''The Nation'' is an
American liberal
Liberalism in the United States is a political and moral philosophy based on concepts of unalienable rights of the individual. The fundamental liberal ideals of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, the separation of c ...
biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to
William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison (December , 1805 – May 24, 1879) was a prominent American Christian, abolitionist, journalist, suffragist, and social reformer. He is best known for his widely read antislavery newspaper '' The Liberator'', which he found ...
's ''
The Liberator'', an
abolitionist
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people.
The British ...
newspaper that closed in 1865, after ratification of the
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. The amendment was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, by the House of Representative ...
. Thereafter, the magazine proceeded to a broader topic, ''The Nation''. An important collaborator of the new magazine was its Literary Editor
Wendell Phillips Garrison
Wendell Phillips Garrison (June 4, 1840 – February 27, 1907) was an American editor and author.
Early life
Garrison was born on June 4, 1840 at Cambridgeport, Massachusetts. He was the third son of the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison ...
, son of William. He had at his disposal his father's vast network of contacts.
''The Nation'' is published by its namesake owner, The Nation Company, L.P., at 520 8th Ave New York, NY 10018. It has news bureaus in
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
,
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
, and
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...
, with departments covering
architecture
Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...
, art, corporations,
defense
Defense or defence may refer to:
Tactical, martial, and political acts or groups
* Defense (military), forces primarily intended for warfare
* Civil defense, the organizing of civilians to deal with emergencies or enemy attacks
* Defense industr ...
,
environment
Environment most often refers to:
__NOTOC__
* Natural environment, all living and non-living things occurring naturally
* Biophysical environment, the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism or ...
, films,
legal affairs
''Legal Affairs'' was an American legal magazine that was launched under the auspices of Yale Law School, and which later became an independent non-profit venture with an educational mission. As the first general-interest legal magazine, ''Legal Af ...
, music,
peace
Peace is a concept of societal friendship and harmony in the absence of hostility and violence. In a social sense, peace is commonly used to mean a lack of conflict (such as war) and freedom from fear of violence between individuals or groups. ...
and
disarmament
Disarmament is the act of reducing, limiting, or abolishing weapons. Disarmament generally refers to a country's military or specific type of weaponry. Disarmament is often taken to mean total elimination of weapons of mass destruction, such as n ...
, poetry, and the
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...
. Circulation peaked at 187,000 in 2006 but dropped to 145,000 in print by 2010, although digital subscriptions had risen to over 15,000. By 2021, the total for both print and digital combined was 96,000.
History
Founding and journalistic roots
''The Nation'' was established in July 1865 at 130 Nassau Street ("
Newspaper Row") in
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
. Its founding coincided with the closure of the abolitionist newspaper ''
The Liberator'', also in 1865, after slavery was abolished by the
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. The amendment was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, by the House of Representative ...
; a group of abolitionists, led by the architect
Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted (April 26, 1822August 28, 1903) was an American landscape architect, journalist, social critic, and public administrator. He is considered to be the father of landscape architecture in the USA. Olmsted was famous for co- ...
, desired to found a new weekly political magazine.
Edwin Lawrence Godkin, who had been considering starting such a magazine for some time, agreed and so became the first editor of ''The Nation''.
Wendell Phillips Garrison
Wendell Phillips Garrison (June 4, 1840 – February 27, 1907) was an American editor and author.
Early life
Garrison was born on June 4, 1840 at Cambridgeport, Massachusetts. He was the third son of the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison ...
, son of ''The Liberators editor/publisher
William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison (December , 1805 – May 24, 1879) was a prominent American Christian, abolitionist, journalist, suffragist, and social reformer. He is best known for his widely read antislavery newspaper '' The Liberator'', which he found ...
, was Literary Editor from 1865 to 1906.
Its founding publisher was Joseph H. Richards; the editor was Godkin, an
immigrant from Ireland who had formerly worked as a correspondent of the London ''
Daily News'' and ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
''.
Godkin sought to establish what one sympathetic commentator later characterized as "an organ of opinion characterized in its utterance by breadth and deliberation, an organ which should identify itself with causes, and which should give its support to parties primarily as representative of these causes."
