20-year-old Chinenye Natasha Amadi stands out as a young publisher and editor of a campus magazine at the Syracuse University in New York, United States of America. Presently in her fourth year, studying Magazine Journalism and Information Management, she founded Renegade Magazine to promote the black culture.
Syracuse University was among five universities that offered her scholarship following her superlative performance in high school when she emerged tops with a 4.85 cumulative points. The four other universities include; City University of New York, Burruk College, Stony Brook University, University of Connecticut and University of Illinois.
Daily sun reports that, in an encounter with Campus Sun during her visit to Nigeria recently to celebrate her vacation with loved ones, she discussed her experiences as an undergraduate. “Syracuse University,” she began, “has offered me a lot of opportunities that I probably wouldn’t have gotten in other schools. I’m a full scholarship student. I don’t pay anything towards my education, except my personal expenses. So, my housing is covered. My tuition is covered and even my books. I don’t pay for my books either. I live on campus apartment. And it’s just two of us who live in an apartment”.
She revealed how she took the bold step to roll out the first magazine to discuss the affairs of black people. Her words: “It is the only black magazine on my campus. We write about issues surrounding the black community. Basically, the magazine is to celebrate black culture on and off campus. And I’m the Editor-in-Chief of the magazine on campus. I manage a staff of about 25 students. I assign story ideas. I pick the general theme every semester and every year, we produce two issues. The theme of our last issue was feminism. We wrote on what it takes to be a black woman in America. We have models that come to our campus and we interview them. In 2014, I helped start the magazine and established it along with three other students –Ibet Iyang, Jasmine Holloway and Erica Parish. Its one of the things I’m most proud of while in Syracuse”.
She said her passion to promote the black culture is the motivating factor that led to the establishment of the magazine. “We started the magazine because we felt all the other magazines on campus weren’t covering issues affecting the African-American community. So we wanted a magazine being dedicated to lifestyle on African-American. We write about Black history. Every issue, we have a whole page dedicated to one historical figure in the Black community.”
When Daily Sun reporter asked if the publication yields some financial gains and how the team manages its resources, she replied, “Oh no. The school funds the publishing of the magazine. Every semester we make a budget and give it to the school based on the number of pages. But we distribute the copies of the magazine to students.
“But, we still get advertisers like local businesses on campus because we also do stories on locally-owned businesses around the Syracuse area. We get adverts from hair stylists, restaurants and other businesses. They advertise their businesses in our magazine and we do get some money to make T-shirts, stickers and stuffs like that for our staff”.
I am immensely proud of Ms. Chinenye for her accomplishments so far. I know what it takes to do what she has done; it is not easy; some of us (though much older now) came through the same
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