''In These Times'' is an American politically
progressive monthly magazine of news and opinion published in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
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, subdivision_name ...
,
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...
.
It was established as a
broadsheet
A broadsheet is the largest newspaper format and is characterized by long Vertical and horizontal, vertical pages, typically of . Other common newspaper formats include the smaller Berliner (format), Berliner and Tabloid (newspaper format), ta ...
-format fortnightly newspaper in 1976 by
James Weinstein, a lifelong
socialist
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...
.
It investigates alleged corporate and government wrongdoing, covers international affairs, and has a cultural section. It regularly reports on labor, economic and racial justice movements,
environmental issues
Environmental issues are effects of human activity on the biophysical environment, most often of which are harmful effects that cause environmental degradation. Environmental protection is the practice of protecting the natural environment on t ...
,
feminism
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
,
grassroots democracy
Grassroots democracy is a tendency towards designing political processes that shift as much decision-making authority as practical to the organization's lowest geographic or social level of organization.
Grassroots organizations can have a var ...
,
minority communities, and the
media
Media may refer to:
Communication
* Media (communication), tools used to deliver information or data
** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising
** Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass el ...
.
Weinstein was the publication's founding editor and publisher; its current editor and publisher is
Joel Bleifuss
Joel Bleifuss is an American journalist. He was the editor and publisher of ''In These Times'', a Chicago-based news magazine founded in 1976 by James Weinstein. During Bleifuss's tenure, the magazine published articles and columns by members ...
.
, it had a circulation of over 50,000. As a
nonprofit organization
A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...
, the magazine is financed through subscriptions and donations.
History
In 1976, Weinstein, an historian and former editor of ''Studies on the Left'', launched the politically progressive journal ''In These Times''. He sought to model the newsweekly on the early-20th-century socialist newspaper the ''
Appeal to Reason''. For some time, its tagline was 'The Socialist Newsweekly'. "We intend to speak to
corporate capitalism
In social science and economics, corporate capitalism is a capitalist marketplace characterized by the dominance of hierarchical and bureaucratic corporations.
Overview
A large proportion of the economy of the United States and its labour mark ...
as the great issue of our time, and to socialism as the popular movement that will meet it" he told the ''
Chicago Sun Times
The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago T ...
'' on the eve of the first issue's release. While Weinstein himself was involved with both the
New American Movement
The New American Movement (NAM) was an American New Left multi-tendency socialist and feminist political organization established in 1971.
The NAM continued an independent existence until 1983, when it merged with Michael Harrington's Democrati ...
and the
Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee
The Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC; ) was a democratic socialist organization in the United States.
The DSOC was founded in 1973 by Michael Harrington, who had led a minority caucus in the Socialist Party of America and disag ...
, he wanted the journal to be independent of any one
political party
A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology ...
or
faction
Faction or factionalism may refer to:
Politics
* Political faction, a group of people with a common political purpose
* Free and Independent Faction, a Romanian political party
* Faction (''Planescape''), a political faction in the game ''Planes ...
. Thus, over the years it has published a wide variety of contributorsfrom
anarchist
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not neces ...
s, to
union
Union commonly refers to:
* Trade union, an organization of workers
* Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets
Union may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment
Music
* Union (band), an American rock group
** ''Un ...
members, to
centrist
Centrism is a political outlook or position involving acceptance or support of a balance of social equality and a degree of social hierarchy while opposing political changes that would result in a significant shift of society strongly to the l ...
s.
During the 1980s, the publication won notoriety for its investigative reporting of the
Iran–Contra affair
The Iran–Contra affair ( fa, ماجرای ایران-کنترا, es, Caso Irán–Contra), often referred to as the Iran–Contra scandal, the McFarlane affair (in Iran), or simply Iran–Contra, was a political scandal in the United States ...
. It has since broken stories on the deliberate destruction of Iraqi water treatment plants by US forces during the first
Gulf War
The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Iraq were carried out in two key phases: ...
(1990-1991),
global warming
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...
, and on the emergence of
mad cow disease
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad cow disease, is an incurable and invariably fatal neurodegenerative disease of cattle. Symptoms include abnormal behavior, trouble walking, and weight loss. Later in the course of t ...