[Moore, "Proceedings at the Semi-Centennial Dinner," p. 503.]
In its "founding prospectus" the
magazine
A magazine is a periodical publication, generally published on a regular schedule (often weekly or monthly), containing a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, purchase price, prepaid subscriptions, or by a combinatio ...
wrote that the publication would have "seven main objects" with the first being "discussion of the topics of the day, and, above all, of legal, economical, and constitutional questions, with greater accuracy and moderation than are now to be found in the daily press."
''The Nation'' pledged to "not be the organ of any party, sect or body" but rather to "make an earnest effort to bring to discussion of political and social questions a really critical spirit, and to wage war upon the vices of violence, exaggeration and misrepresentation by which so much of the political writing of the day is marred."
In the first year of publication, one of the magazine's regular features was ''The South As It Is'', dispatches from a
tour of the war-torn region by John Richard Dennett, a recent
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
graduate and a veteran of the
Port Royal Experiment
The Port Royal Experiment was a program begun during the American Civil War in which former slaves successfully worked on the land abandoned by planters. In 1861 the Union captured the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina and their main h ...
. Dennett interviewed
Confederate
Confederacy or confederate may refer to:
States or communities
* Confederate state or confederation, a union of sovereign groups or communities
* Confederate States of America, a confederation of secessionist American states that existed between 1 ...
veterans, freed slaves, agents of the
Freedmen's Bureau
The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was an agency of early Reconstruction, assisting freedmen in the South. It was established on March 3, 1865, and operated briefly as a ...
, and ordinary people he met by the side of the road.
Among the causes supported by the publication in its earliest days was civil service reform—moving the basis of government employment from a
political patronage
Patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege, or financial aid that an organization or individual bestows on another. In the history of art, arts patronage refers to the support that kings, popes, and the wealthy have provided to artists su ...
system to a professional
bureaucracy
The term bureaucracy () refers to a body of non-elected governing officials as well as to an administrative policy-making group. Historically, a bureaucracy was a government administration managed by departments staffed with non-elected offi ...
based upon
meritocracy
Meritocracy (''merit'', from Latin , and ''-cracy'', from Ancient Greek 'strength, power') is the notion of a political system in which economic goods and/or political power are vested in individual people based on talent, effort, and achiev ...
.
''The Nation'' also was preoccupied with the reestablishment of a sound national currency in the years after the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...
, arguing that a stable
currency
A currency, "in circulation", from la, currens, -entis, literally meaning "running" or "traversing" is a standardization of money in any form, in use or circulation as a medium of exchange, for example banknotes and coins.
A more general def ...
was necessary to restore the economic stability of the nation. Closely related to this was the publication's advocacy of the elimination of
protective tariffs
Protective tariffs are tariffs that are enacted with the aim of protecting a domestic industry. They aim to make imported goods cost more than equivalent goods produced domestically, thereby causing sales of domestically produced goods to rise, ...
in favor of lower prices of consumer goods associated with a
free trade
Free trade is a trade policy that does not restrict imports or exports. It can also be understood as the free market idea applied to international trade. In government, free trade is predominantly advocated by political parties that hold econo ...
system.
[Moore, "Proceedings at the Semi-Centennial Dinner," p. 504.]
The magazine would stay at
Newspaper Row for 90 years.
From 1880s literary supplement to 1930s New Deal booster
In 1881, newspaperman-turned-railroad-baron
Henry Villard
Henry Villard (April 10, 1835 – November 12, 1900) was an American journalist and financier who was an early president of the Northern Pacific Railway.
Born and raised by Ferdinand Heinrich Gustav Hilgard in the Rhenish Palatinate of the Kin ...
acquired ''The Nation'' and converted it into a weekly literary supplement for his daily newspaper the ''
New York Evening Post
The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com, and the entertainment site Decider.com.
It was established i ...
''. The offices of the magazine were moved to the ''Evening Post''s headquarters at 210 Broadway.
