Over the past several years, the percentage of pages in Proceedings written by junior authors has increased dramatically—an intentional result of the resurrection of our essay contests over the past five years. Compared to normal submissions, essay contests attract a higher percentage of young, active-duty authors—officer and enlisted. This month we feature “Junior Voices” on the cover—not because it’s an anomaly, but because there are so many, and most are essay contest winners. To other potential young contributors, let this month’s junior voices inspire you. To older members who might be guilty from time to time of worrying whether the future can be trusted to Millennials and Gen-Z, take comfort in the wisdom, ideas, and writing ability demonstrated here.
Midshipman 2nd Class Christopher Rielage, an NROTC student at Stanford University, won the 2018 Midshipmen and Cadets Essay Contest with his “Concentrate the Fleet for Wartime Readiness” (pp. 54–57). The five winning essays from the annual Naval Academy Capstone Essay Contest start on page 60. Marine Captain Michael Magyar received the annual Lt. Gen. John A. Lejeune Writing Award for the best paper in the Marine Corps Expeditionary Warfighting School with his essay “Expeditionary Advanced BOOM!” (pp. 28–31). One of the Professional Notes this month was written by two midshipmen who are now ensigns. Husband and wife Coast Guard Lieutenant Commanders Krystyn and Piero Pecora suggest that it’s time for a Coast Guard officer to take the reins of U.S. Southern Command.
More enlisted authors are in our pages and on our website every month as well. Many of these essays come to us via our annual Enlisted Essay Contest. Corporal Zachary Anuszewski, U.S. Marine Corps, wrote this month’s From the Deckplates—a call to “Integrate Software for More Efficient Inventory” (pp. 16–17). Senior Chief Adam Gladding and Lieutenant Commander T. J. Hartman, U.S. Navy, teamed up on “Sailors Are More Than Cogs in a Machine” (pp. 74–75). And as this issue went to print, the staff was evaluating the 209 submissions in this year’s Enlisted Prize Essay Contest—a significant increase from last year’s 88 entries. We will publish the three winners, and probably a dozen or more other submissions will appear in these pages and on our website later this year.
Last month I mentioned our newly redesigned website. Thanks to hard-hitting content and our new technology, online pageviews are growing rapidly. For the first half of May, Proceedings pageviews were up about 40 percent over the first half of April. In addition to our website, the Proceedings app is also doing very well. If you haven’t seen the app, you can download it to your mobile device for free at iTunes or Google Play. One advantage of the app is that you can download an entire issue of the magazine and read it wherever you are, whether or not you have a data signal to your device—on an airplane (or at my mom’s house in rural New Hampshire) for example. Thank you to all our members and readers who are contributing to our rapid digital growth.
Bill Hamblet
Captain, U.S. Navy (Retired)
Life Member since 1993
