Students establish campus magazine
A group of USU students who hope to bring news to their peers in a meaningful, relateable way have started a news magazine.
Aggie BluePrint is the product of students across campus who realized though USU has a newspaper and various college magazines, such as Liberalis, it didn’t have a magazine specifically to express students’ thoughts, interests and opinions, said Kate Rouse DuHadway, Aggie BluePrint editor in chief.
“I thought we needed a magazine, because a newspaper and a magazine have really different functions,” DuHadway said. “A newspaper is just to get the information out there, but magazines can go in depth about things and really have more opportunities for design and the artistic side of journalism.”
Max Parker Dahl, Aggie BluePrint campus life editor, said Aggie BluePrint is a result of USU’s growth.
“Utah State is a wonderful school, but it is still developing into a world-class university,” Dahl said. “Every year, new buildings and programs are built, athletics continue to improve and reach new heights.”
“The students in (the journalism) department wanted to keep pace with the upward momentum and saw the need for this medium to exist,” Dahl said. “It gives room for deeper focus on the community as well as the university level.”
Rhett Wilkinson, Aggie BluePrint assistant managing editor, conducted a survey of students across campus. He said two-thirds of about 280 respondents agreed that a student magazine could fill a void that neither The Utah Statesman nor college magazines, like Liberalis, filled.
The monthly news magazine will publish its second issue online Feb. 13. Other articles will be added throughout the month as the Aggie BluePrint staff sees fit. DuHadway said Nathan Firth has been crucial in handling graphic design for the magazine.
Aggie BluePrint will have sections covering campus life, politics, fine arts, culture and diversity, style, health, entertainment, science, sports, and opinion. DuHadway said occasionally the staff may add sections such as outdoors for months at a time.
The staff will also compile a calendar of USU and local events and it working to create an interactive quote board on the website for humorous quotes people overhear around campus, she said.
Most students are not aware of news events occurring across campus and mostly just focus on their own colleges or their own groups, DuHadway said, and she hopes Aggie BluePrint can bridge these gaps and bring USU together.
DuHadway said she first had the idea for a student-run news magazine one year ago, when she was assigned to create a business plan in an entrepreneurship class she was taking. She said her business plan did not solidify until this year, though, when she was in a magazine-writing class taught by Cathy Bullock.
“When I was in Cathy Bullock’s class, we had to come up with ideas for articles to submit to a real publication — to a real magazine,” DuHadway said. “A lot of the articles they were coming up with were really good ideas, but none of the publications that existed would have accepted them.
“The other students were talking, saying it would be so awesome if we had a student magazine for Utah State University — not for any one department, but for the whole university — where we could address some of these issues that are important to students that may not get brought up otherwise.”
DuHadway said she then mentioned she already had the business plan for such a magazine but would need help to get it started.
“There were about seven of them from that class, and they were all excited about it and wanted to make it happen,” she said.
Wilkinson then conducted his online survey and said it was helpful to hear from non-journalism students regarding their opinions of and visions for a student magazine. He said the survey offered the group outside views of what it should aim for with the magazine.
It was also from this survey that group members decided to change the magazine’s name from Inversion to Aggie BluePrint.
The staff later heard about Opportunity Quest, an entrepreneurship competition organized by the Huntsman School of Business, and decided to enter its business plan into the contest, DuHadway said.
Though the group did not win Opportunity Quest, it was among the top 10 finalists, and DuHadway said the competition forced the group to hone its business plan and work out the logistics.
“Our business plan was a little different than everyone else’s, because our first goal isn’t to actually make a profit. Our first goal is to make a magazine for USU and to make it sustainable. That’s not necessarily traditional. For these competitions, they’re usually looking for whoever is going to make the most money for the investors,” DuHadway said.
She said for now the group is running as a non-profit club but might soon start working to receive enough in-magazine advertisements to make profit.
DuHadway said Aggie BluePrint has a regular staff but “can always use more contributors.”
She said any length of commitment will
be accepted, and some writers plan to write at least one article each month. Other people simply want to write a single article concerning something they are passionate about.
“I want it to become an interactive voice for all USU residents,” Dahl said.
DuHadway said Aggie BluePrint is designed to allow the magazine to be what USU students and readers want it to be, and they are open to suggestions on how to better the magazine’s content.
She also said she is looking for people with graphic design and programming skills to help Firth with the online production of the magazine.
– bracken_allen@yahoo.com