alumni magazine
Alumni magazines are produced by colleges and universities for their largest constituencies—their students and former students. These publications have always done the work of journalism; they document, interpret, and contextualize changes on campuses and, in many ways, in the larger society.
In 1991, Ceil Cleveland wrote in the Gannett Center Journal about taking on the editorship of an alumni magazine, Columbia College Today at Columbia University. She was reflecting on, and pushing back against, a formula that was adhered to in some places, but that increasingly was seeming outdated—a formula that supported unvarnished cheerleading and was built on a stream of alumni-submitted updates.
At the time Cleveland was writing, editors were beginning to approach alumni magazines with a fresh orientation. That meant not just the practice of good reporting and writing but also the embrace of the values of the academy: treating issues in depth, engaging with big ideas, and not shying away from debate.
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An Alumni Magazine History
Also in 1991, another editor, Patricia Ann LaSalle, wrote a mini-history of alumni magazines for the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). At the time, LaSalle was editor of SMU Magazine at Southern Methodist University. She noted that alumni magazines were slow to arrive in higher education. Harvard University, the United States’ first institution of higher education, was founded in 1636. It became the first to charter an official alumni association, in 1840, and started publishing an alumni periodical in 1898, with the Harvard Bulletin. In 1891, Yale University began publishing a weekly alumni newspaper. Three years later, Princeton University unveiled the Alumni Princetonian as the Saturday edition of its student newspaper. In 1900 the first Princeton Alumni Weekly was published.
By the 1950s, colleges and universities were energized by postwar ambitions. Multimillion-dollar fundraising campaigns helped provide the fuel for those ambitions. In turn, effective fundraising hinged on deepening alumni loyalty. The broad reach of all those magazines in all those mailboxes, generally several times a year, far exceeded that of the familiar alumni reunion weekends, homecomings, and programs in the regions. Through the vehicle of alumni magazines, the campus would come to alumni wherever they were in terms of geography and life cycle. The editor of Johns Hopkins Magazine in the 1950s, Corbin Gwaltney, was among the pioneers in resisting the traditional parochialism of alumni magazines; he would go on to become founding editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education.
The emblematic events of the 1960s—demands to end the Vietnam War, equally vociferous demands for racial equity, a growing embrace among the young of their power as agents of change—often originated or found dramatic (even traumatic) expression on campus. The then-editor at Columbia, George Keller, wrote about Students for a Democratic Society in the context of Columbia; in a larger sense, he was probing the meaning of protests that were consequential far beyond one campus.
Around that time, images came to play a bigger role in storytelling for commercial magazines and for alumni magazines as well. In 1988, Charles Michael Helmken, a longtime designer with CASE, produced a book called Great Ideas, which was a tribute to the growing visual sophistication of alumni magazines (and other campus publications). In the field of alumni magazines, he celebrated the use of vibrant color, fine paper, high-quality printing, and compelling photography and illustration.
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The alumni magazine visuals reproduced in the volume are striking, even today. Many are magazine covers: an illustration of a two-headed woman, representing the dual roles of the working mother, in Radford’s magazine; a photo of a pure-white mouse against a pitch-black background, with the cover line “Immunology: Of Mice and Men,” in Emory’s magazine; the words, stacked in three lines, “Talk to/MMM/MMME,” for a feature on stuttering, in Hollins’ magazine; a blank sheet of ruled paper, for a story on writers and writing, in Columbia’s magazine.
The story layouts reproduced in the volume include some eye-popping examples, along with some that are more subdued, even elegant. The mix seemed appropriate to higher education, which, after all, dedicates itself both to the very traditional act of conserving knowledge and to producing and disseminating fresh discoveries. Design in alumni magazines is itself a storytelling device, and, to make that point, the Helmken volume offers a photo series originally published in the Brown University magazine. Called Tools of the University, it features an empty classroom with chairs arranged, expectantly, in a circle; hands positioned on a computer keyboard, with the hint of something on the cusp of being created; a professor taking up his position at a chalkboard, with the hint of something about to be explained; a stack of musical instruments ready to be played; and then a stack of books ready to be consulted.
Alumni Magazines Tracking the Times
Today, in an echo from the 1960s, a polarized political culture puts colleges and universities under intense scrutiny. A much-publicized Pew Survey from 2017 showed that just 37% of Republican-leaning respondents believed higher education had a positive effect on the direction of the country. Later surveys pointed in the same direction (though other reports found that Republicans and Democrats agreed on the value of a college degree). Analysts pinned those results on a range of factors—a college admissions scandal that, while affecting just a few schools, helped feed the critique that selective admissions programs favor the privileged; well-publicized incidents of controversial speakers being blocked from campus appearances, supporting the narrative of a rampaging political correctness; and rising tuition costs, contributing to the notion of campuses as elite bastions.
All of that speaks to the role of these magazines in addressing issues that pervade the campus, issues that often play out in society. Through honest exploration, the best alumni magazines build understanding of the academic enterprise and strengthen support for it as well.
