Last week was our “soft opening.”  We brought in this fancy new website, let people poke around and kick some tires, but didn’t really make a lot of hooplah about it, because we wanted to get some of the last kinks worked out.  Like the discussion forums below, which are now separated by story, and figuring out that we didn’t have a way to direct you to our facebook and twitter feeds.  Those little things are now fixed (look way down on the bottom of the page) so we’re moving ahead with our big grand opening.

We’re hoping to really bring people into The Voice Magazine this week, so we’re running a contest.  If you haven’t subscribed to our weekly mail-out, now’s a great time as all new subscribers will be entered into a draw to win an iPad mini, or one of 25 swag packs featuring the all new Voice Logo.

But wait, what if you’re already a subscriber?  And didn’t we already have a new logo that we were putting on swag? Whatever happened to that?

For the first question, we thought of that, and if you’re already a subscriber then what you need to do to get an entry is to head over to our feed-back page, and send me a quick comment on what you like, and don’t, about the latest incarnation of the Voice Magazine.  You’ve had a week now to see how the new site and schedule works for you, so let us know what you think.

For the second question, we did have a logo re-design done back in 2014.  If you ever let us interview you for the Minds We Meet column, or pointed out an error you found in the magazine, odds are you’ve already seen it.  For those that haven’t, here’s what you missed.  The plan at that point was to have The Voice swing to a look much closer to a 1920’s broadsheet, but with a modern feel.

As time passed, it was decided we should go more modern instead, and with recent concerns about Russian interference in media, the use of an image reminiscient of the Russian Sputnik satellite (the first satellite put into earth’s orbit) was questioned as to if it was truly appropriate.  So if you have any Voice swag with that logo on it now, consider it to be a rare, dare I say collectible, piece of vintage Voice history.  I’m not saying it’ll be worth anything a few years down the road—but I’m not saying it won’t either.

In the meantime, our feature article this week is a Blast from Voices past.  If you’re just joining us here at the Voice today, this is a great article to see just where we’ve come from, and you can dig into all you missed by following some of the related article links below.

We’ve almost 25 years of students and grads writing for The Voice Magazine, and almost all of it can be found somewhere on this site.  That’s a lot of history, so to help you find some of the good bits, we’re also starting a new short, Vintage Voice, where we’ll bring some ofthe best parts of Voice Magazines of old to your attention.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  There’s a lot more in this week’s Voice Magazine including news, reviews, interviews, scholarships, events, and various other goodies.  So welcome, and enjoy the read!