/ 3 October 2005

Get an Opinion

In 2003 the New York Times? published an article by Todd Purdum titled “The Brains Behind Bush’s War Policy.” As Victor Navasky, the publisher of The Nation magazine, writes in his just published memoir A Matter of Opinion, instead of being an article based on gossip or “sources” within the White House or the higher reaches of the Republican Party, the piece focused on the neoconservative journals of opinion, the National Interest and the Weekly Standard.

Writes Navasky: “[Purdum] reports their common theme (in articles starting in 1997): ‘Saddam must go.’ And the essence of all their arguments in favour of war with Iraq? That the doctrine of containment no longer applies in a post-Soviet, post-cold war world.”

Navasky notes that it is interesting that “containment” was first set forth in another journal of opinion, Foreign Affairs, which published George Kennan’s essay “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” under the pseudonym “X” in July 1947.

Navasky’s own magazine, The Nation, has been going since 1865 making it the US’s oldest weekly magazine of “opinion.” He has been publisher since 1978 and his book is both an autobiography and a long argument for the importance of a journal of opinion in any media culture.

Magazines like The Nation write about subjects that no one else would touch since they are not owned by any major media conglomerate. Most journals of opinion, funded by subscribers and, usually, foundations and wealthy individuals, while certainly not immune from outside pressures, are not beholden to the interests of advertisers or the need for corporate “synergy.”

Navasky cites as the beneficial upshot of such independence articles such as The Nation‘s 1987 exposé of Henry Kissinger’s collusion with the Argentine government’s war on its citizens, or its 1989 investigation into the Nazi past of the Bertelsmann publishing house.

Navasky has plenty of advice for those contemplating publishing journals of opinion like The Nation. First, he says, forget about making money. Since The Nation‘s beginnings it has only made a profit for three years. Which three? Apparently no-one is sure.

So, secondly, find a large private donor that is hands-off. One reason for this policy is that The Nation is essentially a leftist magazine, but depends for its funding on capitalists themselves. Some donors promise money, but only if they can control editorial policy. Others wanted to contribute, but wanted a tax break out of it. That meant taking non-profit status. Since The Nation writes about politics and endorses candidates for office, which under US law make it ineligible for non-profit status, to do so would bring into question the raison d’etre of the magazine.

Finally, make a splash. Be different, be bold, say things people don’t want to hear. You’ll know you’re doing your job when you get attacked.

I reprint Navasky’s slightly discouraging advice because I think in South Africa the pickings are slim and the country could use such a magazine (or magazines). The high point of the opinion magazine in South Africa was in the late 1980s with Work in Progress and Die Suid-Afrikaan, and even the Anglo-American funded Leadership. The first three all closed down in the early 1990s as their main donors withdrew support for media. Only Leadership survives, but it reads more like a giant advertisement nowadays.

Of the current crop, Noseweek, with its exposés, comes closest. Noseweek is however not expressly political, with its focus on investigation rather than opinion. The South African Labour Bulletin has been reborn (reads crisper) but is too focused (on labour issues only), the left-wing journal Debate does not come out enough, Insig turned from a centrist journal for the Afrikaner intelligentsia to a reincarnated De Kat, and Focus, published by the Helen Suzman Foundation, is so out of the mainstream (one reason was the objectionable views of its former editor, RW Johnson) to make it essentially irrelevant.

This leaves room for a real journal of opinion to emerge. Whoever starts it can take lessons from The Nation.

Sean Jacobs is The Media’s correspondent in New York.