Origins, when we manage
to unearth them, seldom clarify
the cobbled nature of the pres-
ent. Instead, they often string us
along a path of imagined priori-
ties, allowing us to feel qualified
in recognizing how the past must
inform our current agendas. In
the spirit of the Origin Edition,
we write to our readership as the
editorial team of The Statement
— The Michigan Daily’s weekly
magazine — with our own ori-
gins under the microscope. The
Statement we’ve inherited has,
by nature of being a college pub-
lication, undergone nearly seven
decades of change, spurred by in-
stitutional shifts, individual lead-
ers’ interests and commitments,
and campus and social upheaval.
We’ve inherited a dynamic, mer-
curial force.
But The Statement wasn’t al-
ways “The Statement.” Students
wanting to pen editorial and fea-
tures writing did so for the then-
labeled “weekend magazine,”
which seemed to have dipped in
and out of existence since the
Daily’s own inception in 1890
— that is, until August of 1963,
when then-editor Gloria Bowles
affirmed the magazine’s pres-
ence, promising a bi-monthly ap-
pearance. In the years following,
the magazine would shorten its
title to a curt “WEEKEND” and
feature photo essays, fashion and
literature editions, and even initi-
ate a witty “junk drawer.”
Then, in September of
2005, tucked below The Daily’s
masthead in a pithy “From the
Editor’s” note, then-Editor in
Chief Jason Z. Pesick and then-
Magazine Editor Doug Wernert
announced the inception of The
Statement, which would “feature
more in-depth reporting on is-
sues affecting both the University
and the city of Ann Arbor. It is
more intelligent,” they contin-
ued, “with the goal of exposing
new ideas and information to
readers in a magazine format.”
In the same edition, planted
above The Daily’s masthead,
read: “Weekend Magazine Is
Dead — Long Live The State-
ment.” Their choice in language
may seem a curiously hostile
rhetoric to employ, but Wernert
and Pesick would oversee the
greatest change to The Daily’s
feature-writing capabilities since
the advent of the Weekend Maga-
zine. What they understood was
a veritable need for focused, ex-
ploratory journalism, with an op-
portunity for the creative to make
its way into the fold.
Beyond the editorial shift,
the
magazine’s
name-change
to The Statement paid homage
to The Port Huron Statement,
a founding text of 1960s coun-
terculture, and authored by The
Daily’s own Tom Hayden. In a
2021 Statement article by former-
columnist
Leah
Leszczynski,
Wernert and Pesick would clarify
that “using the Port Huron State-
ment as the magazine’s eponym
was not necessarily due to ideo-
logical admiration for the docu-
ment.” Yet, their choice in name-
sake seems hardly incidental.
Hayden, a University alum
and former Editor-in-Chief of
The Daily in 1960, went on to
found the Students for a Demo-
cratic Society, prompt JFK’s
proposal of the Peace Corps on
the steps of the Michigan Union,
and serve as pallbearer after the
president’s
assassination.
He
also inspired President Johnson’s
infamous “Great Society” speech
and served in the California State
Assembly, while still managing to
contribute to The Daily.
In June of 1962, Hayden
would travel ninety-eight miles
east of Ann Arbor, along with
nearly four dozen other members
of SDS to compose the Port Huron
Statement, working for five days
straight to perfect a document
that would become the New Left’s
founding manifesto. Their chosen
site — Port Huron, Michigan — sits
as an idle waterfront town, starkly
unexceptional in character yet re-
deemable by nature of its proxim-
ity to Lake Huron.
Our editorial team made
the same ninety-eight mile drive.
We wanted to immerse ourselves
in the environment Hayden
and SDS had selected as a site
of change, even if the site itself
seemed to be nothing more than
a matter of convenience, a lake
to swim in during breaks from
the writing sessions. But what
we found, both unexpectedly and
not, contextualizes our commit-
ment to the Statement as host to a
similar kind of journalistic fervor
that Hayden embodied.
In the following sections,
we make our values as editors
explicit, examine the contempo-
rary condition of The Statement
and its duties, as well as the role
of creative writing and journal-
ism today more broadly. Here, we
affirm The Statement’s commit-
ment to producing work that car-
ries the assuredness of fact, the
depth and liberty of prose, and
the ardor of poetry.
TAYLOR SCHOTT,
REESE MARTIN,
SARAH AKAABOUNE
AND JOHN JACKSON
Statement Editorial Staff
Jeremy Weine/DAILY
2 — The Statement // Wednesday, March 22, 2023
From the editors:
The origins and future of
The Statement Magazine
Jeremy Weine/DAILY
From left to right: Julia Verklan (former Statement Managing Editor), John Jackson (Associate Editor), Reese
Martin (Deputy Editor) and Taylor Schott (Managing Editor) discuss Statement’s importance and future in
Lakeport State Park Saturday, March 11.
Julia, Taylor, Reese and John look out on Lake Huron.