I. Introduction
In the 2021-2022 school year, editors and writers of the Highlander worked to inform students on important topics both inside and outside of our Carlmont High School community. When we all returned this year and stacks of each issue were still found loitering in the journalism classroom, we knew we had to make distribution changes for Volume XIV. As journalism students passed by the magazines,
they were disheartened that the writing and designing they worked tirelessly on went untouched. With print media at threat of extinction and printing prices at an all-time high, we could not afford to have our writers lose respect for our very own magazine. Having this in mind, we set out to arrange a plan by identifying the roots of our faulty distribution.
Hundreds of each issue went to English classrooms where teachers would leave them on desks for students. In a perfect world, each student would take
one home. Instead, when English teachers failed to introduce the magazine and its purpose, it became unclear to students that they could take one home for their personal enjoyment. Because of this, magazines were left to collect dust on tables, not only creating leftovers, but taking away from those that could be in other locations to reach the right audience.
Although, had we placed the magazines elsewhere, they still would not reach a great number of students because we only had one other distribution zone: a singular newsstand outside of our journalism class which was not in an accessible location. Considering the heightened cost of printing, we were paying too much money for there to be unread magazines.
By assessing student demographics and community involvement, we sought out to bringing back print through conflicting arrangements: reducing costs and revamping distribution.
II. Making a Plan
To address the distribution issues from last year, we first brainstormed ideal locations to put the magazines. We knew we wanted more magazines in stands and less in classrooms. We decided to keep the stand outside of our journalism classroom, but add three more outdoor stands. We presented the idea to our adviser, who told us he could make room in our journalism program’s budget. With his confirmation, we researched which outdoor stands to purchase. After reaching out to two different online stores for quotes, we landed on the cheapest total of $980.30.
It turned out that the outdoor stands would not come until mid-January, but unfortunately, the first issue of The Highlander was coming in December. To start our project without them, we ordered three cheaper indoor stands to put in hallways around campus, totaling $186.14. We also decided to continue distribution in the freshmen English classrooms as we foresaw it as
a marketing opportunity for our program, but to halt distribution for sophomore, junior, and senior English classes.
We got lucky when one of our fellow journalists mentioned her connection to a printing company which would print copies of the magazine for almost half the price of our original printer. To further reduce costs, we also printed 300 less magazines than the last issue, going from 1100 to 800 copies. This would create significantly fewer leftover copies for the benefit of the environment and our program’s budget. Experimenting with a different total order of magazines would also be a starting point for us to evaluate how many to print for future issues.
III. School Distribution
In early December, Issue I of The Highlander Volume XIV was out, and the indoor stands we ordered came just in time. We set them up in a number of locations at our school that were most trafficked by students. Then, we coordinated with the social media team of our online publication, Scot Scoop, and they posted a map on our Twitter and Instagram. This would alert students at Carlmont not only that The Highlander Issue I was finally here, but that it could be found all around campus, including our original location outside of the journalism classroom.
This distribution was also marketed by a chalk wall drawn by journalism students. The wall contained our social media information, while also displaying the new theme of the magazine to entice readers.
III. School Distribution
Starting with about 20 magazines in each indoor stand, we put roughly ten in each freshman English classroom. We were unsure about how many to put where, but decided to start small and go from there. We also placed a few in administration and counseling offices, as well as inside the library.
We came back the next week to refill stands if needed, and checked in on the classroom counts a couple weeks later to see if students were taking them.
Since our outdoor stands couldn’t arrive in time, we still wanted students to have easy access to the magazine outdoors, so we decided to incorporate lunchtime distribution in the quad, where many students gather daily. We coordinated with our school’s Associated Student Body to get a table and created a sign, indicating we were handing out the newest issue that students could take for free. We brought dozens to the quad two times after the first issue’s release and successfully distributed 70. Additionally, we placed some at the student store, which is also in the quad. We quickly discovered the quad would be a great location to give out magazines in large quantities.
Collecting data throughout the process, we kept track on paper and a notes document, which we would be able to transfer into a data table. These numbers became crucial in determining how we were going to distribute for Issue II.
