By Jennifer Xu, Magazine Editor
and Dylan Cinti, Magazine Editor
Published September 3, 2012
Welcome back, Wolverines! Thank you for choosing Michigan. More importantly, thank you for picking up this magazine.
More like this
Our mission is simple: find good stories and tell them well. It’s not an especially original mission. Indeed, Mark Twain wrote that it was his love of “a good story well told” that led him to write in the first place.
Unlike Mr. Twain, we’re not writing for posterity. We’re writing for right now. Journalism these days happens with an urgency that’s as daunting as it is exciting. We’re inundated with so many different sources of stimuli, and all of them have some piece of news to convey.
To say the world moves faster than when Mr. Twain wrote is a massive understatement. But still, the same principle holds: you can’t go wrong with a good story well told.
For us, what makes a good story is the telling. And the key to telling a good story is to ground it in the human.
For instance, which of the following stories would you rather read: a report about how human eggs are cryogenically frozen, hermetically sealed in liquid nitrogen and injected into prospective mothers’ uteri; or a story about Julie and Bill, a couple whose 13-year quest to conceive a child led them to an egg stored away in a freezer for years?
We’re thinking you would choose Julie and Bill.
As it happens, our feature story this week is about both stories. It’s equal parts science and people, technological advances and human experience. But the pulse of the story lies in its subjects — in parent-hopefuls like Julie and Bill, egg donors like Kyla and Kaitlin, and donation coordinators like Mitzi. You’ll meet all these people when you flip to the center of the magazine.
This semester, we're also bringing back the Personal Statement, a collection of personal essays written by any student, staff or faculty member who has a good tale to tell. This week, our Deputy Editor Kaitlin Williams shares a remarkably candid story about struggling with mental illness. We welcome Personal Statement submissions from anybody affiliated with the University. Please e-mail thestatementmag@gmail.com for more details.
Here at The Statement, we’re always on the lookout for good stories. That is to say, we’re always listening to people and hearing what they have to say. Come listen with us.