The ''New York Evening Post'' would later morph into a
tabloid, the ''
New York Post
The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com, and the entertainment site Decider.com.
It was established ...
'', a left-leaning afternoon tabloid, under owner
Dorothy Schiff from 1939 to 1976. Since then, it has been a
conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...
tabloid owned by
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch ( ; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-born American business magnate. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including ...
, while ''The Nation'' became known for its left-wing ideology.
In 1900, Henry Villard's son,
Oswald Garrison Villard
Oswald Garrison Villard (March 13, 1872 – October 1, 1949) was an American journalist and editor of the ''New York Evening Post.'' He was a civil rights activist, and along with his mother, Fanny Villard, a founding member of the NAACP. I ...
, inherited the magazine and the ''Evening Post'', and sold off the latter in 1918. Thereafter, he remade ''The Nation'' into a
current affairs publication and gave it an anti-
classical liberal
Classical liberalism is a political tradition and a branch of liberalism that advocates free market and laissez-faire economics; civil liberties under the rule of law with especial emphasis on individual autonomy, limited government, economic ...
orientation. Oswald Villard welcomed the
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Cons ...
and supported the
nationalization
Nationalization (nationalisation in British English) is the process of transforming privately-owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to pri ...
of industries – thus reversing the meaning of "
liberalism
Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality and equality before the law."political rationalism, hostility to autocracy, cultural distaste for c ...
" as the founders of ''The Nation'' would have understood the term, from a belief in a smaller and more restricted government to a belief in a larger and less restricted government. Villard sold the magazine in 1935.
Maurice Wertheim
Maurice Wertheim (February 16, 1886 – May 27, 1950) was an American investment banker, chess player, chess patron, art collector, environmentalist, and philanthropist. Wertheim founded Wertheim & Co. in 1927.
Biography
Born to a Jewish family ...
, the new owner, sold it in 1937 to
Freda Kirchwey
Mary Frederika "Freda" Kirchwey (September 26, 1893 – January 3, 1976) was an American journalist, editor, and publisher strongly committed throughout her career to liberal causes ( anti-Fascist, pro-Soviet, anti- anti-communist). From 1933 ...
, who served as editor from 1933 to 1955.
Almost every editor of ''The Nation'' from Villard's time to the 1970s was looked at for "subversive" activities and ties. When
Albert Jay Nock
Albert Jay Nock (October 13, 1870 – August 19, 1945) was an American libertarian author, editor first of ''The Freeman'' and then ''The Nation'', educational theorist, Georgist, and social critic of the early and middle 20th century. He was an ...
, not long afterward, published a column criticizing
Samuel Gompers
Samuel Gompers (; January 27, 1850December 13, 1924) was a British-born American cigar maker, labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history. Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and served as the organization's ...
and trade unions for being complicit in the war machine of the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, ''The Nation'' was briefly suspended from the US mail.
During the 1930s, ''The Nation'' showed enthusiastic support for
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
and the
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Cons ...
.
World War II and early Cold War
The magazine's financial problems in the early 1940s prompted Kirchwey to sell her individual ownership of the magazine in 1943, creating a
nonprofit
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 ...
organization, Nation Associates, out of the money generated from a recruiting drive of sponsors. This organization was also responsible for academic affairs, including conducting research and organizing conferences, that had been a part of the early history of the magazine. Nation Associates became responsible for the operation and publication of the magazine on a nonprofit basis, with Kirchwey as both president of Nation Associates and editor of ''The Nation''.
Before the attack on
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the Naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the Re ...
, ''The Nation'' repeatedly called on the United States to enter World War II to resist
fascism
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy an ...
, and after the US entered the war, the publication supported the American war effort.
It also supported the use of the
atomic bomb
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...
on
Hiroshima
is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui h ...
.
During the late 1940s and again in the early 1950s, a merger was discussed by Kirchwey (later
Carey McWilliams) and ''
The New Republic
''The New Republic'' is an American magazine of commentary on politics, contemporary culture, and the arts. Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in hum ...
