From the Editors

IT'S HARD TO APPRECIATE Duke when you're so finely entangled with University life, when walking through the Gothic campus in sweltering humidity becomes routine and when you've forgotten how a college campus, bustling with energy in sunlight, becomes so dark and quiet when the lampposts flicker. There's something refreshing about coming back to Duke each year, something entirely invigorating in doing it for the first time, and it's hard to remember that feeling of return during the throes of another long semester.

But there's one quality you can't acquire without leaving, and that's perspective. And that's what we hope to infuse into TOWERVIEW's 11th year.

It's simple, for example, to bemoan the plight of living in Durham. Until, that is, you drive through the Bull City and realize how far it's come in the last two years. Andrew Hibbard, a Chapel Hill native who's watched Durham shoot up before his very eyes, revisits the City of Medicine's roots to project where the South's sleeping wonder-and one of the top places to live in the United States, according to U.S. News & World Report-might be headed.

When you fly in from New York, as we did on a hot summer evening, one of the first things you notice is the silence of the airport; its stillness. The Big Apple's din is nowhere to be found in the Triangle. But New York-the veritable center of the media world-has become quieter and quieter in recent months, and before we know it, the voice of the news might hush to a whisper. But not if anyone at Duke has anything to say about it, Ryan Brown writes. Journalism may be changing, but a small wing of the new Sanford School of Public Policy is devoted to tracking and defining the future of journalism, hopefully for the better.

And lastly, anyone who spends some time at Duke is bound to hear the name Reynolds Price. Some lucky few take one of the famed American author's two English classes in the spring. The fall is Price's writing time, and his latest memoir, like so much of his work, has earned critical praise. He, too, knows the importance of getting away. After all, his latest effort recalls his time in Europe as a Rhodes Scholar.

Think of this installment as a preview: a weekend jaunt on campus amid these fading days of summer. You'll be back soon, and so will we, for a few days, relishing our outsider's perspective.

Welcome to what promises to be another rewarding volume of TOWERVIEW and, as always, thanks for reading. We hope you enjoy.