PRINTVox turns 10
Vox celebrates its tin anniversary
May 15, 2008 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Vox cover gallery
Happy 10th birthday to us — kind of.
Although Vox is officially turning 10, our evolution can be traced back more than 30 years, when vox was still only another esoteric Latin word. In the spirit of celebrating our future by remembering our past, we have dusted off the archives, tracked down some of our history and examined our lifelong relationship with MU’s School of Journalism.
The story of Vox’s genesis begins in the ’70s. After several failed attempts, Roy Fisher, the school’s dean, decided there should be a magazine with the Sunday Missourian. He wanted one that would be tuned into the community so as to be able to predict the future — a magazine on “the edge of things to come.” By the end of 1972, Vibrations was being published.
Located in the bowels of Neff Hall, the magazine’s headquarters were not only home to 25 to 30 members of staff but also the office of Don Ranly, the editorial director. At the time, Vibrations didn’t have its own newsstands or an independent advertising section. The Missourian’s prestigious newsroom bustling down the hall reminded everybody that the magazine was second to the newspaper.
The struggle for legitimacy was difficult — a few professors told students their stories were too good for publication in the magazine. “We were starved for articles,” Ranly says. Eventually, however, Vibrations found its forte and became the blueprint for later generations of magazines.
In the wake of Vibrations’ success came Ideas, a Sunday magazine that covered weightier issues and topics such as politics and international stories. This would become half of Vox. The entertainment section would grow out of a different publication altogether. Enter Weekend.
Weekend was a Thursday entertainment magazine that previewed events and acted as a weekend guide for the city. In 1998, graduate student Adam Purvis merged the weeklies and presented the result under a new moniker — Vox. Jennifer Rowe, another graduate student and editor of Weekend, became involved with the project and would eventually rise to the position of editorial director. Although other professors have donned the title as well, it is a position she continues to hold most semesters today.
The management of Vox is like an iceberg to the public: You only see a small percentage of the work that goes on. For many who work in 320 Lee Hills Hall, Vox is a job, a class and a learning experience for breaking into the industry. For their bosses, it is a professional publication but also a place of discovery. A laboratory first, Vox allows students to learn how a magazine operates and, more importantly, produce its content.
Since that first issue, the staff has completely changed three times a year for the past 10 years. With such turnover comes a regular shift in focus and ideas. Vox has worked with MU’s English department for an Onion-esque fiction issue and published profiles written from a dog’s perspective. One year, a reporter was sent out on assignment and came back with an epic poem. Although Homer might consider it a tragedy, the poem never made it to publication. But the constant need to try new things has remained.
“I hope we will never stop taking risks,” Rowe says. “This is the chance for students to try crazy stuff.”
Like the little brother carving his own niche in the family, Vox has won its share of awards, including the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s General Excellence award. But as nice as it is to hang up those awards in the office, when you ask those most involved in the magazine about their proudest achievements, they find something else they hold in higher esteem: watching the students move on and succeed at some of the most successful magazines around.
“Art directors have all gone onto big magazines,” says Jan Colbert, who oversees Vox’s design. “The experience they get designing in Vox gets them everywhere.” She recalls the magazines that employ her students like children recite the candy they get on Halloween: O, Portfolio, Cookie, W, Outside Magazine.
Rowe, who has saved every issue of Vox she has ever been involved with, has another file tucked away in her office. It contains all the letters, e-mails and cards from former students thanking her for their professional success.
“You feel like you’ve done your job when students leave and send notes and say, ‘I’m at ESPN The Magazine, and it’s just like Vox,’” Rowe says. “They are able to take on more responsibility because they’ve done it before.”
She remembers when she received an e-mail from another former student hired at a consumer magazine with two others. It explained that he beat out his co-workers for a promotion because his boss thought he had been better trained and was able to make the jump faster.
“When you have those bad days or you make mistakes with an issue, those are the days I pull (the letters) out and read them,” Rowe says.
Vox has faced successes and failures, and hopefully we’ve sprinkled some wit, whimsy and wisdom along the way. Although we’ve shared much in the last decade, there is still more to do. On the roads we travel, all of the signs point to cyberspace — the next horizon for the good ship Vox and its ever-changing crew. The trip so far has been merry, and we hope you continue to follow our journey as we venture into territories both well-tread and unknown.