''s
Michael Straight
Michael Whitney Straight (September 1, 1916 – January 4, 2004) was an American magazine publisher, novelist, patron of the arts, a member of the prominent Whitney family, and a confessed spy for the KGB.
Early life
Straight was born in New Yor ...
. The two magazines were very similar at that time — both were left of center, ''The Nation'' further left than ''TNR''; both had circulations around 100,000, although ''TNR''s was slightly higher; and both lost money. It was thought that the two magazines could unite and make the most powerful journal of opinion. The new publication would have been called ''The Nation and New Republic''. Kirchwey was the most hesitant, and both attempts to merge failed. The two magazines would later take very different paths: ''The Nation'' achieved a higher circulation, and ''The New Republic'' moved more to the
right
Rights are law, legal, social, or ethics, ethical principles of Liberty, freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people according to some legal system, social convent ...
.
In the 1950s, ''The Nation'' was attacked as "pro-communist" because of its advocacy of
detente with the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
, and its criticism of
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making false or unfounded accusations of subversion and treason, especially when related to anarchism, communism and socialism, and especially when done in a public and attention-grabbing manner.
The term origin ...
.
One of the magazine's writers,
Louis Fischer
Louis Fischer (29 February 1896 – 15 January 1970) was an American journalist. Among his works were a contribution to the ex-communist treatise '' The God that Failed'' (1949), '' The Life of Mahatma Gandhi'' (1950), basis for the Academy A ...
, resigned from the magazine afterwards, claiming ''The Nation''s foreign coverage was too pro-Soviet.
Despite this,
Diana Trilling
Diana Trilling (née Rubin; July 21, 1905 – October 23, 1996) was an American literary critic and author, one of a group of left-wing writers known as the New York Intellectuals.
Background
Born Diana Rubin, she married the literary and c ...
pointed out that Kirchwey did allow anti-Soviet writers, such as herself, to contribute material critical of Russia to the magazine's arts section.
During
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making false or unfounded accusations of subversion and treason, especially when related to anarchism, communism and socialism, and especially when done in a public and attention-grabbing manner.
The term origin ...
(the Second Red Scare), ''The Nation'' was banned from several school libraries in New York City and Newark,
and a
Bartlesville, Oklahoma
Bartlesville is a city mostly in Washington County in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The population was 37,290 at the 2020 census. Bartlesville is north of Tulsa and south of the Kansas border. It is the county seat of Washington County. The Can ...
librarian,
Ruth Brown
Ruth Alston Brown (; January 12, 1928 – November 17, 2006) was an American singer-songwriter and actress, sometimes referred to as the " Queen of R&B". She was noted for bringing a pop music style to R&B music in a series of hit songs for Atl ...
, was fired from her job in 1950, after a citizens committee complained she had given shelf space to ''The Nation''.
In 1955, George C. Kirstein replaced Kirchway as magazine owner. James J. Storrow Jr. bought the magazine from Kirstein in 1965.
During the 1950s,
Paul Blanshard
Paul Beecher Blanshard (August 27, 1892 – January 27, 1980) was an American author, assistant editor of ''The Nation'' magazine, lawyer, socialist, secular humanist, and from 1949 an outspoken critic of Catholicism.
Early life and educ ...
, a former associate editor, served as ''The Nation''s special correspondent in
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan (, ; uz, Ozbekiston, italic=yes / , ; russian: Узбекистан), officially the Republic of Uzbekistan ( uz, Ozbekiston Respublikasi, italic=yes / ; russian: Республика Узбекистан), is a doubly landlocked cou ...
. His most famous writing was a series of articles attacking the
Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
in America as a dangerous, powerful, and undemocratic institution.
1970s to 2020
In June 1979, ''The Nation''s publisher
Hamilton Fish
Hamilton Fish (August 3, 1808September 7, 1893) was an American politician who served as the 16th Governor of New York from 1849 to 1850, a United States Senator from New York from 1851 to 1857 and the 26th United States Secretary of State fro ...
and then-editor
Victor Navasky
Victor Saul Navasky (born July 5, 1932) is an American journalist, editor and academic. He is publisher emeritus of ''The Nation'' and George T. Delacorte Professor Emeritus of Professional Practice in Magazine Journalism at Columbia University. H ...
moved the weekly to 72
Fifth Avenue
Fifth Avenue is a major and prominent thoroughfare in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It stretches north from Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village to West 143rd Street in Harlem. It is one of the most expensive shopping stre ...
