Joanna
Doug Henwood wrote:
> FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 7, 2005
>
> 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.
>
> ***********************
>
> 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.
>
> ***********************
>
> 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.
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>