From the Nominator

Our audience is alumni, our campus community, prospective students, and their families. Our goal is to engage our alumni and campus audiences in an immersive storytelling experience with content that evokes pride and sparks conversation and to demonstrate the value and versatility of a liberal arts education. In the planning of every issue, we ask two questions: "How do we make our magazine stand out amid all the other media competing for our audience's attention?" and "How do we make our audience turn the page?" We do it by being topical, relevant, and in the mix. We do it by ensuring Holy Cross Magazine holds the same value for a reader that any engaging consumer magazine would. The average time on page for each of our top 10 stories of 2024 beat industry standards, which consider a strong AOP to be 52 to 54 seconds. Page views for our top five stories are measured in the thousands. Feedback from letters to the editor includes: "Thank you for the wonderful article on upholding the First Amendment standards of our democracy without hostility," from Ambassador J. William Middendorf II '45, 62nd Secretary of the Navy, and "Not only does community leap out of the pages, but the truly good people from and at Holy Cross are palpable. We were already happy, excited, and proud that our daughter had decided to attend Holy Cross, but your magazine solidified what we were hoping she'd find there," from Marissa Brunetti, M.D.

From the Judges

From its hand and eye feel (Rolling Stone-size) to its image-first strategy, spot-on, arresting titles, and thoughtful use of resources, Holy Cross Magazine blew us away. The narratives were really well done, the imagery beautiful, and the entry truly refreshing to flip through, thanks to plenty of white space, a strong mix of stories, and truly powerful photography. We got a sense of the place and what was important to it, really feeling the Holy Cross point of view. Said one of us, “I get it and I feel it.”