New home, new staff, new ways to read

Introducing 24 Farnsworth Street, senior editor Elaine McArdle, and UU World Digital.
By Christopher L. Walton
Summer 2014

Good news! As this issue arrives in your mailboxes, the magazine staff and our colleagues at the Unitarian Universalist Association and Beacon Press are unpacking at our new home at 24 Farnsworth Street in Boston. (I am writing these words surrounded by moving boxes and recycling bins in our final month at 25 Beacon Street, which the UUA sold along with the Eliot and Pickett guest houses for $23.6 million in March. See page 37. But we expect to open for business at our new address on May 19.) We look forward to showing you the new space in our next issue.

More good news! I am thrilled to introduce our new senior editor for news, Elaine McArdle. Elaine is no stranger to the magazine or to Unitarian Universalism. Before joining the staff in March, Elaine had written eleven articles since 2011, including a major profile last year of retiring Executive Vice President Kay Montgomery. She brings more than twenty years of journalistic experience with local and regional newspapers, national magazines, and public radio. A Unitarian Universalist since 1995, she is active at First Unitarian Church of Portland, Oregon, where she lives and works. Watch for her byline in this issue, and in our weekly news coverage at uuworld.org.

And still more good news! You’ll recall the readership survey we announced a year ago. I describe the results in some detail starting on page 33, but the short version is that we discovered gratifying levels of engagement with the magazine among our print readers as well as real interest in broadening the ways we deliver the magazine. The UUA remains committed to delivering a print quarterly, so those of you who love having a paper copy to read on the porch or share with a friend or leave on your coffee table will continue to receive it. But we are introducing a digital version, too, for readers who would like to download the magazine or read it on any computer. And, if you have an iPad, Kindle Fire, or Android tablet, we are introducing UU World apps specially designed for you. Now you can flip through the magazine—front to back, articles, art, ads, and all—wherever you are, even if your print magazine is still at home. To add a digital subscription, visit uuworld.org/digital.

Finally, an overdue announcement: we officially welcome longtime contributor and online columnist Doug Muder, who has written five major feature stories and dozens of other provocative, insightful essays for us, to the ranks of our contributing editors. His latest essay, “I Don’t ‘Believe in’ the Seven Principles,” appears on page 50.

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This article appeared in the Summer 2014 issue of UU World (page 3). See sidebar for links to related resources.

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