Her Campus, an online lifestyle magazine for college women, officially launched its BGSU Chapterin September and is looking for new writers and social media editors.
Founded by three Harvard students in 2009, this publication has now branched out extensively with more than 360 campus chapters located in 11 countries. Topics include culture, entertainment, style, beauty, sex and relationship.
“It is basically a magazine altered towards college-aged female women, but also a step for college women and men interested in journalism, editorial, digital publishing, photography and social media,” Lindsay Coder, BGSU Her Campus Correspondent, said.
Since the launch was relatively recent, the goal is to make Her Campus more known to other Falcons by customizing the content to the Bowling Green community.
“We want to make our chapter as big as some of the other chapters that are out there, because there are other schools that have huge team and everyone knows what it is … So we just want to put out good articles that people want to read.” Anna Kubitz, Her Campus contributing writer, said. “My most recent article I wrote was about a BGSU grad who was starting her own business, so I think it’s cool to be able to make the article more personal to BGSU since we are the BGSU chapter. Since everyone can write about, ‘oh, fall fashion’ but when you make it more customized to the school, people like it more.”
For journalism or media students, one perk of writing for Her Campus is getting a foothold in the media field by getting involved in a nation-wide magazine.
“I think it is a unique experience for college students, especially for people at the Bowling Green area whereas this is kind of rural,” Kubitz said. “But the experience, I think, working the ‘big’ name – Her Campus, people in the fashion industry or social media industry know the big names, so they would be like, ‘Oh, you are a writer for Her Campus,’ even if you are in the middle of nowhere in Ohio.”
Another similar platform at BGSU is the Odyssey, which has been around for approximately seven years, according to Kelsey Dietrich, Editor-in-Chief of the Odyssey’s BGSU Chapter.
Ostrich, who is double majoring in English and psychology, has been writing for the Odyssey even before she came to BGSU. What she likes about Odyssey is how much space the platform has allowed her in order to write and express her opinions freely.
“You can write about anything that you want – there are no specific guidelines in terms of topic, so the point is to give people a voice,” Dietrich said.
Similar to Her Campus, as Odyssey’s primarily targeted audience is also female millennials, Dietrich said there is one male writer among the eight people who set the foundation for BGSU Odyssey.
“I think it’s just anyone who is interested and if they really have a passion for it and they will keep going, which is kind of cool,” she said. “Every university has a community, so there are like, thousands and thousands of writers. There is so much variability.”
She is also running the BGSU Odyssey Instagram account, which has gained more than 400 followers since first created in 2018.
Even though BGSU Odyssey is a growing platform, Dietrich has witnessed the impact of her writing on students.
“I have had, in my own personal experience, a couple of people send me messages, direct message me on Facebook about posts and articles I have written, and say ‘Oh, I really connected, that was really cool’, and that makes me so excited,” she said.
For information on how to get featured, contact Lindsay Coder, BGSU Her Campus Correspondent at [email protected] and Kelsey Dietrich, Editor-in-Chief of the Odyssey’s BGSU Chapter at [email protected].