, in
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
. In June 1998, the periodical had to move to make way for
condominium
A condominium (or condo for short) is an ownership structure whereby a building is divided into several units that are each separately owned, surrounded by common areas that are jointly owned. The term can be applied to the building or complex ...
development. The offices of ''The Nation'' are now at 33 Irving Place, in Manhattan's
Gramercy Park
Gramercy ParkSometimes misspelled as Grammercy () is the name of both a small, fenced-in private park and the surrounding neighborhood that is referred to also as Gramercy, in the New York City borough of Manhattan in New York, United States.
T ...
neighborhood.
In 1977, a group organized by
Hamilton Fish V
Hamilton Fish V (born September 5, 1951), also known as "Ham", is a U.S. publisher, social entrepreneur, environmental advocate, and film producer in New York City. He is currently the publisher and editor of the monthly independent political pe ...
bought the magazine from the Storrow family. In 1985, he sold it to
Arthur L. Carter
Arthur L. Carter (born December 24, 1931) is an American investment banker, publisher, and artist.
Biography
Born to a American Jews, Jewish family, Carter graduated from Brown University in 1953 with a degree in French literature.
He served i ...
, who had made a fortune as a founding partner of
Carter, Berlind, Potoma & Weill
Cogan, Berlind, Weill & Levitt, originally Carter, Berlind, Potoma & Weill, was an American investment banking and brokerage firm founded in 1960 and acquired by American Express in 1981. In its two decades as an independent firm, Cogan, Berlind, ...
.
In 1991, ''The Nation'' sued the
Department of Defense Department of Defence or Department of Defense may refer to:
Current departments of defence
* Department of Defence (Australia)
* Department of National Defence (Canada)
* Department of Defence (Ireland)
* Department of National Defense (Philipp ...
for restricting free speech by limiting
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: ...
coverage to
press pool
A press pool, media pool or news pool is an arrangement wherein a group of news gathering organizations combine their resources in the collection of news. A pool feed is then distributed to members of the broadcast pool who are free to edit it ...
s. However, the issue was found
moot
Moot may refer to:
* Mootness, in American law: a point where further proceedings have lost practical significance; whereas in British law: the issue remains debatable
* Moot court, an activity in many law schools where participants take part in s ...
in ''
Nation Magazine v. United States Department of Defense
In 1990, the United States Department of Defense implemented press pools so they could control and monitor the press during the Gulf War. The competition into the press pools was intense and if a publication wasn't a member of the pool, they were ...
'', because the war ended before the case was heard.
In 1995, Victor Navasky bought the magazine and, in 1996, became publisher. In 1995,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Katrina vanden Heuvel (; born October 7, 1959) is an American editor and publisher. She is the publisher, part-owner, and former editor of the progressive magazine ''The Nation''. She was the magazine's editor from 1995 to 2019, when she was s ...
succeeded Navasky as editor of ''The Nation'', and in 2005, as publisher.
In 2015, ''The Nation'' celebrated its 150th anniversary with a documentary film by Academy Award-winning director
Barbara Kopple
Barbara Kopple (born July 30, 1946) is an American film director known primarily for her documentary work.
She has won two Academy Awards, the first in 1977 for ''Harlan County, USA'', about a Kentucky miners' strike, /sup> and the second in ...
; a 268-page special issue featuring pieces of art and writing from the archives, and new essays by frequent contributors like
Eric Foner
Eric Foner (; born February 7, 1943) is an American historian. He writes extensively on American political history, the history of freedom, the early history of the Republican Party, African-American biography, the American Civil War, Reconstruc ...
,
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 ...
,
E. L. Doctorow
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow (January 6, 1931 – July 21, 2015) was an American novelist, editor, and professor, best known for his works of historical fiction.