.
During the 1980s, and up to 1992, it was a biweekly newspaper and a democratic-socialist competitor to the ''
National Guardian
''The National Guardian'', later known as ''The Guardian'', was a left-wing independent weekly newspaper established in 1948 in New York City. The paper was founded by James Aronson, Cedric Belfrage and John T. McManus in connection with the 194 ...
'', which was a biweekly newspaper that was closer to
Marxism–Leninism
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology which was the main communist movement throughout the 20th century. Developed by the Bolsheviks, it was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, its satellite states in the Eastern Bloc, and various co ...
.
Senior editor
Silja J. A. Talvi won two
National Council on Crime and Delinquency
Evident Change, formerly the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD), is an American nonprofit social research organization. NCCD was organized by fourteen probation officers who met at Plymouth Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on June 1 ...
PASS Awards (2005, 2006) for her reporting on the impact of
three strikes sentencing on
African-American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...
men, and on the trend toward
privatization of the prison system.
The magazine was awarded the ''
Utne Reader
''Utne Reader'' (also known as ''Utne'') ( ) is a digital digest that collects and reprints articles on politics, culture, and the environment, generally from alternative media sources including journals, newsletters, weeklies, zines, music, and ...
''
Independent Press Award for Best Political Coverage in 2006.
Contributors
Two of the magazine's longest-running columns are
Salim Muwakkil
Salim Muwakkil (born Alonzo James Cannady, January 20, 1947) is an American journalist and political commentator, based in Chicago. He is a senior editor at '' In These Times magazine'' and an op-ed columnist for the ''Chicago Tribune''.
Muwakkil ...
's ''The Third Coast'', covering race relations, and
Susan J. Douglas's ''Back Talk'', a critical review of the mass media.
David Moberg has reported on labor and
political economy
Political economy is the study of how Macroeconomics, economic systems (e.g. Marketplace, markets and Economy, national economies) and Politics, political systems (e.g. law, Institution, institutions, government) are linked. Widely studied ph ...
for the magazine since its inception in 1976.
The magazine's editor
Joel Bleifuss
Joel Bleifuss is an American journalist. He was the editor and publisher of ''In These Times'', a Chicago-based news magazine founded in 1976 by James Weinstein. During Bleifuss's tenure, the magazine published articles and columns by members ...
has written for it since the mid-1980s. More stories from his column, ''The First Stone'', have been included in Project Censored's "Top 25 Censored Stories of the Year" than of any other journalist.
Other columnists include
H. Candace Gorman,
Laura S. Washington and
Terry J. Allen.
Senior editors include Allen,
Patricia Aufderheide, Douglas, Moberg, Muwakkil and
David Sirota.
Notable contributors to the magazine have included:
*
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...
*
Alexander Cockburn
Alexander Claud Cockburn ( ; 6 June 1941 – 21 July 2012) was a Scottish-born Irish-American political journalist and writer. Cockburn was brought up by British parents in Ireland, but lived and worked in the United States from 1972. Together ...
*
Barbara Ehrenreich
Barbara Ehrenreich (, ; ; August 26, 1941 – September 1, 2022) was an American author and political activist. During the 1980s and early 1990s, she was a prominent figure in the Democratic Socialists of America. She was a widely read and awar ...
*
Norman Finkelstein
Norman Gary Finkelstein (; born December 8, 1953) is an American political scientist, activist, former professor, and author. His primary fields of research are the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust. He is a g ...
*
Laura Flanders
Laura Flanders (born 5 December 1961) is an English broadcast journalist living in the United States who presents the weekly, long-form interview show ''The Laura Flanders Show''. Flanders has described herself as a "lefty person". The brother ...
*
Annette Fuentes
*
Juan Gonzalez
*
David Graeber
David Rolfe Graeber (; February 12, 1961September 2, 2020) was an American anthropologist and anarchist activist. His influential work in economic anthropology, particularly his books '' Debt: The First 5,000 Years'' (2011) and ''Bullshit Jobs ...
*
Glenn Greenwald
Glenn Edward Greenwald (born March 6, 1967) is an American journalist, author and lawyer. In 2014, he cofounded ''The Intercept'', of which he was an editor until he resigned in October 2020. Greenwald subsequently started publishing on Substac ...
