“The opening editorial” posted:

The hope of the editors is to suggest, however imperfectly, some of the qualities which a responsible literary journal should have and to discover whether there is, in America, not only the need for such a review but the demand for one.

“Greenblatt” posted:

The original audience must have been as shocked by this interference as the torturer Cornwall. Though the servant is killed by a sword thrust from behind, it is not before he has fatally wounded his master. And what is most shocking is that the audience is clearly meant to sympathize with the attempt by a nobody to stop the highest authority in the land from doing what everyone knew the state did to traitors. Here there is no cover of presumed madness, and though the setting is still ancient Britain, the circumstances must have seemed unnervingly close to contemporary practice.

How could Shakespeare get away with it? The answer must in part be that Elizabethan and Jacobean society, though oppressive, was not as monolithic in its surveillance or as efficient in its punitive responses as the surviving evidence sometimes makes us think. Shakespeare’s world probably had more diversity of views, more room to breathe, than the official documents imply.

“Filler” posted:

Today’s race to erect ever-higher, ever-more-luxurious Manhattan condominiums recalls the early-twentieth-century competition to win New York City bragging rights for the world’s tallest building, as one record-breaking tower after another rose in dizzying succession. Yet not one of New York’s postmillennial claimants to that lineage possesses an iota of the aesthetic élan that distinguished those early skyscrapers, internationally renowned as America’s signal contribution to modern architectural form. Here one can point, for example, to the Woolworth, Chrysler, and Empire State buildings.

In contrast, the smokestack-like protuberances that now disrupt the skyline of midtown Manhattan signify the steadily widening worldwide gap between the unimaginably rich and the unconscionably poor. Those of us who believe that architecture invariably (and often unintentionally) embodies the values of the society that creates it will look upon these etiolated oddities less with wonder over their cunning mechanics than with revulsion over the larger, darker machinations they more accurately represent.

quote:

Early issues included a “child” and “philosopher” as core features. The Believer would learn a truth from one of each. The magazine seemed unconscious of the weakness of believing so hard in children and old men: either those who hadn’t started lives of adult thought, or those who were just about done. We respect the philosophers they profiled, but the motif confused philosophers with white-haired dispensers of truth. That is not a thinker: that’s Santa Claus. It led on one occasion to the tragic spectacle of Richard Rorty answering the Believer’s query, “Do you see yourself, in the coming years, continuing to respond to these charges of relativism, etc.?”: “I think that what I write from now on will be pretty much rehashes of what I’ve already written. I don’t have any new ideas.” The profiles of children have had better luck celebrating kids’ innocence and purity. The Believer profiles “tools.” It lists writers that you simply must read. It believes in others, instead of itself.
Ultimately, the Believer is a book review. It has attracted writers we admire. It does differ in at least one particular from, say, the New York Review of Books, in that its overt criterion for inclusion is not expertise, but enthusiasm.

Mr. Wiggles posted:

I used to read the New Yorker and the Review all the time but I just don't have the minutes these days. I still get a a paper copy of The Atlantic delivered to my house, though, which I always make time for.

Cardboard Box A posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TT81o4hL4c

So what do you think this hypothetical TIME ADVANCED is more closely patterned after... Harpers, The Atlantic, or The New Republic?

Mr. Wiggles posted:

Those guys are a couple of the major reasons. The dispatch section is still good, and I like the poetry. Generally the magazine is a bit too limousine liberal for my taste politically, but as was mentioned, the occasional super fantastic article makes up for that.

Defenestration posted:

N+1 published the essay MFA vs NYC which is huge if you follow writing circles. I can't find it out from a paywall though
https://nplusonemag.com/issue-10/the-intellectual-situation/mfa-vs-nyc/

daft posted:

I don't know if it qualifies but the few articles I have read on The Baffler have been pretty good. Thanks for the post OP.

Defenestration posted:

N+1 published the essay MFA vs NYC which is huge if you follow writing circles. I can't find it out from a paywall though
https://nplusonemag.com/issue-10/the-intellectual-situation/mfa-vs-nyc/

quote:

Daniel Patrick Moynihan knew better. His 1965 report on “The Negro Family” was explosive for what it claimed about black mothers and black fathers—but if it had contained all of Moynihan’s thinking on the subject, including his policy recommendations, it likely would have been politically nuclear. “Now comes the proposition that the Negro is entitled to damages as to unequal favored treatment—in order to compensate for past unequal treatment of an opposite kind,” Moynihan wrote in 1964. His point was simple if impolitic: Blacks were suffering from the effects of centuries of ill treatment at the hands of white society. Ending that ill treatment would not be enough; the country would have to make amends for it. “It may be that without unequal treatment in the immediate future there is no way for [African Americans] to achieve anything like equal status in the long run,” Moynihan wrote.

Antwan3K posted:

Does Le Monde Diplomatique go here? It's a monthly and one of the best news periodicals in the world. Their English edition is http://mondediplo.com/ (that I'm kind of pissed I can't access entirely as a subscriber to the french one)

TheOtherContraGuy posted:

I've had a subscription to the NYRB for a couple months now and consider it possibly one of the best purchases of my life. Even when I disagree with a reviewer's point of view I find their arguments compelling.

Wraith of J.O.I. posted:

I was just thinking of how I need to describe to a periodical now that I have an income sufficient to afford it. What would people here suggest between the New Yorker and the NY Review of Books? I've read a lot of the New Yorker over the years, and much less of NYRB, but am very open to it, and have liked what I've read.

Solkanar512 posted:

And here's one from left field - Archeology.

icantfindaname posted:

What kind of ideological bent does Foreign Affairs have? I know Foreign Policy is a neocon shitrag founded by Sam Huntington, I'm assuming FA is more centrist?

Chris Hughes posted:

At the heart of the conflict of the past few days is a divergent view on how the New Republic — and journalism more broadly — will survive. In one view, it is a “public trust” and not a business. It is something greater than a commercial enterprise, ineffable, an ideal that cannot be touched. Financially, it would be a charity. There is much experimentation in nonprofit journalism – ProPublica and the Texas Tribune are proving the model — and that may be the right path for certain institutions. At the New Republic, I believe we owe it to ourselves and to this institution to aim to become a sustainable business and not position ourselves to rely on the largesse of an unpredictable few. Our success is not guaranteed, but I think it’s critical to try.

The Wall Street Journal posted:

A person familiar with the matter said Mr. Hughes had already begun preliminary talks with a variety of potential buyers, including larger media companies and digital startups.

One scenario being explored would be to sell the magazine to a philanthropist who would transform it into a nonprofit.

In a meeting with staff Monday, Mr. Hughes said he had no intention of laying anyone off and said business would proceed as normal until a new owner was found.

Mr. Foer—whose departure, in part, triggered the staff exodus a year ago—warned against interpreting Mr. Hughes’ move to sell as a sign that the magazine couldn't survive.

“The New Republic has spent 100 years cheating death. There have been plenty of times in the past when it appeared doomed, then somehow skated to safety. Maybe it will again,” he said in an email. “There are still good stewards in the world and there are ideas-driven magazines that make a difference.”

Chris Hughes posted:

The unanswered question for The New Republic remains: can it find a sustainable business model that will power its journalism in the decades to come? There are bright signs on the horizon: Vox, Vice, the Texas Tribune, Buzzfeed, ProPublica, and Mic embody a new generation of promising organizations — some for-profit, others non-profit — that have put serious, high-quality journalism at the core of their identities. The New York Times, The Atlantic, and other traditional outlets seem to have found business models that work for them. I hope that this institution will one day be part of that list. To get there The New Republic needs a new vision that only a new owner can bring.

Ol Standard Retard posted: