The Liberty Project: SMU Alumni Reboot Storied Magazine

The Liberty Project, the modern revival of Liberty magazine, launched June 24 with three SMU graduates at the helm. Editorial director Christina Geyer ’10, editor Courtney Spalten ’14 and marketing manager Patrick Kobler ’10 have reimagined and reinvented the iconic lifestyle publication as a multimedia site tailored to the 21st-century reader. The Liberty Project’s inaugural issue offers more than 120 original works and personal accounts, including features by actress Sarah Michelle Gellar and author and fashion journalist Lauren Scruggs Kennedy.

In its heyday, Liberty published the musings of everyone who was anyone, from Albert Einstein to Shirley Temple. The weekly magazine folded in 1950, but its legacy of rich storytelling and thoughtful commentary inspire its online reincarnation.
“The Liberty Project is reclaiming the power of the first-person by publishing an array of carefully curated and thought-provoking stories,” says Geyer. “We’re creating an environment that celebrates the voice of the individual and fosters the sharing of relatable personal narratives to create a unique editorial experience that is meaningful to our contributors and our audience.”
Melding backgrounds in media, technology and marketing, the founding editorial triad infuses the storied brand with a fresh vision.
Both Geyer and Spalten majored in journalism in SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts and forged careers as editors.
As an SMU student, Geyer co-founded smustyle.com, a campus fashion blog that continues to this day and is managed by a team of student editors. Her keen observations of tastemakers and trends landed her as an editor at PaperCity magazine before she moved to FD, The Dallas Morning News’ style magazine, where she served as managing editor and launched its wedding magazine, FD Love.
Spalten minored in psychology and fashion media at SMU and acted as digital editor of FD before joining the new online venture.
“I feel incredibly fortunate for the opportunity to use the journalism skills I learned at SMU and put them toward relaunching an iconic publication as an innovative digital, multimedia content platform,” Spalten says.
Kobler’s résumé befits a political science major. He served as president of the SMU student body in his senior year and joined Teach for America after graduation. Kobler went on to become an author and program coordinator for the George W. Bush Presidential Center and Institute; headed external affairs and public outreach for Chui, a tech start-up founded by SMU alumni Shaun Moore ’10 and Nezare Chafni ’10; and, most recently, served as the managing director of regional communications, public affairs and engagement for Teach For America.
The three came together some months ago to start serious work on the reboot with CEO Amy Katzenberg and the rest of the team.
While the new iteration would likely be unrecognizable to anyone who had picked up the first copy of Liberty in 1926, some of the core characteristics that made the magazine a household name for a quarter-century remain. Much like the original, The Liberty Project provides a platform for writers, photographers, artists, celebrities and thinkers to share multiple perspectives.
The stable of contributors includes Kiflu Hussain, writing about human rights. He served as a refugee research assistant with the SMU Department of Anthropology’s Forced Migration Innovation Project and is now with The Hunter and Stephanie Hunt Institute for Engineering and Humanity in SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering.
“The Liberty Project can help make Dallas an important national media hub. In doing so, SMU’s students, professors and alumni can have an additional opportunity to share their voices as world-changers,” says Kobler.
Unlike most publications of the time, the original magazine bought the rights to many works it published. The Liberty Library boasts original writings by such literary giants as F. Scott Fitzgerald, P. G. Wodehouse, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and Agatha Christie. Among the notable stories published: “My Sex Life” by Mahatma Gandhi, “What Democracy Means to Me” by Clark Gable and “How It Feels to Be a Has-Been” by Babe Ruth.
Roughly 120 of the magazine’s literary properties have been adapted for popular media, including the movies Sergeant York (1941) and Double Indemnity (1944) and the TV series Mr. Ed (1958-66).
Plans are for The Liberty Project to showcase original content from the magazine’s archive through a contemporary lens.