News from Wallace House Archives

From the Head Fellow

By Charles R. Eisendrath ’75

It is a great pleasure to introduce Liz McMillen '98, to her 451 fellow Fellows as editor of a reconstituted Journal of Michigan Fellows. You'll note new design elements, but most of all, a new direction. Liz is interested in first-person accounts by Fellows of their lives in journalism. Elizabeth Kastor's ('96) experiences with KidsPost at The Washington Post points the way.

Overall, our new editor's goals are "to provide a forum for thinking about journalism, and to reconnect Fellows with the fellowship experience." In order to prompt fresh thinking, McMillen took early notice of the wealth of cartoonists on our roster, beginning with her classmate Frank Cammuso of The Syracuse Newspapers. His illustrations for this year's excellent Graham Hovey Lecture by Ellen Soeteber ('87) suggest a willingness to experiment. This is not the first collaborative effort of McMillen and Cammuso.

"The MJF Bowling Club," she recalls, "was formed in delirium on a bitter early winter night in 1997, right after a dinner at Program Director Charles Eisendrath's house of various grilled wild game. Meetings were mandatory and top-secret, called at the absolute last minute by a Star Chamber of elite Fellows. They rotated among several area alleys, including one field trip for which Julia Eisendrath was kidnapped and forced to have a good time using a six-pound pink ball. We learned two things of note: 1) those who work hard and play by the rules stand no chance in bowling, and 2) producers for national television news magazines often slide down a properly waxed alley faster than a bowling ball, itself.

"The uniform of the MJF Bowling Club was a stylish royal-purple-and-gold shirt with thick piping and a hidden flask pocket. The forced disbandment of this club after program year ended left a hole in our lives from which we have never really recovered."

I can add to this only that I received my shirt at graduation, and that I would describe it as a rayonesque symphony of illness yellow and outahere purple. On the other hand, it was monogrammed ("Chuck"). So who's to complain?

Away from the pins, Liz studied "The Culture Wars" as they concerned journalism and the academy. She had arrived from The Chronicle of Higher Education with a definite take on the subject and even thoughts of a do-good role in some kind of middle western peace process. There were courses in literature with Nicholas Delbanco, psychology with Patricia Yaeger, and others in the humanities and school of education. But as so often happens…

"Oh, God," she says. "During the year I realized that the culture wars would probably go on with or without me. I had bought a new computer, and began learning what could be done with it. My interests changed."

So did her job. Back at The Chronicle, she volunteered to create a new Web site segment on academic careers for the magazine. It is now The Chronicle's most popular Web site destination, with nearly one million hits a week. By way of comparison, the dead wood edition, with paid circulation of 100,000, claims a readership of 500,000. The success led to further executive assignment as senior editor of the publication's new Review section on arts and opinion. A recent decision in that role may bring her closer to the culture wars than at any time since leaving Ann Arbor. She hired me to write "It's Hunting Season, So Shoot Me," an account of what it's like to be a hunter on the faculty of a place like Michigan. Expected result: A fusillade of bloody-minded letters from hunter-haters.