A new chapter for our alumni and friends magazine

Posted 10:20 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024

A new chapter for our alumni and friends magazine

If you're reading this in print, you may have noticed something different about this issue of the Lantern.

For one, yes, it's bigger. For another, it arrived at your mailbox in early fall, breaking from our traditional summer-winter cadence. These are intentional changes that will allow us to tell the UW-La Crosse story in a new and exciting way. But more on that later.

The reality is we no longer have the resources to print and distribute the Lantern twice a year. It's something we've known was coming, and we considered it from many angles.

Sure, we could shrink our distribution list or charge a small subscription fee or try any one of countless other cost-saving measures. But we want to share the UWL story with as many people as possible, and making this magazine less accessible doesn't align with that goal.

Moving to one annual issue provides significant cost savings that unlock new possibilities for the magazine: a larger layout, more pages and higher-quality paper. We hope you'll notice these enhancements, and that you'll enjoy having all of our best alumni and campus news stories in a single, centralized issue.

Moving forward, those on our print distribution list can expect to receive a copy of the Lantern each fall. We hope this timing - at the start of the academic year, in the leadup to many of our major annual events - will maximize the magazine's impact on our readers and generate even more engagement and enthusiasm among alumni and friends.

In keeping with changes to the global media landscape, we've worked hard to enhance our online news presence.

If you think you'll miss reading the Lantern twice a year - and part of us hopes you will - we encourage you to check out Light Reads, our monthly online newsletter for alumni and friends. We also post exclusive content, such as videos and extended stories, in the online version of the Lantern. We invite you there as well.

The Lantern has been and continues to be our primary touchpoint with tens of thousands of UWL alumni and friends across the world. We look forward to sharing more stories with you. This will always be your magazine and your university.

Kyle Farris,

Lantern editor

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.