Enter Verum: A New Magazine Arrives on the Iowa City Scene

You should be seeing a new magazine circulating around Iowa City in the coming days and months ahead. Sporting original artwork on its high quality matte cover, the words on the front read, Verum Magazine. Verum is Latin for truth.

Verum Magazine is the brainchild of students Rob Johnson, Brad Jackson and Sarah Bulmer. It was created as a solution to two problems:

First, to provide another option for creative journalists, artists and photographers to get their work into print in a professional and creatively imaganitive publication.

Second, to develop a vehicle that emphasizes reaching students about the issues they care about: Art, Politics, Fashion, and Sports. To become the magazine that students choose to read instead of Cosmopolitan or Sports Illustrated or (name that fashion or gossip blog).

"We wanted to create something that really represents a college student's interests," said Johnson, who also serves as the publication's publisher and editor-in-chief. "We don't want to be known as a student magazine, we want people to pick it up and think this is bigger than that."

It's a big goal, but Johnson said the Verum staff has already received some positive feedback since launching their first issue on January 19.

Johnson and Jackson, both journalism and entrepreneurial studies students at the university, said they started talking about the idea last April after Johnson left the and was looking for other alternatives for his work. He said he found few options, especially for people interested in working in the magazine and blogging fields following graduation.

"There really isn't anything substantial for writers and photographers except for the Daily Iowan," Johnson said.

At this, the pair enlisted Bulmer to be their creative director, and embarked on a journey to find a way to make the idea into a reality. They started with the university, but decided to pass when they found out they would have to give up editorial control. Then, after more looking, they found a home at the Bedell Business Center, a campus building devoted to incubating entrepreneurial efforts.

Jackson said the experience with Bedell has been great, and that the Verum staff has been provided with everything they've needed to get off the ground, including an office to base it from.

"It was really great how the entrepreneurial office took us in," Jackson said.

With the first issue out, planning has already begun on the next issue, which should be released in March, with another issue coming during the Spring semester in May. The staff also plans to post more to the Verum website to keep a steady flow of content to viewers in between issues.

Johnson said Verum is currently a self funded effort, with its passionate employees providing their content mostly for free. The goal now is to sell advertisements so the magazine can appear on a monthly schedule in the fall.

For Johnson and Jackson (who are both juniors), and the rest of the Verum Magazine staff, the ultimate intent is to produce a quality publication that they can not only be proud of appearing in, but also has staying power.

"We definitely have ambitions to build this into something that can last," Johnson said.

You can find a copy of Verum, available for free, at several downtown establishments.