About Us
The Booze News is just one of the many publications owned by global media powerhouse, Rickshaw Media Group, Inc. (NYSE: RMGX) Our company atmosphere, both corporate and local, is centered around the concepts of unity and fun. Our publications aim to give students a creative outlet and a voice. We're obviously not your traditional student paper, but how many of those actually represent their readers?
Other than that, what you need to know is this paper started as merely a joke by two guys (Derek Chin and Atish Doshi) at the University of Illinois back in 2004. Once the first issue came out, they noticed it was a total hit and saw they could be onto something. So, they decided to keep going with it. Since then the newspaper has set up its Global Headquarters in Chicago (on Michigan Ave, near a Chipotle) and maintains a small and highly overworked corporate staff that oversees the countless young whippersnappers that are the true value of the company. Our publications have expanded to schools throughout the country and are doing quite well thank you very much. Though some of them have different names, they all attempt to provide each market with a completely unique forum for students to tell stories, air grievances, and every once in awhile...write something so profoundly ridiculous that we here at corporate can't help but shake our heads. Kids these days...
Press Release 9/26/07
In response to the recent AP article on The Booze News published by your news outlet, Rickshaw Media Group, the parent company of The Booze News would like to issue the following statement:
These so-called "calls to action" by The University of Missouri and Columbia residents, which are intended to nanny college students and keep them out of harms way are out-dated and misinformed. We believe college is a time of self-expression and self-discovery and attempting to inhibit the actions of the individuals who make up that society by ridiculing newspapers such as ours is not only unjust, it is unrealistic.
The corporate staff members of The Booze News are aware that our local staff writers are more in touch with the true pulse of the student community. We realize this shortcoming yet no one on the corporate staff is over 25 years old. It is hard to comprehend why people twice the age of our average reader would feel they have an authority to voice their opinion on matters college students face daily. This is why we give them freedom and creative control over the content that appears in their local issues, a direct reflection of the content covered, whether it be music, movies or "hickeys." It is all content produced by the student body you are so concerned with protecting.
Our newspaper was founded upon the principle that students should have the freedom to write about relevant topics of their choice while still entertaining, not "brainwashing" our readers. We realize that we are not for everyone but merely a reflection of the culture in which we distribute, the culture does not mimic us. As a result our newspaper has always been embraced by a large majority of our intended audience.
Our newspaper does not intentionally discriminate against one particular group, nothing we publish is meant to offend. In fact, our founders, Derek Chin and Atish Doshi, are both part of minority groups and are sympathetic to the pain of discrimination. The offensive matter cited as an example was taken out of context and not intended to be malicious in any way. We do regret publishing that article because of the manner in which it was received. We wrongly assumed that the people who actually read the article would recognize the sarcasm. We also did not realize that one tidbit, taken out of context, would spread so rapidly among people who had never actually seen the completed article. The bottom line is it is not in our policy or interest to publish malicious attacks, we never have and we never will.
As for the rest of our content, it is only offensive to those out-of-touch adults who are in denial of the true behavior of students. Our content is not offensive to those who realize it is simply a true yet humorous reflection of college life. In an article printed in The University of Missouri's independent newspaper, The Maneater, a Freshman was quoted as saying, "[The Booze News] isn't meant to be taken seriously." If a college freshman can realize this and still find our content "hysterical", it is beyond our comprehension that a group of adults would blame our publication for many of the perceived problems that college students face today.
Our company atmosphere, both corporate and local, is centered around the concepts of unity and fun. We are not a publishing company with intentions to offend or hurt anyone, we are simply building a company by filling an empty niche on college campuses that we view as an important creative outlet. College is a stressful time in life, we are simply here to offer an escape from the daily challenges of student life with light, humorous and peer-driven content.
