Copyright © 1999 by the Boston Phoenix, Inc. All rights reserved.

This Just In: Media notes

The American Prospect gets ready for the big time

By Dan Kennedy

Somewhere between the quirky neoliberalism of the New Republic and the cranky paleoliberalism of the Nation is the heart of real, mainstream liberalism. Now the American Prospect -- the Cambridge-based liberal magazine founded 10 years ago by academics Robert Kuttner, Robert Reich, and Paul Starr -- is hoping to give a regular voice to that brand of liberalism.

Starting in mid-October, the Prospect will switch from bimonthly to biweekly publication, an ambitious new schedule that will be accompanied by a redesign aimed at making the publication look more like a magazine and less, as executive editor Scott Stossel puts it, like "the Journal of Italian Poetics." Also to be added are color, an expanded books-and-culture section, and regular columnists, including Kuttner, Reich, Wendy Kaminer, and players to be named later.

Funding this ambitious project is a five-year, $10 million grant that Kuttner says, somewhat mysteriously, comes from "several foundations that are kicking in." That money will be supplemented with $2 million in existing funds and another $4 million to $5 million to be raised through a capital campaign.

Although Kuttner and Stossel insist that the Prospect will continue to offer the heavy-duty policy pieces for which it is known, the overall effect will be lighter and breezier. Kuttner says he's long heard from friends and critics that the magazine should be half as thick and come out twice as often. The daunting density of the Prospect's current incarnation, Kuttner quips, is reminiscent of the old joke about Wagner's music: "It's not as bad as it sounds."

Stossel says the goal is to boost paid circulation from about 20,000 to upwards of 100,000 within five years -- the same territory occupied by the New Republic and the Nation. The magazine is opening a small Washington office, boosting the staff from 18 to 34, and searching for new, bigger headquarters. In addition, Kuttner, who is co-editor along with Starr, will switch from part-time to full-time, although he will continue to write his weekly column for the Boston Globe.

"We're liberal and mainstream," says Kuttner, "committed to the idea of a mixed economy, committed to the idea of social justice and greater participation. I think the fact that there has not been a magazine that really stands for that foursquare has been a setback for liberalism, and has reinforced the idea that it's sensible to be conservative. Well, the conservative revolution is somewhat spent, and everyone's wondering what the next liberalism will look like."

The answer, he hopes, will be found in the pages of the American Prospect.

¥ Missing in action. There were few local stories in 1998 bigger than the July 11 murder of Gary Moreis on bucolic Martha's Vineyard. The drug-related killing, a tragedy compounded when Moreis's father, Peter, died of a heart attack a short time later, was the subject of numerous news stories in the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald, as well as a number of think pieces on What It All Meant. (Also weighing in was the Phoenix; see "Trouble in Paradise," News, July 31, 1998.)

But when it came to writing the final chapter, the Globe and the Herald were AWOL. Troy Toon, the 25-year-old Roxbury man who had been charged with knifing Moreis to death, was convicted of second-degree murder on Monday in Edgartown District Court. He was sentenced to life in prison. And not a word appeared in either of the two Boston dailies on Tuesday -- even though both papers ran an AP report on their Web sites. (The most complete story was published on the Vineyard Gazette's Web site, www.mvgazette.com.)

Rather than follow up on an important local story, the dailies devoted their resources to pointing out that, boy, it sure is hot out there. And here's the headline of a wire story that the Herald somehow did manage to find room for in its print edition: HALF-TON N.Y. MAN VOWS: 'I'M NOT GOING TO DIE HEAVY.'

¥ Dis-Content. Editors at the Globe and the Herald can only wonder what the fallout will be from a Brill's Content investigation supposedly in the works regarding coverage of the Valimore Williams affair. Williams is the Boston Police lieutenant who was the victim of a vicious prank: one of his underlings hung a noose over his motorcycle. Williams has charged that the stunt was racist; Police Superintendent Paul Evans has ruled it was merely ignorant.

¥ Politics now. Just two months after leaving the Herald, where she was State House bureau chief, to become the Globe's deputy city editor, Carolyn Ryan is reportedly on the verge of being named to a plum position: political editor, supervising all state and local political coverage. Ryan would replace Larry Edelman, who recently left to become second vice-president for investor relations at John Hancock. Edelman himself had served as political editor for barely more than a month; he had been the Globe's business editor for five years before that.

¥ Patrick's day. Bob Hohler's profile of Rhode Island congressman Patrick Kennedy in last Sunday's Boston Globe Magazine was a workmanlike -- if rather unskeptical -- look at Kennedy's puzzling rise to power. (I did enjoy Hohler's description of Kennedy's getting six stitches in his finger and then passing out cold aboard Air Force One.) But for sheer cruel fun, check out Matt Labash's piece in the June 7 Weekly Standard. My favorite line about the inarticulate scion: "At a recent National Press Club press conference, he recited electoral minutiae with the fixed stare of an autistic savant reciting 1930s box scores."

Wapner at five.