FEATURES
Our First Year
A Year-End Revew of 'The Review' Sabin R. Sidney
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omething strange is happening at Wake Forest. Remember that? That’s how I started my first column in The Wake Forest Review. I answered the ever-so-famous question, “Why we exist” as a publication. And in about one-thousand words, more or less, I answered that it’s to “balance the discussion” and “stand up to the liberals.” All very true, but what we really need to ask now is, “What have we done?” On May 1st, 2017, The Wake Forest Review will officially celebrate its one-year anniversary. And on that night, I will cheerfully pour myself a drink and raise it to that very same magazine, which is now framed and hanging on my dorm room wall. As I take a sip, I will be thinking, “What have we done to get ourselves here?” What is “here” though? Well, it’s being the only college conservative magazine at Wake Forest University. It’s being the only college conservative newspaper in North Sabin Sidney is a junior from Cedarburg, WI, studying Finance in the School of Business. He is the Founder and Executive Director of The Wake Forest Review.
8 // SPRING 2017
Carolina to host a weekly podcast and feature a U.S Congressman, U.S Senator, and chairman of the American Conservative Union. It’s being the only college conservative newspaper in North Carolina to report on two presidential campaign rallies as credentialed media. It’s hosting our own panel on conservatism, attending the Inauguration, becoming a nonprofit, raising over $10,000 in just three months, and printing our third hard copy magazine built entirely by students. This is what being “here” means. On May 1st, The Wake Forest Review will celebrate one of the most challenging and most rewarding years of our lives. The Beginning of the Rest of our Lives People always ask, “How did this get started?” My response to this is always that I started The Wake Forest Review in my dad’s coffee shop. I made my first contact on May 25th, 2016. It was to Anthony Palumbo. Then followed Michael Blevin, Owen Pickard, JP Hayes, Ryan Wolfe, and finally Ciara Ciez. All within about one month we became the original staff of The Review. And I’m pretty sure we had no idea what we were getting ourselves
into. It certainly was the beginning of the rest of our lives. One of our primary tasks was to complete the business plan. This was the original picture of our newspaper. It explained who we are, what we’re doing, our market, and finally our potential. Anthony, Owen, and myself worked on this throughout June, getting it ready for our first-ever grant proposal through the Collegiate Network. The Collegiate Network was the first contact we made outside of our new-born staff. It is a group of independent college newspapers, mostly conservative, that provides workshops and financial support. Throughout the summer, I was in touch with Jacob Lane, who is now working with the parent organization, Intercollegiate Studies Institute. In late July, I attended the Collegiate Network’s Editors Conference, in which many of these publications came together at Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia for two days of collaboration, workshops, and even late-night viewings of the Republican National Convention. Additionally, Ryan and JP were working on other various projects to get the Review ready for our big debut before the school year started. JP was working on get-