Michael Massey knows a thing or two about making the best of things. When the piece he submitted to the Viewpoint editor for Technician was rejected for being too liberal to appeal to a mass audience at NCSU, the rejection got Massey, a senior in English, thinking. After discussing the issue with some like-minded peers, Massey decided that the rejection showed him that there was a niche on campus that Technician was failing to fill.
The result was SPLAT — an alternative newsmagazine that will release its first issue today. For Massey, the first issue of SPLAT marks the realization of a dream that began with initial interest meetings for writers and designers in October. While SPLAT editors originally planned to release its first issue sometime in November, Massey said that delaying it until the start of the new semester gave the publication more time to put out a product that they could be proud of.
“We wanted to create as high a quality magazine as we could,” Massey said. “Our initial deadline didn’t allow us enough time for design. Also, we thought that the start of a new semester should coincide with the start of a new publication.
SPLAT, which takes it’s name from the onomatopoeia that was used during fight scenes in such television shows as Batman, will be distributed from tables that will be set up in several locations on campus, including the Court of North Carolina and the Brickyard, although Massey said the publication eventually hopes to secure kiosks on campus and at local businesses that surround campus.
Massey estimates that the production costs for the first issue ran at about $3,000, some of which Massey paid for out of his own pocket. The remainder of the cost was paid with loans and advertising revenue. While Massey said that there was little advertising money coming in from the first issue, he hoped that advertising would pick up in future issues.
While Massey was an instrumental figure in starting the publication, he chose not to serve as the editor-in-chief. Massey said that the decision had a lot to do with morale among the staff.
“I chose not to be the editor-in-chief because I didn’t want people to look at me as a boss,” Massey said. “I didn’t want the staff to feel like I was lording over them.”
The publication will cover a variety of issues that the staff feels are of importance to students.
One distinguishing feature of the magazine will be the creative writing section, which solicits submissions from writers in the creative writing department and hopes to publish several short works of prose and poetry in each edition. The creative writing section will be headed by section editor Lauren Upton, a junior in English who said she feels very strongly about the magazine because of the role it plays in making the campus a better place.
“This campus needs something like SPLAT because it is more diverse than a lot of people realize,” Upton said. “The more voices you can have on campus, the better, so there is no reason to discourage this new voice.”
