Editor-in-chief Julia Skeval (pictured above) takes a look at one of the campus media outlets that is published exclusively online, Her Campus. Her Campus at Geneseo is a relatively new campus media publication that represents a chapter of a larger national publication (Emma Boskovski/News Editor).
Media publications such as the WGSU radio station, Memories Campaign, Her Campus at Geneseo, MiNT Magazine and Gandy Dancer all corroborate in expressing their desire for larger visibility on campus.
Along with visibility comes a similar expressed desire from each publication for the campus community to engage more with campus media. Based on the figures provided by each publication leader, every campus media organization, excluding The Lamron, has an average of 13 members.
WSGU Marketing Director junior Ben Michalak explained WGSU is chartered by SUNY, licensed by the Federal Communications Commission and spans a radius of about 20 miles in Livingston County.
The station has a live link on the Geneseo website. It plays “alt-pop” female artists as a “smarter, friendlier alternative,” broadcasts Ice Knight games and recently began to cover local sports, according to Michalak.
“Just recently we started covering high school football,” Michalak said. “We’re not just here for the college community to cover college related things. We’re a local radio also covering local sporting events. That’s something we hope to do with future events as well.”
Michalak said that the station holds remote broadcasts, produces the annual Genny Fest and holds competitions to be featured at events to promote WGSU.
“I think that in a sense, with all those promotional and visibility efforts that we make, when people are actually a part of it and they understand what WGSU is about and what we’re doing and what their role is, that makes it all the better in terms of visibility,” Michalak said.
The station currently has around 15 to 20 active members, and the team works as a “cohesive” and “tight-knit” group that is working well so far, according to Michalak. Despite the dedicated members, Michalak said he would love to see more people involved with WGSU, as it would be less of a time commitment for all members then and increase idea flow and diversity.
Overall, Michalak expressed that radio might not be the “student’s first choice” but hopes to reach a wider audience and gain more members if there was more visibility regarding the opportunities WGSU could provide.
“In terms of pre-professional opportunities for, let’s say, communication and English majors, I think things like WGSU and even The Lamron are perfect for that,” Michalak said. “I think if anything it’s about making those opportunities on a campus level better advertised to students.”
The Memories Campaign is another media organization on campus that struggles to achieve greater visibility.
President of Memories Campaign junior Katherine Peter said that the publication’s goal is to “preserve the oral history of Geneseo” by listening to older community members and creating chapbooks of their lives.
“It’s the people who have lived in Geneseo their whole lives and made it what it is now,” Peter said. “We want to make sure we’re preserving those voices.”
Peter said the organization promotes the club by sending weekly emails to their mailing list and ‘Whatsup,’ tabling in the MacVittie College Union at the club and volunteer fairs and holding fundraisers in previous years.
The Memories Campaign has about six active members that spread out most of the work amongst themselves, but it is often difficult to finish chapbooks and start new ones, according to Peter.
“It’s work to transcribe and make the chapbook. A lot of times, people can’t make that sort of commitment which I totally understand, and it’s even hard for me,” Peter said. “If we can focus on one thing, we could finish a chapbook or go out and do a new interview or start a fundraiser or something. Right now, it’s all getting half-done by all of us. I think it would be beneficial to be able to spread out a little bit more and specialize.”
Peter noted that it is difficult to publicize on campus when students begin to ignore tables in the union and unsubscribe from listservs.
“I think allowing us to publicize in a way that’s new [is important] because at this point students know where the publicity is happening and they don’t pay attention to it,” Peter said. “I honestly don’t know because I feel like we’ve done everything possible and I don’t know what the next step would be.”
Her Campus is a fairly new media organization on campus that is geared toward college-aged women or other marginalized voices, according to co-president junior Kayla Glennon.
“If you have something that you can’t normally express and you want to express it here, then we will allow you to write a whole article,” Glennon said. “You could write a whole series of articles about [your topic] if you want to and we will get it published.”
Glennon explained that there have been numerous promotion efforts to gain new members, such as tabling at the club fair, hosting a DIY Bullet Journaling event with Geneseo Late Knight and sending many emails to the campus community.
