Student Magazine Wins Awards

Stowaway magazine, a student-produced travel publication at BYU, garnered two national awards for publishing excellence last year. The grassroots periodical received the Bronze Award for “Best Editorial/ New Publication” in the Print/Magazine category of the 2011 ContentWise Magnum Opus Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Custom Media, presented in conjunction with the Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri–Columbia. Stowaway also won the Award of Excellence for “Custom-Published Magazines and Journals,” presented by the 2011 APEX Awards for Publication Excellence.
“These awards speak to the caliber of the editing students at BYU,” said Carrie Van Dusen Akinaka, student managing editor for the Winter 2011 issue, which received both awards. Published since 2010, Stowaway is a quarterly travel magazine created and published as a project in English Language 430R, the capstone class of the editing minor. Each semester, all class members contribute to planning, writing, editing, designing, creating web content, and selling ads. The niche magazine aims to inspire the imagination of college-aged readers and encourage them to explore the world, immerse themselves in different cultures, and create their own adventures through exciting and meaningful travel that includes service, education, and leisure.
Publishing Stowaway “helps students gain highly marketable skills in editing, writing, designing, and web publishing,” said editor-in-chief Marvin K. Gardner, professor of English language in the Department of Linguistics and English Language. The magazine is unique in that every issue is created by an entirely different group of undergraduates. Gardner, who came to BYU after a twenty-eight-year career as an editor and managing editor of the Liahona and Ensign magazines published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, enjoys the challenge. “At the end of each semester, after the issue has been printed and published online, the students graduate, and I start on a new issue with a new group. The awards are tributes to their skills, talents, and creativity.”
Chelsee Ostler, teaching assistant to the class when the awards were won, said that the students put in ten to twenty hours a week on the magazine staff. “When we first saw the awards, it was exciting to realize that we are part of something reaching people across the world,” she said. Stowaway currently has online readers in 112 nations. Complete copies of current and past issues of Stowaway can be read online at www.stowawaymag.com. Free digital versions of the magazine are also available at www.magcloud.com/browse/magazine/ 45637. MagCloud also offers a free iPad app that includes access to all issues.