Booze News debuts

By Erica Zucco

Published Sept. 21, 2007

In the latest issue of The Booze News, MU students and residents of the surrounding community can find the "Top 10 Worst Kissing Styles," college break-up season and "How to Prevent your Best Friend from Becoming Whipped."

The Booze News, a newspaper targeted toward students aged 18 to 24, was introduced to Columbia this fall and was met with mixed reviews from the community.

The publication features stories centered around drinking, dating and school-related humor, as well as information and reviews on local bars and nightlife locations.

University of Illinois students Derek Chin and Atish Doshi founded The Booze News in 2004 in an attempt to provide entertaining, college-centered articles to the students on their campus, according to the paper's Web site.

As the popularity of The Booze News began to spread, Doshi and Chin began to distribute papers to campuses across the nation.

The Booze News now distributes localized versions of the paper to six universities in the Midwest.

In Columbia, the newspaper was dropped off at popular bars and restaurants that were named as distributors by the publication, but not all of the businesses supported the content of the paper.

Doshi said Shakespeare's Pizza and Chipotle Mexican Grill are two establishments that chose to dispose of the issues.

Doshi said a petition formed by students who disapproved of the paper's content could have prompted the businesses' response.

The petition discouraged Columbia establishments from promoting The Booze News.

Doshi said Columbia was the first city in which the papers were distributed off-campus.

"We expected that since both families and college students attended the same establishments, there would be a lot of readers outside of our target audience," he said. "We knew that no parent would commend us for doing a nice job.

In all honesty, though, we expected a worse overall response than we received."

On The Booze News Web site, sidebars encourage students to send their party pictures to the newspaper, and links are posted directing visitors to recipes requiring alcohol and reviews of popular liquors.

"We didn't want to give the same information you could find on CNN or in USA Today," Doshi said. "The articles are nothing that will change the world. If we give a couple relationship tips or teach our readers a new drinking game, then we feel that we've done our job."

Despite the disputed nature of the content, freshman Robert Kessler said he believes the articles are all in good fun.

"Yes, many of the articles in The Booze News are very offensive, but they're hysterical," he said. "It isn't meant to be taken that seriously."