“We always want more names and more ideas and more voices because our members are always coming up with new ideas,” Glennon said. “I think that’s a lot of the reasons that some people stay in the club is that they have so many bursting ideas all the time that they love writing down and getting them published.”
Her Campus has about six to 10 active members, according to Glennon. They express the want for new members in order to hear more voices across campus.
Glennon said that since Her Campus is a new online media organization on campus, it is often hard to spread the word because most of the work is done online. However, they explain how it is hard to make students care about media.
“I can see how a lot of the media on campus is a little bit invisible. I always just think you can’t force people to look at this stuff. You can’t force people to write for us,” Glennon said. “People will either disregard what you’re doing or acknowledge it, and hopefully they acknowledge it, but there’s a good amount of people disregard it.”
Editor-in-chief of MiNT Magazine junior Lara Mangino also has similar problems gaining membership and submissions. MiNT Magazine is a literary magazine that publishes student writing and artwork once a semester.
“The purpose of MiNT Magazine is to publish student writing and artwork—creative and academic writing as well as photography, paintings, drawings and stuff like that—for consumption by the campus so people can see the artwork and creative process their fellow students are up to,” Mangino said.
Mangino has also done extensive advertising from tabling at the club fair, sending emails, hanging posters and even speaking to professors and classes.
She explained MiNT has about 10 members, but if there were more active members, the quality of production would increase.
“I think having more members would most primarily take the burden off the current members,” Mangino said. “Additionally, if we could get bigger meetings in general that’s a lot more voices going into reviewing the submissions off the magazine because I think that’s a lot more fair to the authors and the artists.”
Mangino believes that students “branching out of their specific interest area” could increase submissions and memberships and wishes she saw a larger variety of majors.
“I don’t know how many business [or STEM] majors know about the magazine. It’s certainly a lot harder to reach them because their primary focus isn’t writing and artwork,” Mangino said. “In a perfect world, I would like everyone on this campus to know about MiNT Magazine, but it’s a lot harder to reach certain people—especially on a campus that you have 5,000 people to reach.”
Another on-campus literary magazine is Gandy Dancer, but it is very different from MiNT Magazine.
Co-managing editor of Gandy Dancer junior Nicole Callahan explained that publishing the magazine is a class offered by the English department where students can learn more about publishing.
“Gandy Dancer is a literary magazine that any student in the SUNY system can submit to,” Callahan said. “For Gandy Dancer, you are being guided into knowing more than you did when you entered the class.”
Since Gandy Dancer accepts work from all SUNY schools, a lot of advertising is done off-campus by other colleges and as in-class assignments for the team to reach out to their friends for submission, according to Callahan.
She explained that the class is generally full of passionate students, but there is still a lack of involvement and submissions from the rest of the campus.
“[Students] form nice groups in each section—fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction. They bond over the submissions and over selecting submissions to enter the actual magazine,” Callahan said. “I think faculty know about us, but I’m not really sure how much students know about us who haven’t been in the class or are in the English department.
Callahan explained that there is “a unique sort of balance between engagement and lack of engagement” since there are online and print versions.
“I know that our website gets visitors, but I don’t think we have as many students purchase the actual full magazine except for those who have been in the class, will be in the class or those who are published in it,” Callahan said.
She agrees that there is a “drought” for media publications on-campus.
“We lack a connecting rod that I think we’ll have to materialize in order to move us forward and bring light to all publications and increase our membership, our readership and all that,” Callahan said.
Mangino expressed a similar sentiment of connecting media on campus.
“Also, in the future, I’d like to work more with The Lamron, Gandy Dancer and a lot of other media publications,” Mangino said. “I’d like to work more to increase awareness and participation for all of our publications because I think high tides raise all ships.”
Callahan urges students to participate more with on-campus media.”
“Submit to Gandy Dancer and submit to all the other publications too. Write an article for The Lamron sometime or Her Campus. Submit to MiNT. Do all the things,” Callahan said.
Associate news editor Rebecca Williamson is the co-president of Her Campus and is the fiction editor of Gandy Dancer. News editor Emma Boskovski conducted these interviews and thus contributed reporting to this article.