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Dear Readers: After nearly 16 years as editor of the Yale Alumni Magazine, I will be stepping aside with this issue and moving across York Street to a position as critic at the Yale School of Architecture. Writing about architecture has been a parallel calling since my freshman year at Yale, when I had a job shelving books in the Art and Architecture Library. The chance to return to the A&A Building when today's freshmen are shelving books that I wrote myself created an irresistibly symmetrical opportunity.
Although I will remain on the masthead as Consulting Editor, I will miss the day-to-day operations of the magazine and the many rewards it brings. I am proud to say that the Yale Alumni Magazine -- which holds the title of the oldest independent alumni magazine in the nation -- has won a host of awards for editorial achievement since 1986. The most recent, a gold medal in higher education reporting from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, cited our stories last year on topics ranging from alcohol use by undergraduates, to the state of graduate student unionization efforts, to Yale's research on (and relationship to) the history of slavery. Covering such topics dispassionately in an institution one feels strongly about can be difficult, but it is essential to serving an audience that has scant patience with mere boosterism. For all the professional satisfaction, the personal part of this job has brought some of the greatest rewards. The major tribute goes to you as readers, whose subscriptions do so much to sustain the Yale Alumni Magazine financially, and who have always been quick to let us know in the Letters column how you felt about Yale and the magazine's coverage of it. The corresponding secretaries who write the Class and School Alumni Notes consistently produce a section that is the envy of other universities. Our alumni advisers span the peaks of American journalism (from William F. Buckley Jr. of National Review and Calvin Trillin of the New Yorker, to Nancy Gibbs of Time, Robert G. Kaiser of the Washington Post, James Ottaway of the Wall Street Journal, and Lawrie Mifflin of the New York Times). And I expect them to keep looking over the magazine's shoulder. I am grateful to the current staff, a seasoned corps of professionals who are both colleagues and friends. And I owe special thanks to those members of the magazine's Board of Directors who over the years have stood up for the Yale Alumni Magazine's independence and editorial integrity. None has stood as tall as my classmate and friend Steve Weisman, a pillar of the New York Times editorial board who understands Yale and the Yale Alumni Magazine, and has supported the magazine in more ways than any editor has a right to expect, from his days as a class secretary to his current role as chairman of Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., the Yale Alumni Magazine's parent organization. I thank them all -- and so should you. Sincerely, Carter
Wiseman '68 |
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Yale
Alumni Magazine, PO Box 1905, New Haven, CT 06509-1905. USA.
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