The Wake Student Magazine
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The Wake Student Magazine is a weekly student-operated news and entertainment publication for which University of Minnesota students from many disciplines do all of the reporting, writing, editing, illustration, photography, layout and business management. Student activities fees account for roughly 80 percent of its funding and are supplemented by advertising revenue. The Wake also publishes "[Liminal]http://www.wakemag.org/liminal," a literary journal that was created in 2005.
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[edit] Awards
- Named the nation's best campus publication (2006) by the Independent Press Association
[edit] Manifesto
Boredom, rivers, coffee shops, apathy, discrimination, park benches, Greeks, stoners, athletes, snobs, Abercrombie, Ecko, transit, homeless, police, construction, music, art, alcohol; all of this and more can be found in and around our U. To put it simply, there is a lot going on here. So much, in fact, that it’s hard to understand how one newspaper could possibly deal with all of it…or two, or five, or thirteen.
And so, this is yet another attempt at starting an alternative to the Daily on campus. “But, why?” you may ask. Well, if anything, introducing The Wake will hopefully make our campus slightly more interesting. “More interesting” might mean controversy, entertainment, information or simply eye candy.
Our generation has quite a bit on our plate right now. Everyday we are confronted with frightening terrorist threats, a war nobody seems to understand and an increasingly doom-laden situation in the Middle East. Disturbing as all this is, even more frightening is a generation that does not seem to care.
We are all used to being called apathetic and lazy by the older ones, but few realize that we have very good reason to be.
Few generations have been targeted by advertising and marketing as much as ours. Of course, this involves us being convinced that the new Nokia cell phone skins are a big deal while the new congressional elections “don’t really seem to matter.” Well, they do matter, and I think we all still understand that. All we need is a good chance to talk and think about these very important, very unprofitable things, then wash it all down with some comics.
Listen, our campus, our nation, our world is a complicated place. All we really want to do is talk about it. Talk about what’s good, what’s not good, what matters, what doesn’t matter. Then, hopefully, some people will read it, love it, hate it, argue it, agree with it, frame it, burn it, and write us letters about it-that will be that. Then, the next week another copy will come out and the whole process will begin again.
Our desire is to cover that which matters to our generation, demographic, etc. Not faculty or University employees, but us. Essentially, the only thing this paper concerns is students. If that means talking about Britney Spears, Campaign Finance Reform and the Intramural Broomball Finals on the same page, so be it.
There’s nothing certain when it comes to how well this newspaper will do. If we get advertising, then we’ll be able to survive. If we don’t get advertising, then we’ll keep publishing until we can’t anymore. In either case, we are going to make the most of this and try to make an impact on campus, conversation and life at the U.
[edit] Controversy
Since its 2002 inception, The Wake has been involved in several incidents and "rivalries" of sorts with other Minneapolis-based publications, outlined below.
- Staff members have repeatedly accused Pulse of the Twin Cities, another local arts and entertainment-focused magazine, of plagiarism of graphics and quotes.
- In 2006, the managing editor of The Wake was lambasted by local magazine The Dink after publishing comments criticising The Dink's name, which was said to be often considered a derogatory term for Vietnamese people.
- The Wake has been involved in an ongoing feud with supporters of other campus publication The Minnesota Daily who consider The Wake to be direct competition, despite its alternative format and audience. This feud has been parodied several times by both publications, most notably in each publication's May 2006 "Finals" issue, in which the opposing publication's design and general tone was mocked.
