The founders of American Prospect, a quarterly journal meant to herald the rebirth of a ”no-apologies liberalism,” were confronted quickly with why the country may need renewal in the public sector.
An impressive premier issue should have been out a month ago. But due to a screwup at the U.S. Postal Service, thousands of copies sat in a postal facility in Richmond, Va., and, only now, are trickling out.
”We wondered why nobody was getting them,” said a rueful Paul Starr, a Princeton University sociologist.
Starr teamed with Robert Kuttner, a columnist for Business Week and several papers; and Robert Reich, a Harvard University economist and network TV regular, to start a quarterly that aims both to dispute the notion that liberals are devoid of any consistent philosophy and to counteract influential conservative journals and think tanks of the past decade, notably The Public Interest, the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Manhattan Institute.
Those entities played a major role in shaping conservative, and thus national, policy in the 1980s. They were intellectual farm teams for brash and bright conservatives who moved up to the big leagues, namely the upper echelons of government, during the Reagan years.
Yet there`s a sense that conservatives are in a bit of a fix these days, especially with the communist threat on hold as a result of events in the Soviet Union and Europe.
”All these changes leave them without a unifying enemy that can hold them all together in a common program,” Starr said.
At the same time, among liberals, there may be a lessening of frictions such as foreign policy wranglings over the Vietnam War. There`s the possibility that liberals can come together, back the strengthening of government and improving the performance of public institutions (such as the post office) but not feel they`re selling out by urging, say, a strong economy and free-enterprise system.
Thus, there`s American Prospect. It has rounded up some of the usual liberal academic suspects, such as historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and economist John Kenneth Galbraith. But the journal has melded them with a younger breed of brainy guys and gals, including University of Chicago sociologist William Julius Wilson, Northwestern University sociologist Christopher Jencks, Boston University law professor Deborah Stone, and the three co-founders.
”Our focus is on the longer-term needs of the country, in investing in our people and reconstructing a strong and prosperous American society,”
Starr said.
It appears the journal will position itself against conservatism and, say, the quest for privatization of many traditionally public services, while keeping its distance from more left-leaning philosophies and people. Clearly, this will be more centrist than the Nation and the Progressive; being less inclined, seemingly, to embrace various Third World revolutions and tolerate movements it might deem vaguely Stalin-like.
The first issue contains more than a dozen substantive efforts, few of which can be consumed easily on a bus ride home but, still, intentionally stray from bone-dry academese.
There`s Schlesinger arguing that a laissez-fair market stymies national progress and Galbraith on why Democrats should try to ride the issue of political integrity to electoral victories.
Stone raises serious, even profound, questions about the morality and efficacy of an insurance system that increasingly uses diagnostic tests to predict vulnerability to illness, including AIDS. Is it right that certain people can be dismissed as unacceptable insurance risks and that technology
(those tests) possibly will result in fewer people getting insurance?
Jencks combines with Kathryn Edin of Chicago`s North Park College to proffer an idea by which welfare cheating might be diminished. Instead of forcing those on low-paying public aid to seek other sources of income, what about forms of publicly financed help, such as child care?
Massachusetts Institute of Technology political scientist Richard Valelly dissects low voter turnouts and denies that nonvoting, as some contend, reflects complacency or, possibly, contentment. Wilson`s ”Race and the Democratic Coalition” maintains that there is a need for public policies that are seen by whites as more inclusive, because whites turn bitter when construing government programs as of help only to minorities.
It`s all part of a strong first package that`s $7.95 by itself and $40 if taken as part of a two-year charter subscription via Box 7645, Princeton, N.J. Last week`s annual gathering of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, D.C., was a generally tame affair whose few ”moments,” as Friday luncheon speaker Dan Rather might put it, included the outgoing president`s address, the unveiling of prototypes of papers ”of the future,” thoughts from an illustrious former newspaperman, David Halberstam, and cameos by George Bush and Tom Wolfe.
Departing association leader Loren Ghiglione of the News in Southbridge, Mass., derided newspapers for wallowing in editorial ”dispassion and disinterest”; being run by whites who live in exclusively white enclaves;
participating in ”society`s lies” by, for instance, looking askance as tobacco firms ”buy respectability” and subsidize some journalism groups; and not making a ”persistent commitment to action.”
”And I don`t mean dutifully describing a problem in an 87-part series read by no one except the reporter`s mother,” he said with a vaguely self-righteous air.
He means being an advocate and, for example, subsidizing student newspapers.
Minority hiring is a frustration, even embarrassment, for the industry. The latest survey showed a tiny increase of minority fulltime professionals in newsrooms, up to 7.8 percent, with 54 percent of newsrooms being all white.
The Chicago Sun-Times was among the papers that declined to respond with data on minorities, defined as Asians, blacks, Hispanics and American Indians. The Tribune declined initially, then disclosed here that 10.2 percent of its newsroom is minority, including 5 supervisors, 18 copy desk personnel, 21 reporters, and 7 photographers and artists. Of 17 interns hired since January 1989, eight are minority.
Hiring was on the mind of Halberstam, who spoke on ”What`s Wrong With the American Journalist.”
The title was a bit wayward inasmuch as he tends to find that, nostalgia of old foggies aside, journalists get better all the time. He sees the entries in a contest he helps judge and is dazzled. The young reporters who enter
”are better than we were,” he said.
But he does fear that recruiting is foresaking those potential bright lights who don`t have fancy degrees or good marks. ”You can`t run an eccentric through a machine. You have to trust unusual people,” he said, suggesting that far fewer of those sorts can get jobs at papers these days.
As the newspaper folks convened, the broadcasters were completing their yearly get-together, in Atlanta, home of a prime nemesis, cable industry pace- setter Cable News Network.
About 50,000 professionals showed up for this affair and, despite all the symposiums on issues, such as possible entry of the deep-pocket phone companies into broadcasting, this was very much a big hardware show, with technical types offering about 22 football fields` length of new commercial TV and radio equipment.
And if you really wanted to know the Big Picture, folks like Scott Jacobs, of IPA-the Editing House, and Paul Roscor, of Roscor Productions, both of Chicago, tended to say the same thing: Sony Corp. rules this world. Increasingly, it has cornered key markets, from TV cameras and three-dimensional graphics equipment to arcane switching devices.
”Sony owns the show,” Roscor said with clear, patriotic frustration. It even went so far as to show a special-effects box that could cost at least $350,000 but that ”it`s not really trying to sell.” It`s meant merely, Roscor said, to ”take the air out of competitors` sails, put them on notice that Sony can kick their butts on just about anything it desires.”
Some reporters prefer to keep the identity of their sources to themselves. Former Chicagoan Georgie Anne Geyer seems less reticent.
There can`t be much doubt about whom the Washington-based world affairs columnist relies on after an all-star crew of right-wingers helped celebrate her birthday last week at Washington`s Army-Navy Club.
There were former national security adviser Bud McFarlane; retired Gen. Daniel Graham, former head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and father of the ludicrously wasteful Star Wars defense concept that he sold to then-President Ronald Reagan; former Reagan arms-control adviser Edwin Rowney;
and Washington Times Editor Arnaud de Borchgrave, among others.
She was serenaded with a customized version of ”Chicago, Chicago” that started thus: ”Chicago, Chicago/Miss Geyer`s home town/Our Gee Gee, yes Gee Gee/That writer renowned.”
Rowney read a letter said to be from Richard Nixon. Other columnists
”don`t have their heads screwed on right,” it said. Given Geyer`s reputation as cozy with the Central Intelligence Agency, it`s surprising only that the agency didn`t send an invisible cake shaped like a Stealth bomber.