In 2017, a talk by controversial political scientist Charles Murray was interrupted by demonstrations at Middlebury College. The college’s alumni magazine ran a commentary from the president that helped readers grasp the tough balancing act of a campus leader. She made the case that the college “must find a way to connect the principles of free speech and the creation of a robust public sphere.”
The Carolina Alumni Review, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has documented the strange odyssey of Silent Sam, the Confederate monument that was toppled after standing on campus for 105 years. Late in 2019, members of the UNC System board of governors brokered a settlement with the Sons of Confederate Veterans; it would provide up to $2.5 million to display the statue on private property. The alumni magazine did not shy away from reporting that the Faculty Council condemned the payment, social media lit up with dissent and questions, a legal group filed suit to overturn it, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation said it would not go forward with an anticipated $1.5 million grant.
When COVID-19 came to campuses, in the Spring of 2020, alumni magazines did the documenting. The Summer 2020 issue of Johns Hopkins Magazine offered this feature lineup: “Seeing Red,” about an innovative dashboard created by Hopkins engineers that showed how the pandemic played out in real time; “This Is Not a Drill,” looking at how scientists and researchers at the university’s Center for Health Security, who had long warned of the catastrophic impact of a pandemic, were using their expertise to help lessen the impact of one; “A View From Italy,” providing the COVID-19-related perspective of a faculty member based in Hopkins’ Italy campus; “On Writing History’s First Draft,” on how an undergraduate newspaper had covered the crisis through the voices of students; “Losing Touch,” which charted the physical and emotional toll of COVID-19, through the experiences of a physician who fought the disease at home and on the frontlines; and “Then It All Changed,” recalling how the Hopkins leadership made a series of gut-wrenching decisions around the operations of the university.
Beyond a consequential pandemic, alumni magazines routinely grapple with matters that intellectually curious readers care about and that the academy’s intellectual firepower can unpack. In its Winter 2019–2020 issue, Notre Dame Magazine asked “What’s Wrong With Experts?” reflecting on the devaluing of the wisdom and advice of authorities. In Harvard Magazine, March–April 2020 issue, “Healthy Plate, Healthy Planet” talked about obesity, malnutrition, and a warming planet from the vantage point of a Harvard nutrition scholar. The Winter 2020 Carleton College Voice’s “Character Driven” reflected on the efforts of a multidisciplinary artist brought to campus to help the community explore gender, ethnicity, identity, religion, privilege, and social norms.
How do we acquire language? One answer is in the Stanford Magazine March 2020 story “What the Kids Are Saying These Days,” about a Stanford scholar’s work in that area. And what can one committed individual do to combat climate change? It turns out that a Yale graduate has led the charge to lower California’s carbon output—a story told in the Yale Alumni Magazine January/February 2020 article “The Climate in California.”
Alumni Magazine Futures
Alumni show an enduring attachment to the physical alumni magazine; in its mix of words and images, it serves as a strong reminder of the physical campus. In a monograph for CASE published in 2020, Meredith Barnett, a communications consultant, referred to a survey from the Association of Magazine Media, from 2019, showing that 73% of adults said they enjoyed reading a print magazine more than reading on an electronic device. Although in the commercial world, many print publications have foundered, data indicate that for alumni magazines, print remains powerful. Barnett noted that the digital space is crowded, with tweets, alerts, and emails all vying for readers’ attention. According to a recent CASE Magazine Readership Survey combining the surveying of 91,000 readers by 176 institutions, a quarter of readers said they are not at all likely to view additional alumni magazine content online. Only 10% were very likely to.
The survey also found that alumni learn about the campus chiefly through alumni magazines; in the strength of their influence, the magazines, as printed products, trump email, web-based content, or word of mouth. More than 80% of the alumni surveyed said they read all or most alumni magazine issues. Seventy percent of readers said they prefer to read that content in print; 11% preferred online, and 18% wanted both.
Still, alumni magazines, like journalism enterprises overall, have adjusted to changes in how readers consume information. Tighter printing budgets are likely to accelerate the rethinking. Between printed issues, in its Web Extras category, Dartmouth’s magazine showcased stories about a young graduate’s experience hiking in Nepal, which produced some health challenges along with some lessons in human connections; a photo series documenting an emptied-out campus during the time of COVID-19; and an archival plunge into life at Dartmouth when, during World War II, the college instituted the Navy V-12 program. As campuses were grappling with the coronavirus, the website for LMU Magazine, published by Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, featured podcasts that offered expert opinion on juveniles in detention who were at risk for COVID-19, the economic consequences of the pandemic for the region and the country, the future of U.S. relations with China, and the effectiveness of political leadership in managing a crisis.
Over time, the basic alumni magazine has become more nimble, flexible, and professional. What has not changed is that higher education is rich in storytelling potential, and that through shared stories, campuses and their constituencies are deeply connected.
The original version of this article was published by SAGE Publications in The SAGE Encyclopedia of Journalism.