He wrote twelve novels, three volumes of short fiction and a stage drama. They included ...
,
Toni Morrison
Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford; February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019), known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist. Her first novel, ''The Bluest Eye'', was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed '' So ...
,
Rebecca Solnit
Rebecca Solnit (born 1961) is an American writer. She has written on a variety of subjects, including feminism, the environment, politics, place, and art.
Early life and education
Solnit was born in 1961 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to a Jewish fa ...
, and
Vivian Gornick
Vivian Gornick (born June 14, 1935) is an American radical feminist critic, journalist, essayist, and memoirist.
Early Life and Education
In 1957 Gornick received a bachelor of arts degree from City College of New York and in 1960 a master of a ...
; a book-length history of the magazine by
D. D. Guttenplan
Don David Guttenplan is editor of ''The Nation''. A former London correspondent of the magazine, he wrote ''The Holocaust on Trial'', a book about the ''Irving v Penguin Books and Lipstadt'' libel case while based in the UK's capital.
Early life ...
(which ''
The Times Literary Supplement
''The Times Literary Supplement'' (''TLS'') is a weekly literary review published in London by News UK, a subsidiary of News Corp.
History
The ''TLS'' first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to ''The Times'' but became a separate publication i ...
'' called "an affectionate and celebratory affair"); events across the country; and a relaunched website. In a tribute to ''The Nation'', published in the anniversary issue, President
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
said:
In an era of instant, 140-character news cycles and reflexive toeing of the party line, it's incredible to think of the 150-year history of ''The Nation''. It's more than a magazine — it's a crucible of ideas forged in the time of Emancipation, tempered through depression and war and the civil-rights movement, and honed as sharp and relevant as ever in an age of breathtaking technological and economic change. Through it all, ''The Nation'' has exhibited that great American tradition of expanding our moral imaginations, stoking vigorous dissent, and simply taking the time to think through our country's challenges anew. If I agreed with everything written in any given issue of the magazine, it would only mean that you are not doing your jobs. But whether it is your commitment to a fair shot for working Americans, or equality for all Americans, it is heartening to know that an American institution dedicated to provocative, reasoned debate and reflection in pursuit of those ideals can continue to thrive.
On January 14, 2016, ''The Nation'' endorsed
Vermont
Vermont () is a state in the northeast New England region of the United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to ...
Senator
A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...
Bernie Sanders
Bernard Sanders (born September8, 1941) is an American politician who has served as the junior United States senator from Vermont since 2007. He was the U.S. representative for the state's at-large congressional district from 1991 to 2007 ...
for
President
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
*President (education), a leader of a college or university
*President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Automobiles
* Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ful ...
. In their reasoning, the editors of ''The Nation'' professed that "Bernie Sanders and his supporters are bending the arc of history toward justice. Theirs is an insurgency, a possibility, and a dream that we proudly endorse."
On June 15, 2019, Heuvel stepped down as editor;
D. D. Guttenplan
Don David Guttenplan is editor of ''The Nation''. A former London correspondent of the magazine, he wrote ''The Holocaust on Trial'', a book about the ''Irving v Penguin Books and Lipstadt'' libel case while based in the UK's capital.
Early life ...
, the editor-at-large, took her place.
On March 2, 2020, ''The Nation'' again endorsed
Vermont
Vermont () is a state in the northeast New England region of the United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to ...
Senator
A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...
Bernie Sanders
Bernard Sanders (born September8, 1941) is an American politician who has served as the junior United States senator from Vermont since 2007. He was the U.S. representative for the state's at-large congressional district from 1991 to 2007 ...
for
President
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
*President (education), a leader of a college or university
*President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Automobiles
* Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ful ...
. In their reasoning, the editors of ''The Nation'' professed: "As we find ourselves on a hinge of history—a generation summoned to the task of redeeming our democracy and restoring our republic—no one ever has to wonder what Bernie Sanders stands for."
