Break Into Writing for Alumni Magazines

A sea of magazine/website publications abound that the average person rarely sees, which means a lot of writers aren’t aware of them. One of those is the world of alumni magazines.

(Find Success Pitching to Magazine Families.)

Their market may be finely niche, but their revenue comes from solid advertising or financial support, and they pay their writers. These markets pay in the mid-range, from 10 to 50 cents per word, and the rejection rate runs lower than most publications.

But wait, you say. Don’t you have to be an alumnus, a practicing professional or a specific graduate? Not necessarily.

What Is an Alumni Publication?

There isn’t a college alumni association that doesn’t have a magazine that represents the finer points and successful stories of the college, its students, its faculty, and its graduates. The college may be no larger than Berea College in Kentucky with 1,600 students, or a huge university like Arizona State University with over 75,000, but they use a magazine to keep its alumni, otherwise known as financial donors, informed. Those articles have to be written by experienced writers, and they rely heavily on freelance.

Do you have to be a graduate? While having graduated from the school gives you a leg up, you don’t necessarily have to have graduated from there if you have intimate knowledge of the school’s accomplishments or any of its successful graduates.

What Type of Topics

Each school has a unique voice in its publication, so get your hands on several issues and study them hard. In studying Clemson World, published four times a year, you’ll find topics such as cultural heritage, award winners, medical breakthroughs, energy and environmental accomplishments (and the students and/or professors who orchestrated them). Then you’ll find recipes suitable for tailgating and spotlights on graduates who’ve done something phenomenal, like ex-governor David Beasley, a Clemson graduate who now serves as executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme. There are personal essays on graduates, especially those multi-generational graduate families, and even those who are younger and breaking into their careers, making Clemson proud. It’s not just about football.

The topics are insanely vast. The bigger the school, the bigger the stories, but don’t negate the accomplishments of a smaller school. For instance, around this writer’s geography can be found a dozen colleges or universities, and a day doesn’t go by that she doesn’t come across a graduate from one of them. Some are politicians, others entrepreneurs, others doing volunteer work that matters. Find out their alma mater, define their niche and accomplishments, then pitch wherever they graduated from.

Dig deeply enough, and you might find quite the intriguing human interest piece. Discover how graduates and professors and students are making a difference in the world, and you have much potential for column and features pieces .

Create a Theme and Build on It

To increase your potential of writing for alumni markets, rather than just interviewing an interesting person, consider a theme around which you can build a story that lists three or four or more people.

How many graduates are publishing books these days? Have any of them become bestsellers or demonstrated popularity in the state? On one hand you might find a history or anthropology grad who published on a particular piece in history. Then you run across an English graduate now writing literary fiction, and a law graduate covering political issues.

From another angle, choose a city in your state and research several grads making a difference in that immediate geography, focusing on their impact and efforts to create a better quality of life for those particular residents.

Do a piece on teachers, entrepreneurs, medical professionals, or volunteerism. Learn about those making social change. Consider pieces on new students making great strides already in their young lives.

Do a Q&A Piece

Consider a piece where graduates are asked the same question and offer advice to students. Or have them explain what graduating from their school means to them. Ask how said college impacted them as human beings, not just professionals. Have graduates offer their best tailgate recipe. Show the intimate and more personal side of these people.

Reach Back Into History

Every college has a history it’s proud of. The older the school, the richer the history. A lot of this history is phenomenal. Some history turns into something to overcome, with the success story being how growth occurred from that effort.

How did a school get started and how and why did it change? Who are the people, or their heirs, who instigated change? How are they preserving the history of their ancestors?

What about long-term friendships from college days that evolved into something poignant or earth-shaking? That turned into partnerships or lifesaving events?

Interview an elder graduate in the winter of their life, demonstrating what they remember so many decades ago, how their college life molded them, and how times have changed, maybe what was better then or may be better now.

Don’t Say You Are Not an Alumnus

Instead, pitch a fantastic story. Alumni/university magazines could even become your niche, painting you as an expert in finding how colleges are making a difference in the world. Clemson World, for instance, recently posted 12 contributing writers in its masthead, with only three being graduates.

(4-Step Strategy to Pitch Articles and Get Published.)

The bigger the publication, the more open they are to freelancers, often growing their topics into a broader scale. Magazines for Johns Hopkins, University of Toronto, Northern Arizona, Boston University, and Columbia University, for instance, love big ideas similar to that of commercial glossy magazines.

Get your foot in the door by presenting a piece that not only screams a particular school but also encompasses a great theme, a theme so great that your lack of sheepskin from that university does not matter, because you can talk it and have found the resources to paint it beautifully.

The Magazines Are Not Competition With Each Other

Each university has a unique market, in other words, the readership does not cross, therefore, the magazines do not compete against each other. The theme you choose for one publication can be utilized in several others, with different graduates/students/professors, of course. One concept can be reapplied several times with different angles. For instance, a piece on graduates who have published books can apply to every magazine of every university.

Alumni magazines are grossly overlooked. They are often free to alumni, and you can get your hands on them easily enough through the publisher or the graduates themselves.

Start, however, with the one that pertains to you, your alma mater. Make them look at you twice because you finished from that school. Write-what-you-know applies and could land you your first few credits before you branch out into other schools.

Go back to school and show them how good a writer you’ve evolved into, and you might even become one of their focal pieces yourself.