Contact: Mike Webb, The Nation Publicity Director
Jill Danzig/Danzig Communications
VICTOR NAVASKY TO STEP DOWN AFTER 28 YEARS FROM NATION HELM VANDEN HEUVEL TO BE EDITOR AND PUBLISHER
NEW YORK, NY: On November 7, 2005, Katrina vanden Heuvel, who has served as The Nation's Editor since 1995, will become its Publisher. She will succeed Victor Navasky who came to the magazine in 1978 as Editor and became Publisher and General Partner in 1995.
Ms. vanden Heuvel is the latest in a long line of Nation publisher-owners who include Victor Navasky and extend back to Freda Kirchwey in the 1930s and 1940s and Oswald Garrison Villard, who took over from his father in 1918. Ms. vanden Heuvel is the only woman editing (and now publishing) a political weekly in this country.
Vanden Heuvel will also succeed Navasky as general partner of The Nation, L.P., a limited partnership composed of over 160 partners, which owns the magazine. Navasky, who will become Publisher Emeritus and a member of the magazine's editorial board, will be one of the magazine's major shareholders, along with Paul Newman, Peter Norton and Alan Sagner.
Said Mr. Navasky: "The Nation, America's oldest weekly magazine, founded in 1865, the year the civil war ended, is one of the country's cultural treasures. Katrina vanden Heuvel has an invaluable understanding of the role of the opinion magazine in general and the mission of The Nation in particular. I believe she is the ideal steward to carry forward The Nation's extraordinary tradition. She has the trust and the confidence of The Nation community."
"As editor of the magazine for the last ten years, Katrina has defined The Nation's voice in the aftermath of the cold war and in the traumatic post-September 11th years. The magazine, under her leadership, has clearly staked out the intellectual and political alternative to the Bush administration's extremist agenda, and done so much to mobilize our readers and the country against the misbegotten war in Iraq."
Ms. vanden Heuvel said: "This is an extraordinary responsibility and honor. I believe that in these remarkable political and cultural times, the need for The Nation's independent voice is greater than ever. I will ensure that the magazine plays an even more influential role in shaping the public debate in the turbulent years ahead. I am privileged to work with such extraordinary writers and contributors, and with such a seasoned and skillful team, who care so deeply about the magazine, its impact and expanding readership."
The Nation, whose circulation was 20,000 in 1978, today boasts a circulation of 187,625, and is the most widely read weekly political opinion magazine in America. Its readership has nearly doubled since the last election.
Carey McWilliams, who edited The Nation from 1955 through 1975, once said about the secret of its survival, "It is precisely because The Nation's backers cared more about what it stood for than what it earned that the magazine has survived where countless others publications with circulations in the millions have gone under."
From Fred Cook's historic sacred cow-busting issues on Senator McCarthy, the FBI and the CIA to Toni Morrison on the language of racism and E.L. Doctorow on our democracy to Katha Pollit's national magazine award-winning essays and columns to the magazine's groundbreaking series (complete with centerfolds) on the national entertainment state and the danger of conglomeratized media, to those who published their first pieces in The Nation, including Hunter Thompson, James Baldwin and Ralph Nader, The Nation has carried on the tradition of crusading, independent journalism.
"Our regular contributors and columnists form the core of today's most eloquent liberal and left writers and journalists," said vanden Heuvel. These include, besides those already mentioned, Naomi Klein, David Corn, William Greider, Jonathan Schell, Eric Alterman, Patricia Williams, John Nichols, Eric Foner, Arthur Danto and Stuart Klawans, Alexander Cockburn and many more.
The Nation's original prospectus in 1865 promised that the new weekly "will not be the organ of any sect, party or movement." It was going to be the conscience, a gadfly "to wage war upon the vices of-exaggeration and misrepresentation." And its business structure, invented by its founding editor, the Anglo-Irish journalist, E.L. Godkin, was designed to guarantee the editorial independence of the magazine.
The Nation's Circle of Partners also include the novelist E.L. Doctorow, Lee Halprin and Abby Rockefeller, publishers, psychologists, scientists, high school teachers, college professors, lawyers, a former admiral, homemakers, librarians and many subscribers to the magazine.
Teresa Stack, who is president of The Nation, will be in charge of the day-to-day business of the magazine.
In addition to the magazine, The Nation website receives over 800,000 unique visitors a month. Its small donor program, which includes 15,000 members, now contributes a little over $2,000,000 in revenue each year. The Nation now operates an annual cruise to help defray any deficit. Its writers and editors appear regularly on mainstream news and public affairs programs and their books are regularly reviewed in mainstream and independent media. The Nation Institute, an independent public charity dedicated to promoting independent journalism, runs conferences, grants fellowships, supports investigative journalism and has its own book imprint, Nation Books.
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Katrina vanden Heuvel has been The Nation's editor since 1995. Prior to that, she worked in numerous positions - ranging from assistant editor to editor-at-large - at the magazine. Before coming to The Nation she worked at ABC's "CloseUp" documentary division.
Vanden Heuvel is a frequent commentator on American and international politics on MSNBC, CNN and PBS. Her articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Boston Globe. She writes a weekly column, "Editor's Cut," for www.thenation.com.
Her book, Dictionary of Republicanisms, a satirical guide to GOP Doublespeak, is being published this month by Nation Books. She is also editor and co-editor of numerous books including, with Robert Borosage, Taking Back America--And Taking Down The Radical Right, and with Stephen F. Cohen, Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev's Reformers. She edited The Nation: 1865-1990, the definitive anthology of the magazine's first 125 years.
Vanden Heuvel has received awards for public service from numerous groups, including The Liberty Hill Foundation and the New York Civil Liberties Union. She serves on the board of The Institute for Policy Studies, The Institute for America's Future, The World Policy Institute and the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute.
She lives in New York with her husband, Stephen F. Cohen, and their 14-year old daughter.
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Victor Navasky is publisher emeritus and a member of the editorial board of The Nation. He is also George Delacorte Professor of Magazine Journalism at the Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, where he directs the Delacorte Center of Magazines and chairs the Columbia Journalism Review.
Navasky was editor of The Nation from 1978-1995, at which time he became publisher and editorial director. Prior to joining the magazine, he was an editor at The New York Times Magazine and wrote a monthly column, "In Cold Print," about the publishing business for the Times Book Review. He is the author of Kennedy Justice and Naming Names, which won a National Book Award, and he co-authored, with Christopher Cerf, The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation. He was founding editor and publisher of Monocle, a "leisurely quarterly of political satire and social criticism" that appeared in the 1950s and early 1960s. His most recent book is A Matter of Opinion (2005) about which The New York Times said, "Anybody who has ever dreamed of starting a magazine, or worried that the country is losing the ability to speak seriously to itself, should read his new book, A Matter of Opinion."
He lives in New York with his wife, Annie Navasky.