Student Media looks to future

by Karli Bayliss

The 2022-23 school year has been a challenging one for Student Media. Although faced with many unexpected events, employees persevered, produced award-winning content and made needed changes to the organization.

The school year started out great for Student Media, as the first issue of the Indigo Magazine was released within the first few weeks of the fall semester. However, the organization would hit its first snag in October when both the editor-in-chief, Alyssa Storm, and managing editor, Maggie Cabrera, resigned to focus on schoolwork and other responsibilities.

Justin Sheppard and Aja Carter respectively took over these positions, but this leadership wouldn’t last long either. As Sheppard graduated in December, Carter was appointed to editor-in-chief and LeSha’ Davis to managing editor. Carter, junior mass media major, recalls how these shifts impacted Student Media.

“That change in leadership was really hard for us all as a team, just because it was a major switch-up for us in the middle of the semester. But I think we got through that pretty quickly and were able to work through it. I think that was the biggest struggle we had this year,” said Carter.

Another challenge was getting the next magazine produced and printed. Christina Noland, senior mass media major and editor-in-chief of the Indigo Magazine and KAW Yearbook, had originally planned for the second issue to be on campus by November. However, due to multiple staff members falling ill, difficulties with the outsourced printer and other factors, magazines didn’t hit newsstands until mid-February. Nevertheless, the magazine went on to win awards and the public’s admiration.

“The Indigo Magazine cover for the one that dropped this semester got a silver ADDY Award for cover design and it got silver overall for the entire magazine content. People are recognizing the quality of work that Student Media is doing, and I’m really happy about it,” said Noland.

Many other things started turning around for Student Media in the spring, including the launching of a new podcast, IchaPod, and receiving an upsurge of applicants to begin as content creators. Although the organization needed more reporters, 30 plus new hires was a lot for leaders to manage.

LeSha’ Davis, junior English major, acknowledged that something needed to be done about this.

“Content is hard to create when we have a lot of new people coming in and out all the time. Keeping a team together is pretty hard in Student Media because it’s not like other student employment jobs where you can just come to an office and have tasks already built out for you. It does take a lot of work behind the scenes.”

So, the executive team created a training system where new employees write eight different types of content before getting assigned to a team. This training has also allowed staff to determine who is ready to put in the work to create outstanding content.

“With our new tier-one training, we’ve gotten the chance to cover a lot more stuff, and we’ve had a lot more different content opportunities. Specifically, different things like lifestyle features, where we get to write more opinion pieces and focus on things outside of events. We’ve also got a lot of diversity within our staff. I think we’re publishing a lot more, and I feel like we’re getting a bit more attraction than normal as well,” said Carter.

In an effort to continue this growth into the next academic year, staff spent the last weeks of the semester prepping for the loss of graduating seniors. This pertains to over half of the executive staff, including Noland.

“Since so many of us just so happen to be graduating in May, I’m kind of concerned because that’s so much leadership just gone. But I’m sure that, come fall, the people who were looking for leadership this semester will step up to replace the gaps,” said Noland.

Student Media ended the year on a positive note by winning the Kansas Collegiate Media All-Kansas award for the fall 2022 Indigo Magazine. Several individual awards were earned at the conference as well. Simran Shrestha, senior molecular biology and biotechnology major and copy chief, attributes Student Media’s achievements in the past year to its employees’ work ethic.