IV. Building Community
Once we conquered plans for the school, we pivoted to expanding distribution to our local community. After contacting a parks & recreation official, he directed us to someone that has influence in our local shopping center which is a hub for students and adults in the area. We reached out to this representative
and scheduled a meeting with her. Mary Parden, the Belmont Chamber of Commerce Executive Director, would end up playing a crucial role in marketing and distribution for our plan to engage not just students, but everyone in the community.
In our first meeting with Mary, she approached us with the idea of repurposing a lighted display case at the shopping center. She suggested that this shadow box would be a place for the locals that visited the shopping center to learn about community events, but also where we could advertise our publications.
We were thrilled with this idea, thus we began reshaping the once dust-ridden, neglected shadow-box
into a hub of community events and local news, while also increasing awareness for our own publication. We also posted fliers and a hand-written monthly calendar with school and community events. For news, we included recent stories and cartoons from our online publication, as well as selections from the newest issue of The Highlander. We also incorporated QR codes so that interested passersby could visit Scot Scoop and discover past issues of the magazine on their device.
To further increase community engagement, we wanted to reach out to Doc’s Bagels, a small deli frequented by many, and ask if we could provide them with copies of the magazine to distribute to customers.
We wrote up a letter and sent it through Mary, then quickly received approval from Doc’s. The next week, we went to put 20 copies of the magazine to include in our data collection.
IV. Building Community
Through much trial and error, we wanted to take the data we collected to formulate a cost-effective distribution plan with built-in marketing. On top of everything else, we wanted to enforce a stable process for those that came after us.
This issue we collected numbers tracking the number of taken magazines, something which we had never really done for past issues. Though we cannot create a comparison between our new distribution plan and Issue VI, we hope that our tracking method will allow us to improve our ratio of printed to distributed magazines. With just 150 magazines left over from
Issue I compared to the hundreds of unaccounted for and recycled magazines left over from Issue VI last year, we are off to a good start.
Before assessing our data, it is important to note that a great number of taken magazines were accounted for by just under 100 journalism students that took one home, dozens of subscriptions that came in late which we shipped ourselves, as well as a few magazines that got distributed by other students to their friends and family. However, the data we collected from tje magazines that we hand-distributed was the determining factor of our plans for Issue II.
Though our data shows low numbers from English classrooms, we decided to continue supplying freshmen English classrooms in particular as a way to recruit new students into the journalism program. Last year, hundreds of magazines got recycled by English teachers because of faulty distribution. We will prevent that this year by setting guidelines for teachers so they know to hand the magazines out for free and to introduce them properly.
We will also continue bi-monthly lunchtime distribution, but during these lunches, we realized that many students did not even know of the Highlander’s existence, or that they could take their own copy for free. Through this, we discovered the importance of expanding student awareness of the publication, as well as carrying out different marketing tactics for better recognition.
To do this, we will continue creating a new chalk wall for each issue by one of the outdoor stands. We have also designed stickers to put on our new outdoor stands once they arrive, with the design intended to promote print media.
We also plan to further reduce the number of magazines we print for the next issue to 700 to not only ensure full distribution but eliminate unnecessary environmental impact and lower our budget. Additionally, this year, we will save over $1000 per issue on printing between our new, cheaper printing company and a reduction in the number of magazines we print.
In terms of community distribution, we started small to test things out, but over half of the magazines we placed at Doc’s Bagels got taken, thus we plan on refilling magazines more frequently as it is a popular student hangout. We will also carry on with updating the shadow box with a monthly community calendar and
community event fliers. The shadow box with a monthly community calendar and community event fliers. To market the journalism program, we will post new articles and cartoons from the online publication and the magazine. We will also put QR codes that link to our online publication, past magazines, and a Google form to suggest article ideas for our writers to fulfill.
Finally, with our leadership role in this distribution process, we will delegate tasks to other journalists that can carry out this process once we graduate.
Since we have never had a formal distribution procedure for the magazine before, we learned that the purpose of our innovation was this process involving much trial and error which allowed us to determine the most cost-effective and efficient distribution plan for our print publication.