A Matter of Opinion.

• Author: Kellman, Steven G.
• Position: Book review

A MATTER OF OPINION

BY VICTOR S. NAVASKY FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX 2005, 458 PAGES, $27.00

The circulation figures for all the journals of opinion published in the U.S. combined would not equal the readership of People magazine. Yet, The New Republic, National Review, Weekly Standard, In These Times, The Progressive, The Texas Observer, and other opinionated periodicals of the left, right, and center exert a disproportionate influence on American politics and culture, even as most remain perpetually on the precipice of bankruptcy. According to Victor S. Navasky, publisher of The Nation, the oldest continuously published American weekly, there must be a lesson in why a few of these survive while hundreds of commercial operations with larger budgets and reader bases have come and gone.

In his book, he offers rambling thoughts about his own life, the life of The Nation, and the critical role that journals of opinion play in sustaining the health of the public sphere. "I am a practicing ideologist publishing an ideological magazine," admits Navasky, who mistrusts writers who pretend not to be guided by a core body of beliefs. Navasky served as editor of The Nation from 1978-94 and has since been serving as its publisher. He identifies the fundamental purpose of the magazine as "Protest against injustice, protest against the despoliation of the world's resources, protest against the arbitrary exercise of power, protest against prejudice and discrimination, protest on behalf of the dispossessed, the disenfranchised, protest on behalf of those who don't read us.... "

Moreover, he protests against the consolidation of media under the control of a half-dozen powerful corporations, noting that the vitality of The Nation--which flaunts its homeliness ("It's probably the only magazine in the country if you make a Xerox of it, the Xerox looks a lot better than the originalS' quipped contributor Calvin Trillin)--repudiates the profit motive as the chief explanation for human endeavor. Much of Navasky's book recounts his persistent efforts to round up financial support for a magazine that has run a deficit almost every year of its existence. He relishes the independence of a publication whose editors have hired and fired its publishers and insisted that neither investors nor advertisers exert any...