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Scott Pruden • Editor// Photo by Luigi Ciuffetelli |
They say the new year is all about making a fresh start. If that’s indeed the case, then my new year technically started in October.
That’s when I had the distinct pleasure of walking into the offices of Delaware Today—a magazine I’ve written for since the early 2000s—and assuming the role of editor.
It follows a pattern through my life of significant events—those fresh starts—taking place in autumn, rather than as the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve. Chalk it up to memories of new clothes and fresh packs of loose-leaf paper, but the beginning of the school year has always felt to me like the true time of new beginnings (and not just because I met my wife, Kelly, at a Labor Day party at my parents’ Pike Creek home).
Still, taking this job as editor not just of a magazine, but of the magazine that represents the place that over the years has become my “second home state” (the first being South Carolina), was something I could never have expected just a few months before. The editor’s chair at a magazine represented a goal that I longed for as far back as the beginning of my newspaper career in 1991. But as a busy freelance writer and happy stay-at-home dad for 14 years, I’d committed myself to that role going forward.
What I realized, though, was that all those years I spent on deadline either as a reporter or editor, followed as a writer honing my craft for Delaware Today and our sister publication Main Line Today, were preparing me for this role. And it’s one I assume with reverence, respect and not a small sense of excitement.
We at Delaware Today are charged with telling the stories of Delaware and its places and people. My goal as editor is to tell those stories in the most engaging, entertaining and touching way we know how—through the prodigious talents of our staff, the eloquent words of our stellar writers and the moving images taken by our team of talented photographers, all of whom share our love for this small but mighty state.
And if you’ll permit me a moment of uncharacteristic boasting, we also strive to be a point of pride for you as a Delawarean—something that you can point to on your coffee table, the newsstand or the screen of your computer and say, “This is ours, and it represents us well.”
But it’s something we can’t do without you, the reader. We want this relationship with you to be a conversation, so let us know how we’re doing, whether it’s through a letter to the editor or a simple like on Facebook. Share your stories with us so we might, in turn, share them with your neighbors, whether they’re next door or two counties away.
So, welcome to this fresh start for both of us, and I look forward to embarking on the journey together.
—Scott Pruden