On February 23, 2022, ''The Nation'' named ''
Jacobin
, logo = JacobinVignette03.jpg
, logo_size = 180px
, logo_caption = Seal of the Jacobin Club (1792–1794)
, motto = "Live free or die"(french: Vivre libre ou mourir)
, successor = Pa ...
'' founder
Bhaskar Sunkara its new president.
Finances
Print ad pages declined by 5% from 2009 to 2010, while digital advertising rose 32.8% from 2009 to 2010. Advertising accounts for 10% of total revenue for the magazine, while circulation totals 60%.
''The Nation'' has lost money in all but three or four years of operation and is sustained in part by a group of more than 30,000 donors called Nation Associates, who donate funds to the periodical above and beyond their annual subscription fees. This program accounts for 30% of the total revenue for the magazine. An annual cruise also generates $200,000 for the magazine.
Since late 2012, the Nation Associates program has been called Nation Builders.
Poetry
Since its creation, ''The Nation'' has published significant works of
American poetry
American poetry refers to the poetry of the United States. It arose first as efforts by American colonists to add their voices to English poetry in the 17th century, well before the constitutional unification of the Thirteen Colonies (although ...
,
[Jennifer Schuessler]
A Poem in The Nation Spurs a Backlash and an Apology
''New York Times'' (August 1, 2018).[Grace Schulman]
''New York Times'' (August 6, 2018). including works by
Hart Crane
Harold Hart Crane (July 21, 1899 – April 27, 1932) was an American poet. Provoked and inspired by T. S. Eliot, Crane wrote modernist poetry that was difficult, highly stylized, and ambitious in its scope. In his most ambitious work, '' The Brid ...
,
Eli Siegel
Eli Siegel (August 16, 1902 – November 8, 1978) was a poet, critic, and educator. He founded Aesthetic Realism, a philosophical movement based in New York City. An idea central to Aesthetic Realism—that every person, place or thing in reality ...
,
Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 – October 6, 1979) was an American people, American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the N ...
, and
Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Cecile Rich ( ; May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "th ...
,
as well as
W.S. Merwin
William Stanley Merwin (September 30, 1927 – March 15, 2019) was an American poet who wrote more than fifty books of poetry and prose, and produced many works in translation. During the 1960s anti-war movement, Merwin's unique craft was thema ...
,
Pablo Neruda
Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973), better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda (; ), was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Nerud ...
,
Denise Levertov
Priscilla Denise Levertov (24 October 1923 – 20 December 1997) was a British-born naturalised American poet. She was a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry.
Early life and influences
Levertov was born and grew up in Ilford, Ess ...
, and
Derek Walcott
Sir Derek Alton Walcott (23 January 1930 – 17 March 2017) was a Saint Lucian poet and playwright. He received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works include the Homeric epic poem ''Omeros'' (1990), which many critics view "as Walcot ...
.
In 2018, the magazine published a poem entitled "How-To" by Anders Carlson-Wee which was written in the voice of a homeless man and used
black vernacular. This led to criticism from writers such as
Roxane Gay
Roxane Gay (born October 15, 1974) is an American writer, professor, editor, and social commentator. Gay is the author of ''The New York Times'' best-selling essay collection '' Bad Feminist'' (2014), as well as the short story collection ''Ayit ...
because Carlson-Wee is white. ''The Nation''s two poetry editors,
Stephanie Burt and
Carmen Giménez Smith
''Carmen'' () is an opera in four acts by the French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. The opera was first performed by the Op ...
, issued an apology for publishing the poem, the first such action ever taken by the magazine.
The apology itself became an object of criticism also. Poet and ''Nation'' columnist
Katha Pollitt
Katha Pollitt (born October 14, 1949) is an American poet, essayist and critic. She is the author of four essay collections and two books of poetry. Her writing focuses on political and social issues from a left-leaning perspective, including abo ...
called the apology "craven" and likened it to a letter written from "a reeducation camp".
Grace Schulman, ''The Nation''s poetry editor from 1971 to 2006, wrote that the apology represented a disturbing departure from the magazine's traditionally broad conception of
artistic freedom
Artistic freedom (or freedom of artistic expression) can be defined as "the freedom to imagine, create and distribute diverse cultural expressions free of governmental censorship, political interference or the pressures of non-state actors." Gener ...
