Insider’s Guide #3
3 Feedback-Friendly Alumni Magazine Features—Guaranteed Use these field-tested story ideas from veteran editors to boost reader feedback for your alumni magazine.
Erin Peterson I help you tell your school’s best stories. 763.656.7863 • erin@erinpeterson.com • erinpeterson.com Minneapolis, MN
Tell the stories your readers crave Years ago, when I was an editor at the Carleton Voice, my boss, Teresa Scalzo, made a compelling argument about the importance of investing in the alumni magazine. No matter how much readers enjoyed their time at Alma Mater U, she said, the magazine still had to compete with all the other stuff arriving daily in alumni mailboxes, whether that was the New Yorker or Esquire or Entertainment Weekly. We had to earn the attention of our readers by doing incredible work. At the time, my 23-year-old-self took that idea pretty literally: the stories should be just like the stories found in those magazines, except with alumni sources. Of course, over time, I understood what she was actually saying: in any magazine, the writing should be compelling. The design should be top-notch. And the photography should stunning. But just as you wouldn’t expect to see a 10,000-word essay about hospital safety in Entertainment Weekly or a Top 10 list of dive bars in the New Yorker, an alumni magazine shouldn’t tackle the same kinds of stories in the same way as consumer publications. I once asked Kenyon’s Shawn Presley, the owner of trophy cases full of CASE awards and an armload of Sibleys, how he thought about putting together a magazine that his readers loved. He said the data—and he did surveys after every issue of the magazine—showed him one thing: alumni want to read about their school. “Editors take on world subjects like terrorism or poverty,” he told me. “Alumni can get that anywhere and are often sick of reading about it. That doesn’t mean we don’t do those kind of stories, but we do them sparingly and make sure we have a solid mix of stuff. I read CASE entries with these lofty goals of being an alumni magazine that is simply good reading about what happens in the world. I always wonder ‘when was the last time you surveyed your readers?’ ” Tell the kind of stories that your readers want in the way that only your magazine can. In the following pages, find out the kinds of stories that resonate with your readers—and get them writing emails and letters to share their perspectives. In the pages that follow, editors share the stories that resonated most with their readers—and that you can use for your own publication. Email me anytime to let me know the kinds of stories that have worked for your magazine. Best, Erin
ERIN PETERSON • 763.656.7863 • ERIN@ERINPETERSON.COM • ERINPETERSON.COM
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Field-Tested Feature #1 Photo essays As a writer, it pains me to say that people love photos waaaay more than words. But don’t take my word for it. Just ask Denison Magazine’s Mo Harmon. Her magazine, a perennial CASE award winner, knocks it out of the park with both words and images. Her magazine tackles hot-button issues like politics, religion, and cheating with major feature stories. But the piece that generated letters and emails? This one: The most popular story we’ve done was probably a photo essay we did a few years back when the men’s swimming and diving team took the National Championship called “Epic.” Find it here: http://bit.ly/1sbU3k4. Meanwhile, St. Olaf magazine’s Carole Leigh Engblom—a 15-year alumni magazine veteran—says student-generated photo essays have hit the mark more than once: A lot of readers liked “Wait Until Dark,” written and photographed by students, about what goes on at St. Olaf after dark AND a lot of readers like “Made in Manhattan,” also written and photographed by students who participated in the Manhattan Art Interim. Read it at http://bit.ly/1xUyJQm.
ERIN PETERSON • 763.656.7863 • ERIN@ERINPETERSON.COM • ERINPETERSON.COM
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Field-Tested Feature #2 Nostalgia for people and events There’s amazing stuff happening on your campus every single day. Do you really need to spend page after page covering stuff the parties and concerts that happened decades ago? Do you need to spend a half-dozen pages celebrating the retirement of beloved faculty and staff members? In a word, yes. Of the dozens of responses that I got to my question about what stories generated feedback, historical and nostalgia-based stories won by a landslide. Any time you can help an alum remember a person, an event, or an activity that he or she loved as a student, you’ll open the floodgates for letters and emails from people who want to add to that story. Kathleen Fields, a former editor of Washington University’s magazine (and currently publications and communications editor for the school’s Center for the Humanities) says: Measuring purely by word of mouth, I think our most popular story recently is the print version of our campus bands story: http://bit.ly/1lt52Am. We crowdsourced material for the article, so there was a lot of engagement on the front end via Facebook and on our YouTube channel page (we sent out a promo video). Jackie Stolze, a longtime editor at Grinnell magazine who now works for the University of Iowa, says a specific Grinnell concert topped the list at her school, too: I think the most popular feature was the story about the Bruce Springsteen concert at Grinnell in 1975. We had 17 alumni telling their stories about the concert. We even saw a copy of that issue of the magazine for sale on eBay! And can you go wrong profiling beloved professors, coaches, and other staff members? You cannot. Just ask Jean Scoon, the editor of Saint John’s University’s alumni magazine. The special edition we did honoring Coach Gagliardi’s retirement [John Gagliardi is the winningest coach at any level of college football] was one of the most popular things we’ve done with publications, judged by feedback from alumni. Bonus: You don’t have to dig too far into the past to resonate with the majority of your alums. Shawn Presley noted that more than half of the alums at Kenyon, for example, had graduated since 1990. Though the specifics may differ at your school, you may find that those numbers are roughty accurate. This means you can tell stories that happened much more recently—but still feel confident that they’ll resonate with most of your readers.
ERIN PETERSON • 763.656.7863 • ERIN@ERINPETERSON.COM • ERINPETERSON.COM
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Field-Tested Feature #3 Myths, mysteries, and ghost stories Didja hear the tale about the student who brought a horse to the rooftop of the tallest building on campus? Or that story about the building that was the runner-up location for a billion-dollar movie? Yeah, me too. Students spend four years sharing legendary tales about their school—but they’re not likely spending any time in the archives confirming their veracity. When you can help confirm, deny, or simply add nuance to the campus myths, ghost stories, and mysteries, you’ll delight your alums, who often only know half the story (if that). Nobody knew that better than Kenyon’s Shawn Presley, whose writers told those tales masterfully: We survey after each issue, and the most popular feature we’ve run in the past ten years was on ghost stories. http://bit.ly/1p1Pjb8 Even the cover was one of the most popular. It was a Sibley winner, too. Next up was something called Rural Legends (a play on Urban Legends): http://bulletin.kenyon.edu/x3203.xml --Do you have your own sure-fire hit? Email me at erin@erinpeterson.com and let me know what questions are essential to your interviews. I respond to every email.
ERIN PETERSON • 763.656.7863 • ERIN@ERINPETERSON.COM • ERINPETERSON.COM
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