*
Miles Harvey
Miles Harvey is an American journalist and author. He is best known for his 2000 book, ''The Island of Lost Maps'', which recounted the story of a Floridian named Gilbert Bland, who stole old and precious maps from libraries across America.
H ...
*
Doug Ireland
*
John Judis
John B. Judis is an author and American journalist, an editor-at-large at ''Talking Points Memo'', a former senior writer at the ''National Journal'' and a former senior editor at ''The New Republic''.
Education
Judis was born in Chicago to a f ...
*
Garrison Keillor
Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor (; born August 7, 1942) is an American author, singer, humorist, voice actor, and radio personality. He created the Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) show ''A Prairie Home Companion'' (called ''Garrison Keillor's Radio ...
*
Naomi Klein
Naomi A. Klein (born May 8, 1970) is a Canadian author, social activist, and filmmaker known for her political analyses, support of ecofeminism, organized labour, left-wing politics and criticism of corporate globalization, fascism, ecofascism ...
*
Robert W. McChesney
Robert Waterman McChesney (; born December 22, 1952) is an American professor notable in the history and political economy of communications, and the role media play in democratic and capitalist societies. He is the Gutgsell Endowed Professor ...
*
Rick Perlstein
Eric S. Perlstein (born September 3, 1969) is an American historian and journalist who has garnered recognition for his chronicles of the post-1960s American conservative movement. The author of five bestselling books, Perlstein received the 200 ...
*
Jeffrey St. Clair
Jeffrey St. Clair (born 1959) is an investigative journalist, writer, and editor.
Biography
St Clair was born in Indianapolis, Indiana and attended American University in Washington, D.C., majoring in English and history. He has worked as an ...
*
Jane Slaughter
*
James Thindwa
*
Michael VanRooyen
*
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American writer known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. In a career spanning over 50 years, he published fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and ...
*
Joan Walsh
Joan Maureen Walsh (born September 18, 1958) is a liberal American political pundit and journalist. Walsh is national affairs correspondent for ''The Nation,'' and was previously an on-air political analyst at CNN and MSNBC. She produced the 202 ...
*
Fred Weir
*
Paul Wellstone
Paul David Wellstone (July 21, 1944 – October 25, 2002) was an American academic, author, and politician who represented Minnesota in the United States Senate from 1991 until he was killed in a plane crash near Eveleth, Minnesota, in 2002. A me ...
*
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek (, ; ; born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual. He is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, visiting professor at New Y ...
See also
*
List of newspapers in Illinois
This is a list of newspapers in Illinois.
Daily newspapers
:''This is a list of daily newspapers currently published in Illinois, USA. For weekly newspapers, see List of newspapers in Illinois.''
* '' The Beacon-News'' – Aurora
* ''Bellevi ...
*
List of political magazines
This is a list of political magazines.
Currently published
No longer published
* ''The American Mercury'', Conservative
* '' The American Catholic Quarterly Review'', Conservative, (1876-1924)
* '' Arayış'', Social Democratic, (1981–1982)
...
*
List of United States magazines
This is a list of United States magazines.
Automotive
* ''Automotive News''
* ''Car and Driver''
* '' Four Wheeler''
* '' Hot Rod''
* ''Motor Trend''
* '' Motorcycle Classics''
* ''Road & Track''
* ''Truckin' Magazine'' (defunct)
Business ...
*
Media in Chicago
The Chicago metropolitan area (the Chicago market) commands the third-largest media market in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles and the largest inland market. All of the major U.S. television networks have subsidiaries in Chi ...
References
External links
* , the magazine's official website (a portion of its content is available free of charge; yearly subscriptions are available for the full print edition)
Fire on the Prairiepodcast
A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...
(active 2003–2006) with interviews and speeches from progressive leaders
{{authority control
1976 establishments in Illinois
Alternative magazines
Bimonthly magazines published in the United States
Monthly magazines published in the United States
News magazines published in the United States
Political magazines published in the United States
Magazines established in 1976
Magazines published in Chicago
Progressivism in the United States
Social democratic organizations
Socialism in the United States
Socialist magazines