer production deadlines to
develop coverage of specialized interest areas. Humor, general interest
and news feature magazines are becoming increasingly popular as stu-
dent publications.Creating a New Publication
Together with a small core group of students, Brad began planning
how the magazine might develop. He needed to find enough students
to fill a class, a teacher willing (or crazy enough) to serve as adviser
and administrative support to make the whole operation (including
finances) work. Despite such obstacles, after about nine months of nur-
turing and plenty of hard labor, the first issue of Muse, a humor/general
interest magazine, rolled off the press.
Describing the magazine as “the offspring of many fathers and moth-
ers,” Brad said the students decided not to have a single editor. Instead,
the magazine used an editorial board to select the stories and articles
that showed the most promise. Everybody on the staff did both writing
and editing.
Muse contains 32 pages each month packaged inside a slick cover.
About one-fourth of the content is given over to departments, which
include the “Muse Mailroom” (letters), “A&E,” (music reviews), “Movie
Madness” (cinema reviews) and “College Watch” (a regular column
featuring first-hand campus visits and tips on how to write application
essays). The remainder of the magazine is devoted to the cover story, six
or seven feature articles, a photo essay, an art page and several ads.(^416) MIXED MEDIA
W
hen you open a magazine, you look
first for those quick little things you can
read in several minutes. You have to pull the
reader into the magazine. We have a section
in the front called “Short Takes.” It’s a four-
page department with lots of short items. Each
page maybe has three to five short pieces.
And you’ve got other departments in the
front that pull you into the magazine. You
don’t want to open a magazine and jump
right into a 5,000 word piece. After you bring
the readers in with the cover, you have short
pieces and build up into the long pieces.
Another consideration is that departments
should be roughly in the same place from issue
to issue. You don’t want to have some section
of the magazine on Page 7 one month, Page 47
the next month and 97 the next month. Each
week, I open New York magazine to the same
place and quickly read through to see what’s
in this section, called “Intelligencer.” “Short
Takes” is always somewhere around Page 20 in
Premiere. And the same with the other depart-
ments. These are anchors for the reader.
Source: Adapted from “Tete-á-Tete,” by Carolina Lightcap, Student
Press Review.
DAVID WALTERS ART DIRECTOR, PREMIERE