In college, I started a weekly newspaper called The Harvard Voice, together with Steven Duque (he just finished touring the country with his band, Big Time). Ognjen Ilic was our web mastermind, building the site from scratch in a matter of days.
Starting – and editing – The Voice had been a rather turbulent experience.
It’s extremely hard to organize a group of busy students, and motivate them to collaborate on someting totally new. In other words, something that won’t bring back a dime, nor will look all that spectacular on your resume, when compared to other established media brands on Harvard’s campus.
Yet, we tried to experiment and have fun. We introduced a more relaxed layout, which, from the typography to the treatment of photography, was radically different from other stuff out there. We tried to establish a disctinctive writing style that would combine pressing issues with serious research, and a more student-friendly, fun-to-read style – something I felt was painfully missing on campus. Here’s what my favorite issue looked like:
I think we did a pretty OK job. Now that I’m gone from Harvard, an enthusiastic sophomore Alisha Ramos is taking over, and is, I’m sure, making the publication better than we ever had.
UPDATE: Alisha, who totally rocks, created a new daily blog for the publication. Very impressive.
UPDATE #2: The New York Post accused The Voice of stalking Emma Watson at a recent Harvard-Brown game. Really, Post?