The Miami Student has been reporting for 200 years; Only 47 include 'Culture' section

When The Miami Student published its first edition as The Literary Focus in 1827, it only included three things: literature, poetry and philosophical thought. Now, 200 years later, The Student has sections covering everything from sports and opinion to culture and environmental news. What The Student calls the Culture section today has undergone many iterations since it’s first appearance 47 years ago.

The first signs of a culture-centered section appeared on the front page of the Friday, Jan. 26, 1979 edition, titled “FRIDAY” magazine. The Student described the new segment as a separate tabloid, which quickly moved into its own section in the main paper, according to an issue from August 1981.

FRIDAY magazine included stories on art exhibitions, plays, film, music and recommendations for how to spend a weekend immersed in campus culture. Many of their stories were reviews, but they also reported on the experiences of art and theater students.

From 1981 to 1985, the entertainment division of the paper went through many name changes. In 1981, FRIDAY was converted back into a tabloid and renamed “Unabridged.” For the next three years, Unabridged covered campus entertainment events and the latest news on everything film and music, until September 1984, when the section was renamed “Avantgardian.”

According to the first edition of Avantgardian from Sept. 21, 1984, “Wherein the staff of the formerly termed Unabridged proves that, indeed, the Phoenix does rise from the ashes,” the section explainer read. “… If perhaps your curiosity leads you to question our motivation behind these bits of philosophical genius, simply have faith that they were espoused with your best interest in mind.”

It’s unclear if something occurred within the paper or if the author is making a sarcastic remark about the name change. However, in January 1986, the tabloid briefly returned to its former name before changing it again in April of the same year. The new name, “Friday!” coincided with The Student’s transition period, when a new editor-in-chief takes office.

In the late ’80s, The Student published a paper every Tuesday and Friday. By the 1988–1989 school year, the paper had two entertainment sections: Pulse, which came out on Tuesdays, and Friday!, which had been moved into the regular edition and came out on Fridays. Pulse only lasted two years, and eventually Friday! was the only entertainment segment left.

In 1995, almost 10 years after Friday! was established, Todd Danielson and Eric Prill, class of 1996, sat down with then editor-in-chief Jennifer Markiewicz Wagman to discuss the idea of bringing back an entertainment paper, titled “Amusement.”

“[We wanted] to make it a standalone section that came out every Thursday,” Danielson said. “It was going to be about eight to 12 pages of entertainment news in the Oxford area.”

In college, Danielson and Prill were in rock bands, so they knew who to talk to in the music scene. Soon after they got Amusement off the ground, the duo found people who were just as interested in the entertainment world as they were.

“We had pretty easily found somebody that did movie reviews,” Danielson said, “and somebody did music, and we’d get all kinds of albums … free music came into the mail, and we could assign them out to people to do music reviews.”

After graduating, Amusement’s chief editor changed almost every year. For the 1998–1999 school year, Amanda Johnson, 2000, Andrew Kern, 1999, and Brian Wolfe, 2000, were the lead editors. At this time, Amusement went from being a full-sized newspaper to a tabloid. Amusement, like the rest of The Student, also fostered many late nights and happy memories.

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“It was such a great way to have a pulse on everything that was going on,” Johnson said. “It was just such a blast … I loved doing [the] layouts and getting photos from different photographers and putting it together.”

For the next 10 years, Amusement printed a new tabloid every Thursday. In 2008, the section was moved into The Student’s Friday editions, and eventually disbanded Oct. 8, 2010, after receiving negative feedback. Afterwards, the section was renamed “Arts and Entertainment,” focused on entertainment-related event coverage, rather than reviews.

In an opinion article from the Oct. 8 print, Anna Turner, the Amusement editor at the time, wrote of her frustration with the decision to disband the section.

“As of today, Friday, Oct. 8, 2010, Amusement will no longer be part of Miami University’s student media,” Turner wrote. “The blame can be placed on a small faction of the Miami community that failed to realize the importance of humor and satire in the media.”

By August 2014, Arts and Entertainment was officially renamed Culture, a name that almost stuck to the present day. It shifted to three separate sections — Entertainment, Style and Food in 2021, and returned to its current name of Culture in 2024 under Editor-in-Chief Kasey Turman.

“We didn’t have the editors or the amount of writers we needed to have three sections,” Turman said. “I mean, if you look around Oxford, you look around Miami, there is a lot of culture, but there’s not always something food-related happening, or something like style-related that you can write about. So putting it all into one section, and naming it Culture, which had already been the name before it was split, made a lot of sense for us.”

Now, Culture is edited by Stella Powers, a junior journalism and media and communication student, and Ayla Peden, a sophomore sociology and journalism student. The section is a mix of columns and reported stories, paying tribute to the various changes it has undergone over the last half-century. Powers and Peden try to keep readers as informed — and entertained — as possible every week.

pedenae@miamioh.edu