Ambitious Alumni Outreach
Jane Bihldorff graces the cover of Milton Academy’s fall 2021 magazine. The cover photo captures Bihldorff (class of ’65) standing on her family’s 450-acre farm in Canton, Massachusetts, U.S. She looks calm, open—at peace. And perched in her hands is a white chicken, one beady eye staring down the camera.
“We all loved the photo pretty instantly,” says Marisa Donelan, Associate Director of Communication at Milton and Associate Editor of the magazine. “It’s a statement.”
The issue was part of Milton Academy’s winning submission for CASE’s 2022 Robert Sibley Magazine of the Year Award. This is the first time an independent school has received the honor for alumni magazines. According to the awards judges, “Milton Magazine does what print magazines do best: it offers a thoughtful, intellectual, and engaging departure.”
Stories like Bihldorff’s are central to the magazine’s success, which uses themes and a strong marriage of words and visuals to highlight students, faculty, and graduates of the Massachusetts, U.S., K-12 boarding and day school.
The magazine is created by a small team of editors and one freelance designer who work to educate, challenge, and inspire readers. They collaborate to produce two issues a year in the fall and spring, which feature alumni-written columns, student artwork, and occasional pieces from freelance writers.
Thematic Element
A unique and longstanding tradition of Milton Magazine is its use of themes. Each issue has a theme; past themes include imagination, journalism, and art. The fall 2022 issue focused on the future of education, spotlighting alumni working in education, as well as Milton’s school-wide teaching and learning initiatives.
Donelan and Editor Sarah Abrams brainstorm ideas for timely themes together.
“It’s a combination of what’s happening on campus, what’s going on in the world, [and] what challenges our alumni are facing,” says Donelan. In some cases, Donelan and Abrams start with a particularly great story and build a theme around it.
The food issue (with Bihldorff and the chicken on the cover) was published in fall 2021, following the first year and a half of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“[By then] people had been vaccinated [and] we saw some light at the end of the tunnel. We decided that, after several issues that covered difficult topics, we’d do something a little bit lighter,” says Abrams.
The issue features alumni who used the power of food to share Asian American stories, an alumna who heads an urban farming initiative, and recipes from alumni and staff, to name a few highlights.
Themes are a way for the editorial team to navigate and orient the reader through the magazine. A theme structure, explains Abrams, serves as a good organizing tool for both the reader and the team who can share their ideas through this lens.
Visuals that Speak
The team also boosted readability with a redesign in fall 2020. They rearranged the flow to incorporate more campus storytelling in the front of the magazine—an idea Donelan took away from the CASE Editors Forum in 2019.
For the redesign, Milton brought on freelance designer Patrick Mitchell of Modus Operandi Design, whom Abrams credits for infusing the publication with new ideas. More sidebars, photos with captions, and pull quotes were added. Abrams explains how offering readers different ways to access information increased the complexity of the magazine.
Sibley Award judges wrote: “We found the design smart and balanced throughout, filled with thoughtful illustration and photography choices that perfectly matched the tone of the narrative.”
Mitchell’s extensive experience and network of illustrators and photographers has taken the magazine to a new level and allows the visuals to truly complement the writing, explains Donelan.
The award-winning 2021 issues featured writing by both Donelan and Abrams, as well as Liz Matson, former Co-Associate Editor.
“Something that a lot of Milton alumni pride themselves on is a strong tradition of writing. … I think we’ve been able to honor that [in the magazine],” says Donelan.
Recently she loved writing an editorial featuring alumnus CJ Hunt, a former Daily Show producer and director of a PBS documentary, The Neutral Ground. She’s also proud of writing stories that detail how educators teach reading to Milton’s youngest students and how the school has overcome the challenges of the pandemic to maintain connections.
“A really excellent publication is one that is intelligent and challenges the reader. The content is very thoughtful, and the stories are well executed, as well as the visuals,” says Abrams.
Sibley judges “admired both the story choices and concepts, as well as the depth and dimension of the storytelling.”
Alumni-Driven Storytelling
Milton’s storytelling is people-driven and features the school’s diverse and talented alumni.
This is reflected throughout the winning issues, which feature stories about alumni across professional fields and from around the globe, young and old alike. Bihldorff’s cover was particularly notable, as she is older than other alumni and students recently featured on the magazine’s covers. Another alumnus celebrated in the food issue—Nick DiGiovanni (class of ’15)—the youngest-ever finalist on MasterChef who now shares recipes with millions of followers on TikTok.
Milton’s alumni make for compelling storytelling. It’s an enjoyable job for Donelan and Abrams to learn about and get to know the academy’s graduates.
“What I love about the magazine is the opportunity to write about alumni in every possible field,” says Donelan. Milton graduates are leaders in medicine, politics, journalism, and the arts (performing and visual), and more, she says.
The challenge, Abrams explains, is identifying those alumni who might have great stories to tell. The school’s administration and faculty pass along suggestions, and Abrams and Donelan work closely with Milton’s alumni office for ideas.
“This is an amazing group of people who are getting this magazine. We want to make sure that it reflects their curiosity and intelligence,” says Abrams.
Elevating Excellence
In the future, the editorial team is considering how to elevate the magazine by expanding digital content that would be available and relevant year-round. Ultimately, Milton’s theme issues, filled with complementary writing and visuals, have made the publication resonate with alumni, staff, and Sibley judges.
“We are very honored to win the Sibley Award,” says Donelan. “I think I read the email about 50 times before I shared it with the team. … It was really phenomenal, and it made us feel really validated in the work that we’re doing.”
An Ambitious Magazine
Milton Magazine, winner of the 2022 Robert Sibley Magazine of the Year.
Celebrating The Sibley Award
The CASE Robert Sibley Magazine of the Year Award has its origins in 1918 with the creation of Alumni Magazines Associated, a group of 40 college and university editors who joined together to secure advertisers for their publications.
Eventually the association joined the American Alumni Council, a predecessor to CASE, in 1927 and expanded its purpose to include recognizing best practices and rewarding innovative alumni magazines. The first awards were handed out in 1929 with more than 100 magazines competing for best editorial, best story about alumni achievement, among other categories. California Monthly of the University of California, Berkeley, U.S., took home top honors for articles about alumni. Robert Sibley was the editor of this winning publication.
Sibley served the magazine for many years and was recognized for his work before he went on to serve as editor of the American Alumni Council journal, where he initiated the magazine award that now bears his name. It remains the highest award for excellence in the field.
Now CASE’s annual Sibley Award is bestowed on magazines that are published at least twice a year and have been awarded a gold or Grand Gold Circle of Excellence Award. Circle of Excellence judges are volunteers who give their time to recognize outstanding achievements in advancement. This year’s finalists included Boston University (Massachusetts, U.S.); Oberlin College (Ohio, U.S.); University of Wisconsin–Madison (U.S.); Wayne State University (Detroit, Michigan, U.S.); Lethbridge College (Alberta, Canada); and The Williston Northampton School (Easthampton, Massachusetts, U.S.). The 2022 winner of the award, Milton Magazine of Milton Academy, was the first independent school to be awarded this honor.
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