VIU’s student press announces the return of its print magazine

Shaw said while they are not returning to the monthly print issues right away, The Navigator is starting off with a biannual print. Photo: Lauryn Mackenzie / CHLY 101.7fm

After almost five years fully online, Vancouver Island University’s school student press, The Navigator, has announced its return to print.

Since 1969, The Navigator, also known by its nickname, The Nav, has covered topics from school sports, student protests, student features, and current events in the world that matter to students at VIU.

Throughout the years, The Navigator has had several transformations, changing from a school newspaper to a monthly magazine, to then only two years after celebrating its 50th volume, shutting down its physical edition and transitioning to a fully online outlet.

Jenaya Shaw is the current Managing Editor for the student press. She is in her fourth year of studying creative writing and psychology at the school, and she started at The Navigator three years ago as a spur-of-the-moment decision.

“The first year was pretty tough because I was in the first year,” Shaw said. “I was just like getting my feet wet, and the editing process was really, really intimidating at first, and it was very overwhelming, but I got into the flow of it, and now I really, really love it.”

After being an editor for two years, she took over the managing editor role after most of the writing team had graduated that year.

She mentions the fact that due to the press being run by students, this usually leads to a large turnover of student staff as they graduate, move away, or take on other responsibilities.

Because of this, Shaw said every year could mean a new style or version of The Navigator. 

“So I've tried to really just keep building on what has been previously done. I don't want to change too much,” Shaw said. “Last year, we revamped the website, so this year we did it again with, like, more exciting colours and format.” 

Right now, along with having written articles and stories done by the student staff, The Navigator has also branched out to podcasting, and videography.

One thing Shaw will bring back this year is The Navigator’s print magazine after it ended in 2020.

“We stopped, really because of covid. People weren't on campus, and it was a lot of money and planning to go through to get to print,” she said. “You have to think about your advertisers, and who are they even advertising to if nobody's picking up the paper anymore.” 

She said there was a huge hurdle and intimidation going back to print but it was not until she took part in the VIU student-run literary magazine Portal that printing a magazine seemed not so daunting.

“I'm like, ‘this is actually super doable. If a bunch of students that kind of stumbled upon Portal can put together a magazine in the same way, why can't The Nav do that,’” she said.

Shaw said while they are not returning to the monthly print issues right away, The Navigator is starting off with a biannual print. Right now it’s all hands on deck for getting their first print issue done before Christmas so they can get it printed and distributed by January while continuing with their digital monthly feature stories.

“The first run is going to be really tough, I think because we have such a small team, like looking back on previous issues that were in print, the team was bigger. There were more art people, there were more editors, there were more designers involved,” Shaw said. “So we're working with the same amount of people as the last couple years, just doing online only, and then also trying to go to print.”

Shaw said while they were originally hoping for a November publication date for their first print issue, they had to push back the date due to starting from scratch without a designer on staff to design the issue.

Currently, The Navigator is raising money through merchandise sales and bake sales to hire a student designer to help design the physical issues. But for now, Shaw explains, the current Associate Managing Editor, Laurent Lemay has stepped in to help design the first issue.

“My Associate Managing Editor, Laurent Lemay, he studied at Okanagan College, and so has a certificate in design, so I got him on that, and I'm really, really stoked to see what he makes. But it's a lot for one person to do,” Shaw said.

She said while The Navigator used to have funding allocated for a staff designer, due to inflation and the loss of advertisements in the print magazine, the funding had to be budgeted elsewhere.

Right now Shaw’s main focus is on outreach and getting the word out that the university has a student press and that it will be going back to print.

“I worry that people won't take them, but that's kind of always a concern. I think a big part of the appeal is that it's free, so you just grab it and take it somewhere,” Shaw said. “Maybe you leave it by accident at a coffee shop, well, that's there now, someone else is going to see it like that's another thing that's super important.”

For now, Shaw said the team at The Navigator are working hard on their monthly features leading to the hope of a winter publication of the first print magazine in over four years that will be distributed across the campus. 

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.