STANFORD MAGAZINE

If you graduated from a university, chances are that you receive some kind of regular publication from your school for free.  The reason is that the administration wants to keep in touch with you, for this publication is many times also read by others, leading to future students.  Plus, donations are always welcome.  Here are ten noteworthy examples.

I read an article last year, Alumni Magazines as a Key Part of Alumni Communications.

• Many alumni magazines are shifting from hard copy to digital platforms.
• This is much cheaper and also keeps up with the times.
• However, a surprise is that recent graduates sometimes complain that they want to receive something like this in the mail:

“Oh, we love getting this! We get so few things in print anymore that this is really special to us, and we hang on to it, and it’s on our coffee table, and we flip immediately to alumni notes to see if our friends are there and see if their photos are in print, because they live in a digital world.”

• The message is that print is not dead.  At least for alumni magazines.

My magazine is called STANFORD.    

• Is sent through the mail 5 times/year.
• Began publishing in 1973.
• If for any reason you wish to read it, go to THIS.  Free.  Oh, I should add that most university alumni magazines come free.  Some high schools have them too, but usually this is only a newsletter.
• Here is a quick summary of the summer issue, cover to the right above.

• 
  Jonathan Levin became Stanford University's 13th president on 1August2024.  The president always has the lead article.  He is allowed to brag a lot, as for example:

Stanford Athletics has a distinctive

tradition. We compete with Harvard and

Princeton in the classroom, and with Texas

and Ohio State on the field, and we’re suc-

cessful. Stanford has the most NCAA

championships and the most Directors’ Cups

for the best overall athletics results in a year,

and we had 59 students and alumni compete

last summer in the Paris Olympics.

One of the articles was titled, Big Fish, and it had to do with how Stanford graduates created Jaws.  Often considered to be the first summer blockbuster, the film was produced by Richard Zanuck, '56 and David Brown, '36.  The numbers refer to when they graduated from Stanford. The shark had a name, Bruce, and was a 25-foot, man-eating, animatronic great white shark, where the closing credits name L.J.V Compagno, PhD '79, who made the shark look frighteningly real.

If the name Richard Zanuck looks familiar, his father was Darryl Zanuck, co-founder of 20th Century Fox, who produced three films that won the Academy Award for Best Picture.  Son Richard also did well, for he produced Driving Miss Daisy, which won an Oscar for Best Picture.  He also launched the career of Steven Spielberg, who directed Jaws.  The other producer David Brown is a 1936 Stanford grad.  That photo is of Brown, Spielberg and Darryl Zanuck on the Jaws set in 1975.

Nothing to do with university magazines, but as a public service, I end with an alert:  watch out for the price of your printed daily newspaper subscription.

• At dinner talk where I live, someone mentioned that he was paying more than $100/month and was shocked.
• Turns out that most subscribers pay through some kind of deduction from a source you identify.  However, you never see the actual bill and lose sight of the cost.
• I looked at how much I was paying and was too shocked that the bill was more than $100/month.
• What newspapers do is to add a small (and not so small) amount/year so that after a whole number of years, the tab mushrooms.
• The solution is to quit, at which time the newspaper offers you an offer that is hard to refuse.
• In my case, I now pay $14/month for an internet version of the paper, plus a delivered hard copy of the Sunday paper.
• Very early in this transition, you get used to it and don't really miss the daily paper.  I usually do turn to the computer link and get a sense of the news, although I now scan and do not read.

About daily newspapers, here is a Pew report.

• Over the past 40 years, even with our population growing by 40%, the number of daily subscribers has dropped by a factor of three.  See above graphic.
• Share of advertising revenue coming digitally is now around 50%.

I guess you must know by now that Donald Trump likes to fire people, especially those who have defied him in some way.  Trump already won a $16 million lawsuit over CBS, and further leaned on them to fire Stephen Colbert.  So he is gone, right?  Wrong!  CBS will retire The Late Show franchise in May of 2026, calling it purely a financial decision.  But looks like Colbert will remain as late night host, and so will the 200 staffers linked to the show.  As you must know, he took over the desk from David Letterman in 2015.  Before that, he hosted "The Colbert Report" on Comedy Central.  Do you think Stephen Colbert will really retire?  He is 61-years old.  His latest?  Below.  I lot more will be coming from the Late Night Show over the next 8 months.  Trump has done his part in boosting the ratings for Colbert.

-