Feeling Smart
 ive
recently graduated seniors are going for the big-time magazine market
by publishing Mental Floss, a slick, nationally distributed magazine
that’s meant, they say, “to make you feel smart again.”
The cover of the first issue, published in April, shows a famous photograph
of Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue. Mental Floss, its creators
say, is designed not only to be smart but to be fun. The cover lines
hint at the magazine’s eclectic interests, wide range, and tongue-in-cheek
tone: “What’s so Great about Alexander?”; “The
arrow of human evolution: Are we headed for world peace?”; “Stock
market crash course: five keys to financial planning.” The issue
features “an undercover history” of sex, along with stories
on human-rights abuses in Guatemala and three fighters for social
justice in the U.S. It delves into the Dead Sea Scrolls, Pablo Picasso,
dark matter in the universe, and highlights from the tradition of
jazz.
 |
| Launching
a magazine:MENTAL FLOSS co-editors Pearson, left, and Hattikudur
created "today's cheatsheet for a complete education" |
“Mental Floss is today’s cheat sheet for a complete education,”
says William E. Pearson, a history major who is editor-in-chief. Pearson
was the major shaper of the magazine when it kicked off—in a
scaled-down version
—as a campus publication last year. “We’re acknowledging
two characteristics of American society,” he says. “One,
people want to consider themselves well educated. Two, they want the
educational process to be quick and simple.”
Executive editor Mangesh Hattikudur, a cultural anthropology major,
has roots reaching back to India, and in his first column he reminisces
about the work of Indian writer Salman Rushdie. As a child, Hattikudur
writes, his mother read to him from Rushdie’s book Haroun and
the Sea of Stories. He compares Mental Floss to Rushdie’s “ocean
of knowledge—thick and rich and full of life.”
Mental Floss, he says, got its start when Pearson told him he’d
been keeping various lists of trivia facts since he was in the sixth
grade and thought he should turn them into a book. Hattikudur suggested,
“Maybe we could do it as a magazine instead of a book, and do
it for the rest of our lives.” After that, the two students found
themselves sitting up at night, talking about history and philosophy.
When they couldn’t find a magazine like the one they had in mind,
Hattikudur says, they figured they had a product.
All five of Mental Floss’ creators met as freshmen. Planning
for the magazine took off during their junior year. Three of them
were studying abroad—Hattikudur in Tibet; Milena Viljoen, assistant
art director, in Kenya; and editor-at-large John Cascarano in Italy—so
they relied on e-mail to communicate. (Aside from Pearson, the other
founder is art director Lisako Koga.) “This would not have been
possible without the Internet,” Pearson says.
That’s how they found already-published writers for their first
issue, he says. They sent out e-mail messages to them, asking if the
writers of books like Jazz for Dummies, An Underground Education,
The Blood of Guatemala, Great Artists, and The Astronomy Café
would work for the magazine—for free. The students have signed
agreements to trade information with HowStuffWorks.com and UselessKnowledge.com.
Both websites host more than a million visitors a month, Pearson says.
The five creators have expanded their magazine to sixty-four pages.
They’ve received advice from Duke administrators and from Samir
Husni, a University of Mississippi journalism professor who wrote
a guidebook called Launch Your Own Magazine. Using a national distributor,
they are planning to get it on the racks at bookstores such as Barnes
& Noble and Borders. Now, they’re searching for investors
to give it a financial foundation.
This coming year, the five graduates expect to continue working on
Mental Floss. “We feel like we did what we set out to do,”
Pearson says. “I think what we learned is how much goes into
a magazine.”
|
