To download the MP3, right click HERE and choose “save link as.”

From 7-8 pm on Thursday, December 17, Michigan Radio aired a special call-in show for the Generation Y Michigan series. The show was co-hosted by Charity Nebbe and Lauren Silverman. Charity is Michigan Radio’s All Things Considered host, and Lauren is our newsroom intern who has been reporting and blogging on generationymichigan.org for the past few months.

Guests on the show included John Bebow (Executive Director at the Center for Michigan) and Britany Affolter-Caine (Director of Intern in Michigan).

Web content administrator Nick Meador hosted a web chat on this page during the show. You can view the chat by clicking the play button in the box below.

Read more about his new Facebook group in the Grand Rapids Press or check in out on Facebook. It’s great to see this project inspire new conversations!

We want to create a variety of ways for you to be involved with the Generation Y Michigan project. Here are some developments we’ve rolled out in the past week or two.

• Twitter feed @GenYMich – This will contain links to all of our posts, and maybe some other surprises. Our profile is at twitter.com/genymich.
• Facebook fan page – Already up to 38 fans, this will be a great place for Gen Y-ers in Michigan to connect. We’ll also post links here. You can find the page at facebook.com/genymich.
• RSS feeds – Not just one feed, but eight! From all posts to recent comments, you’ll find the feeds here.
• Mobile view – A simple list of posts optimized for viewing on your mobile device.
• Email updates – You can subscribe to receive an email notification whenever new content is posted on the site.
• Guest essay submission info – If you were thinking of submitting a guest essay, please read these instructions.
• Author login – Once you read the submission guide, this is where you’ll register and log in.

Look for links to all of these features at the bottom of the website.

We are still working out the specifics of this new aspect of the project, and we don’t have too many requirements at this time. The essay should focus on the topic of young adults in Michigan, and the reasons why they would move to, stay in or leave the state. These can be based on personal experience, observation, interviews or research. The length should fall in the range of 500-2,000 words, with some flexibility. Your essay should be an elaboration on a theme or idea — in other words, please don’t submit a list of pros or cons about Michigan. Feel free to include an image to go with your essay, as long as you created it or you have the right to use it (include a link to the original image if it’s a Creative Commons photo from Flickr or a free-use image from a stock photo website like Stock.xchng).

At this time guest essays will not appear on the front page of Generation Y Michigan. However, they will be published under a Guest Essays tab in the site navigation and the Recent Posts box in the site sidebar. Essays will be subject to the terms of Michigan Radio’s User Agreement, specifically in regard to discrimination and hate speech. Michigan Radio will not edit the content of essays, but we may make grammatical corrections according to AP Style.

We want to clarify that we will not be taking pitches, selecting from submissions or paying for essays. We will publish any essay that meets our general guidelines.

GenerationYMichigan.org is published under a Creative Commons 3.0 BY-NC-SA license. By submitting, the author agrees to have the essay published under the conditions of this license. These contributor requirements are subject to change at any time.

Lauren never had any intention of moving to the state of Michigan; it just happened to be where the University of Michigan was located. And she probably won’t stay after she graduates. However, according to many thinkers, young college graduates–like Lauren–are the people Michigan needs most.

On November 5, Lauren will launch a new series for Michigan Radio called “Generation Y Michigan” in which she explores why young adults in the Generation Y cohort are, or are not leaving Michigan. These stories will air on Morning Edition (M-F, 5-9 am) and All Things Considered (M-F, 4-6:30 pm) throughout the following several weeks.

“Generation Y Michigan” will examine how young people view Michigan, what Michigan needs to do to retain young people, and what Lauren’s generation is hoping the future of the region looks like. Lauren will talk to demographers, employers, and, most importantly, young people (like herself) who have or will be making the decision about whether to stay or go. The on-air portion of this series will be accompanied by a blog at GenerationYMichigan.org, where listeners can discuss this issue, take part in polls, and view supplementary photographs and essays.

Lauren is studying Political Science and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of Michigan.  She worked with Youth Radio in California for 6 years, has filed 8 stories with NPR, including installments of the Day to Day series “What’s the New What”, and is currently working on a story for Marketplace.

Michigan Radio, the public radio station of The University of Michigan, is an NPR News Station and the most-listened-to public radio service in the state, with nearly 500,000 listeners per week across southern Michigan. Michigan Radio broadcasts at 91.7 FM in southeastern Michigan, 91.1 FM in Flint, and 104.1 FM in western Michigan.