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When Chris Hughs ended his rocky ownership of @newrepublic a few short years after purchasing it, @vpostrel noted his foolishness in thinking he could turn a prestige intellectual magazine into a profit center. There was never an era where that was the case.
So why do such magazines exist at all? Ego plays a role of course. Publishing intellectual (or aspirationally anyway) magazines could simply be a form of the “vanity press,” as self-publishing has long been derided for being. But certainly that’s not the whole story.
For one thing, vain publisher or not, some magazines actually achieve influence. Indeed, some even achieve loyal audiences of the tens of thousands or more. What does everyone get out of it? Intellectually curious people always seek stimulation of course, but I think there’s more
Magazines can become fertile soil on which community grows. These communities do not have to be very large to be quite rewarding for everyone involved. Indeed, sometimes it’s better if they are not too big, for some joys of community are hard beyond a certain scale.
I don’t mean to imply that this is solipsistic. Richard Rorty once referred to @DissentMag founder Irving Howe as the “unpaid editor of his country’s most useful political magazine.” Howe fostered a community of political action.
This kind of community building is, I think, one of the compensations for the push and pull of liberalism, the way it disrupts more settled, traditional communities. Intellectual magazines are my example for obvious reasons, but all kinds of topics and media forms fill this role.
At any rate, I have always, from the beginning, seen @LiberalCurrents as a project of community building. And I couldn’t be happier, or more proud, of what everyone who has touched our community has made of it, and what we continue to make of it.
