Alumni Magazines

Alumni magazines are magazines produced by colleges and universities for their largest constituencies. 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on, and [Page 94]pushing back against, a formula that was adhered to in some places, but that increasingly was seeming outdated—a formula that supported unvarnished cheerleading and was built on a stream of alumni-submitted updates.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 ...