From the Editors

This is a magazine about the many places and people that make up New York City and its environs. The stories are reported and written by undergraduate students from the Department of Journalism at New York University, and they have been edited by their marvelous professors, and by us.

Each of these features originated in an advanced journalism or beat reporting class during the 2006-’07 school year. We had many fine stories to choose from, submitted by instructors as the best of their students’ work. We selected these eight to share with you because they each succeed in bringing a world to life. Through close observation of character and setting, they bring readers into intimate contact with customs, dilemmas, passions, and the process of survival in a great metropolis.

Ultimately the goal is a simple one: to bring to life those stories that have been missed by the mainstream media. The emphasis is on stories that are local, but contain universal themes. We’d like native New Yorkers to read these stories and say: “I didn’t know that.” We’d like professional editors to read the stories and say: “I could use that reporter.”

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Some warm thanks are in order. First, to Department of Journalism chair Brooke Kroeger, who conceived Street Level and charged us with showing the world the best that NYU’s journalists had to offer. We also appreciate the generous support of Dean Matthew Santirocco of NYU’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the design work of Carolyn Moore and the FAS publications department. Department of Journalism Web Administrator Todd Grimason turned Moore’s designs into navigable pages. Professor David Handschuh passed assignments on to his photography students; we couldn’t have produced this issue without Journalism MA candidate Laura Sayer.

We owe an enduring debt to two alumnae of the Department of Journalism’s MA program, Heather Graham and Amy Zimmer. They paved the way for us with the original Street Level, an innovative webzine that devoted each issue to a single block of New York City. You can find it here.

– Pete Hamill and Alyssa Katz