Dear reader,
Last November, board member Jonny Dach was tidying his parents’ attic when he stumbled across a typewritten letter from Andy Court, editor-in-chief of The New Journal in 1982. Addressing future managing boards, Andy called The New Journal “a void filled by people who made a leap of faith.”
We each took that leap of faith in our freshman years when we signed onto The New Journal’s mailing list, wrote our first piece, and applied to join the editorial board as associate editors. The first time we met as a managing board, we started a Google Doc with a list of our dreams for the magazine. We are writing this farewell on that document, which contains every (written) thought we’ve had about The New Journal. It’s almost 30,000 words long. We’ve worked on this document from our desks in local newsrooms, in almost every New Haven café, on the floor of Chloe’s suite. When nights become mornings, we’ve held fast to what Andy calls “a feeling of magic, the magic that comes when, after all the bullshit, you walk into the dining hall and people are reading the magazine.”
In this issue, we look to communities grounded by their faith. Chantal de Macedo Eulenstein ’29 explores New Haven’s biking culture, passed down from one generation to the next, and David Rosenbloom ’25.5 joins a community of people whose lives were transformed by an unlikely treatment for depression— ketamine therapy. Other writers meditate at Yale’s Buddhist shrine, hop on the court with a youth basketball team, and find renewed hope at a local Black hair salon.
If there were a way to keep doing this for the rest of our lives, we would. But while we might not be your managing board anymore, we can still hold fast to what made us fall in love with the magazine. The faith that seasoned and first-time writers alike can do incredible journalism. The shared belief in depicting reality with grace and clarity. The chance to work with people just as insane about that.
We’re delighted to introduce you to the next managing board of The New Journal. Kelly Kong and Adele Haeg will be your editors-in-chief, Margot Kohn will be the executive editor, and Harry Lowitz, managing editor. They’re a great bunch.
To echo Andy one more time, “something special has happened here.”
Off we go,
Chloe, Calista, Mia, Tina