Oh So Fresh Magazine Startup Unencumbered By Sense of Reality
College is full of ill-fated magazine startups. Just ask Harvard’s Scene, a training-wheels Vanity Fair minus the journalism. Let us turn our collective attention to Princeton’s upcoming Oh-So-Fresh Magazine (please, O.S.F.), a “lifestyle and entertainment” publication with a rather unfortunate name. Guys: How can you possibly expect to avoid “douchebag” remarks when you call your magazine “Oh So Fresh”?
In an interview with the Princetonian, editor-in-chief Harrison Schaen ’08 describes it as “a combination of GQ and Rolling Stone.” So far, so good. But suddenly, as if hit by the hyperbole truck, he starts unleashing quote after Vayner-worthy quote:
- “When I was in high school, I said to my friends, ‘By the time I’ll be 21, I’m going to start a revolution.’ “
- “You have to have your ‘in,’” Schaen said. “It’s not about what you know, it’s about who you know. We know who to talk to. We know executive heads, we know producers, and that’s how OSF serves as the medium between the University and the entertainment world.”
- “What sets us apart is our contacts,” Schaen said. “We have contacts with MGM, Sony and Paramount, as well as major record labels. It’s all about getting your name out there and having someone who matters look at you, and that’s what we intend to do with OSF magazine.”
We hope, for the sake of everyone involved, the Prince reporter botched these quotes. Even Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon, a Princeton prof contributing a piece to the first issue, fails to say anything substantive: “Universities have to be alert to what’s happening in the world,” he says. “The academy is about making sense of the world. What else are we to make sense of? And the world is very varied.”
We know starting a publication is no small feat — you gotta commend Schaen a hundred percent for that. But a friendly word of advice: Pick up a publicist when you hire the rest of the staff. (Wait, we just re-read the Princetonian piece. You already have a publicist. You already have a publicist for your undergraduate magazine? On second thought, maybe that’s the problem.)