.
Regular columns
The magazine runs a number of regular columns:
* "Beneath the Radar" by
Gary Younge
Gary Andrew Younge , (born January 1969) is a British journalist, author, broadcaster and academic. He was editor-at-large for ''The Guardian'' newspaper, which he joined in 1993. In November 2019, it was announced that Younge had been appointe ...
* "Deadline Poet" by
Calvin Trillin
Calvin Marshall Trillin (born 5 December 1935) is an American journalist, humorist, food writer, poet, memoirist and novelist. He is a winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor (2012) and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts an ...
* "Diary of a Mad Law Professor" by
Patricia J. Williams
* "The Liberal Media" by
Eric Alterman
Eric Alterman (born January 14, 1960) is an American historian, journalist, author, media critic, blogger, and educator. He is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English and Journalism at Brooklyn College and the author of eleven books. From 199 ...
* "Subject to Debate" by
Katha Pollitt
Katha Pollitt (born October 14, 1949) is an American poet, essayist and critic. She is the author of four essay collections and two books of poetry. Her writing focuses on political and social issues from a left-leaning perspective, including abo ...
* "Between the Lines" by
Laila Lalami
Laila Lalami ( ar, ليلى العلمي, born 1968) is a Moroccan-American novelist, essayist, and professor. After earning her ''Licence de lettres'' degree in Morocco, she received a fellowship to study in the United Kingdom (UK), where she e ...
Regular columns in the past have included:
* "Look Out" by
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 ...
* "Sister Citizen" by
Melissa Harris-Perry
Melissa Victoria Harris-Perry (born October 2, 1973), formerly known as Melissa Victoria Harris-Lacewell, is an American writer, professor, television host, and political commentator with a focus on African-American politics. Harris-Perry hoste ...
* "Beat the Devil" (1984–2012) by
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 ...
* "Dispatches" (1984–87) by
Max Holland
__notoc__
Max Holland (born 1950, Providence, Rhode Island) is an American journalist, author, and the editor of '' Washington Decoded'', an internet newsletter on US history that began publishing March 11, 2007. He is currently a contributing edi ...
and Kai Bird
* "Minority Report" (1982–2002) by
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was a British-American author and journalist who wrote or edited over 30 books (including five essay collections) on culture, politics, and literature. Born and educated in England, ...
* "The Nation
cryptic crossword
A cryptic crossword is a crossword puzzle in which each clue is a word puzzle. Cryptic crosswords are particularly popular in the United Kingdom, where they originated, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, and in several Commonwealth nations, includi ...
" by
Frank W. Lewis
Frank Waring Lewis (August 25, 1912 – November 18, 2010) was an American cryptographer and cryptic crossword compiler. His puzzles were printed in ''The Nation'' for over 60 years, for a total of 2,962 puzzles. Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Vonnegut, ...
from 1947 to 2009, and Joshua Kosman and Henri Picciotto from 2011 to 2020, that is now available by subscription
See also
*
Modern liberalism in the United States
Modern liberalism in the United States, often simply referred to in the United States as liberalism, is a form of social liberalism found in American politics. It combines ideas of civil liberty and equality with support for social justice an ...
* ''
Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises''
* ''
Nation Magazine v. United States Department of Defense
In 1990, the United States Department of Defense implemented press pools so they could control and monitor the press during the Gulf War. The competition into the press pools was intense and if a publication wasn't a member of the pool, they were ...
''
*
''Jacobin''
*
''Mother Jones''
References
Further reading
* Brief history plus numerous essays.
External links
*
The Nation Archive(subscription required)
at
HathiTrust Digital Library
HathiTrust Digital Library is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries including content digitized via Google Books and the Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digitized locally ...
(free)
The Nation (archive 1984–2005)at
The Free Library (free)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nation
1865 establishments in New York (state)
Magazines established in 1865
Magazines published in New York City
Modern liberal magazines published in the United States
Political magazines published in the United States
Weekly magazines published in the United States