Williams, 34th Street lifer, chosen to lead magazine into 2019

With the start of 2019, the executive board of 34th Street Magazine will change hands once again. The new executive board of Street will comprise five members: College juniors Annabelle Williams and Dalton DeStefano will lead the charge as editor-in-chief and managing editor, respectively. College junior Lily Snider will take the reins as the magazine’s second-ever assignments editor, while College junior Daniel Bulpitt and Wharton sophomore Ethan Wu will work as audience engagement director and media director, respectively.

This past year, Street experienced several significant milestones including its 50th anniversary and a new record in online readership. The magazine also cut the Highbrow and Lowbrow sections, while doubling down on its features, arts coverage, and profiles, ultimately raising content output by nearly 100 percent with over 1,300 published stories. In the fall, Street saw the launch of its first ever weekly newsletter, The Toast, which was anchored, in part, by Bulpitt. In the new year, the incoming Street leadership hopes to build on these successes and work with the other new members of the 135th Board to achieve their goals.

Williams was the first-ever Street Assignments Editor and was responsible for bringing in the publication’s first-ever freshman class of writers. She famously transferred out of the Wharton School to pursue studies in English and writing, and spent last summer working as a reporting intern at The Philadelphia Inquirer.

DeStefano was Street’s first developing features editor last spring after the section’s restructuring, and he has interviewed celebrities like Jake Gyllenhaal, written film and TV reviews, and worked on a feature story on drag queens at Penn. Like Annabelle, Dalton is a Street lifer, and has been working on the publication for three years straight.

Bulpitt, a former Lastpage editor, worked as a marketing associate in the fall and was instrumental in launching The Toast. Snider was the first-ever editor of the Style section in spring 2018, and was responsible for expanding the section’s output and incorporating more culture news coverage into the magazine. Wu, who was indispensable to the photo department in the fall semester, has been responsible for numerous cover shoots, and has amassed dozens of photo credits this year alone.

The new Street board plans to hit the ground running with changes and improvements the moment they assume their roles in January. Wu is working on building out Street’s video team to create more online content; Snider is looking to expand training initiatives for new writers, while Bulpitt wants to continue to grow The Toast’s subscriber base and build larger audiences on social media, with a focus on Instagram.

“Hopefully, a year from now, Street will be focused on elevating diverse student narratives, having solid reporting on each story, and striking a balance between Penn-centric and Philadelphia-related content,” Williams said. “I also hope that staffers who come onto the magazine will walk out of the office with lifelong friends, much in the way that I have.”