A friend recently asked me why I thought the world needed another travel magazine. I told her that Stowaway isn’t just another travel magazine.
For one thing, it’s created by students at Brigham Young University who are highly qualified and motivated to write about travel. Besides the fact that they come from or have lived just about everywhere you can think of, many of them have participated in study abroad and service-oriented programs and have learned to speak additional languages.
Some of my students have lived for extended periods in faraway places as they have fulfilled church and humanitarian missions and have learned to love people and cultures around the world. The voices, experiences, and insights of these remarkable students on the subject of travel can’t be found anywhere else.
Another reason Stowaway is unique is that every issue is created by an entirely different group of students during a short 14-week semester. At the beginning of each semester, they submit résumés and letters of application to me, and then I give them specific assignments on the staff—such as managing editor, art director, web manager, business manager, and assistants in each of these areas.
In addition to working on a specific staff assignment, each student also participates in all of the other tasks required to create the magazine: planning, writing, editing, proofreading, designing articles, creating web content, selling ads, working with social media, and so on. By the time the semester is over, the latest issue of the magazine is published online for anyone to read for free.
And something even better is also ready at the end of the semester: students who are qualified for full-time jobs in publishing. They have a printed magazine and an online version to prove it.
Although these students come and go with a wide variety of majors and interests, they all have at least two things in common when they graduate: an editing minor and hands-on experience publishing a real magazine.
As they leave the BYU campus in Provo, Utah, they are taking with them not only a diploma but also highly marketable editing, writing, designing, and web publishing skills.
Wherever they go after they graduate, I hope they’ll remember Stowaway and contribute more stories and photos from their new adventures. And I hope you’ll be inspired by their future stories and photos as you continue reading Stowaway.
—Marv Gardner, Stowaway Editor in Chief