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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Thursday, March 28, 2024

Adjusting content, management, Compass Magazine transforms from Tufts Traveler

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Compass Magazine co-founders sophomore Lorenza Ramirez and junior Lindsay Atkeson pose for a PR photo on Oct. 18.

This semester, former Tufts Traveler staff members junior Lindsay Atkeson and sophomore Lorenza Ramirez transformed the student publication into the Compass Magazine, hoping to appeal to a broader audience and to produce issues of higher quality.

The Traveler was a student-produced travel magazine on campus that exclusively published photography and travel writing collected from open submissions. Aiming to make the Compass more journalistic, Ramirez and Atkeson brought in new staff writers this year, which enhanced the culture of the magazine, Atkeson said. Alongside the two senior editors, the team is comprised of two writing editors, 10 contributing writersone public relations representative and two photography editors.

The editing process for the Compass has been one major point of departure from the Traveler. According to Xinnan Li (LA '13), who was one of the Traveler's two editors-in-chief in 2012-2013, when the Traveler staff received written submissions, it made minimal changes to the pieces before publishing them. However, Ramirez explained that in order to be published in the Compass, all writings need to go through a "serious" editing process, which shows that the team values the content as much as the design, she said.

"We want the magazine to be more accessible to the readers, while keep[ing] it professional," Ramirez said.

Li also mentioned that the team used to have meetings once every two or three weeks, whereas the Compass has weekly meetings this semester and has become more cohesive as a team than in the past, Atkeson said.

By taking a new direction, Ramirez and Atkeson hope that they can better connect with students and effectively craft a community of people who are interested in travel and international topics.

"The Compass is an evolution of the Traveler," Ramirez said, "We not only want to take the design to the next level, but also the writing as well."

Ramirez explained that the team changed the publication's name from the Traveler to the Compass at the beginning of the semester.

"We chose the Compass because we really want to take [a] new direction this year," Atkeson said, noting the symbolic content of the compass as something that can lead people to new paths and allow them to expand their horizons.

While content in the Traveler focused on trips abroad, many pieces in the Compass focus on explorations within the United States instead, which can be helpful to those who do not have the luxury to travel all over the world, Ramirez said.

Ramirez and Atkeson met at the beginning of the last academic year, when they both worked on the Traveler's design team. Atkeson had been working on the magazine's production team for two years, while Ramirez had just joined the team as a first-year, Atkeson said.

According to Atkeson, the Traveler lacked management and cooperation among its team members.

It was fun and enjoyable, but I could not see...the future of this magazine, and I felt the vision for the Traveler wasn't coming together as [well] as it could have been," she said. 

Ramirez explained that throughout the summer, she and Atkeson started thinking about doing something completely different and ultimately decided to take the magazine in a new direction. She added that multiple experiences with publishing in high school spurred her to take the Traveler to a new level.

"I was the Editor-in-Chief of my yearbook, and basically of every magazine in my high school," Ramirez said, "I think because I have this leadership skill, and have produced major publications before...I had that drive to create something new."

According to Atkeson, the core team of the Compass is better organized and distributes labor more effectively than the Traveler.

"We have been working really well together as a team," Atkeson said.

The Compass printed 400 copies of its Dec. 1 issue this semester, which contains some personal reflection pieces and a major feature piece. The team is currently working on distributing the issue, Atkeson said.

"[The feature piece] is called 'Deconstructing Paradise,' which is a reflection and a response to a piece written in the Observer earlier," Ramirez said. "We really want to get conversation started."

Noting the changes the new team has made, Li looks forward to the future of the Compass.

"The Compass is heading to a great direction, and I think [a] magazine's quality is very much dependent on [its] chief editors," Li said. "Having a consistent style and a good quality is not very easy."