Who Produces The Wake, and What Are Staff Letters?

The Wake is produced by University of Minnesota students, and "Staff Letters" is a recurring section where those staff members publish dated letters under their role titles—for example, "Letter from the Art Director," posted November 25, 2024. If you want to know who is behind the magazine or how to read their first-person commentary, the staff structure and the Staff Letters section are the two places to look.

Who produces The Wake

The Wake describes itself as a "fortnightly student-operated news, arts and entertainment publication at the University of Minnesota." That single description answers most of the question:

• Student-operated: the people writing, editing, designing, and running the publication are students, not a separate professional newsroom.
• University of Minnesota: the publication is tied to that campus community, which shapes both its subject matter and its audience.
• Fortnightly: new material appears on a two-week cycle rather than daily.

The site's own framing reinforces this. Its call to action reads "Be a part of the wake!"—an invitation aimed at readers and prospective contributors within the student community rather than at a general subscription audience.

What this means for readers

Because the staff are students, bylines and role titles are the most reliable way to identify who made a given piece. The publication's content mix—news, arts, and entertainment—reflects a student magazine's range rather than a single-issue news outlet. If you are trying to attribute a story or contact a specific person, the byline is the starting point; the site provides a dedicated way to search for a particular author or story.

What Staff Letters are

Staff Letters is a section of the site where staff members publish short, signed, dated posts identified by their editorial role. The page evidence shows the format clearly:

Two things follow from this format. First, Staff Letters are role-based rather than topic-based: the letter is framed as coming from a position (Art Director) rather than as a general opinion column. Second, they are dated and archived, so the section functions as a running record of staff commentary over time rather than a static about page.

How Staff Letters differ from regular articles

Regular articles carry an author byline and sit within the news, arts, or entertainment categories. Staff Letters are labeled by staff role and presented as letters—closer to a note from the team than a reported piece. If you are researching the publication's internal perspective, editorial priorities, or design direction, Staff Letters is the more direct source; if you want the published work itself, the article categories are where to go.

How to use these two entry points

1. To identify who produces a specific piece, open the story and check its byline. The site also offers a search path for finding a particular author or story when you only have a name.
2. To read staff commentary, go to the Staff Letters section and open a dated post such as "Letter from the Art Director." Expect a short, role-attributed letter rather than a full feature.
3. To understand the publication overall, combine the two: the "student-operated, fortnightly, University of Minnesota" description sets the scope, and Staff Letters shows how the team presents itself in its own words.

A common snag: readers sometimes look for a staff directory or masthead page and instead land on Staff Letters. The letters are role-labeled and dated, not a complete roster—so treat them as commentary from named positions, not as an organizational chart.