The Spectator is a weekly British conservative magazine first published on 6 July 1828.^[3] It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also own The Daily Telegraph newspaper, via Press Holdings. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture. Its editorial outlook is generally supportive of the Conservative Party, although regular contributors include some outside that fold, such as Frank Field and Martin Bright. The magazine also contains arts pages on books, music, opera, and film and TV reviews. In late 2008, Spectator Australia was launched. This offers 12 pages of "Unique Australian Content" (including a separate Editorial page) in addition to the full UK contents. The magazine had an ABC circulation figure of 63,543 in 2011, 6,908 of which were unpaid-for copies and 18,093 of which were distributed overseas. This was down from a peak of 76,952 in 2008.^[4]

Editorship of The Spectator has often been part of a route to high office in the Conservative Party in the UK; past editors include Iain Macleod, Ian Gilmour and Nigel Lawson, all of whom became cabinet minister or a springboard for a greater role in public affairs, as with Boris Johnson (1999 to 2005), the Conservative Mayor of London.^[5]

History[link]

First Hundred Years[link]

Early Years[link]

The Spectator’s founding editor, the Dundonian reformer Robert Stephen Rintoul launched the paper on 5th December 1828. Almost certainly (there is no precise evidence) he revived the title from the 1711 publication by Addison & Steele. As he had long been determined ‘…to edit a perfect newspaper,’^[6] Rintoul initially insisted on ‘absolute power’^[7] over content, commencing a longlasting tradition of the paper’s editor and proprietor being one and the same person. Consequentially The Spectator’s political outlook in its first thirty years reflected Rintoul’s liberal-radical agenda^[8].

Under Rintoul The Spectator came out strongly for The Great Reform Act of 1832, coining the famous phrase, ‘The Bill, the whole Bill and nothing but the Bill,’ in its support. It also objected to the appointment of the Duke of Wellington as Prime Minister, condemning him as ‘a Field Marshal whose political career proves him to be utterly destitute of political principle – whose military career affords ample evidence of his stern and remorseless temperament.’^[9]

In 1853 it published an anonymous and unfavourable review of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, later revealed to be by George Brimley, typical of the paper's enduring contempt for him as a ‘popular’ writer "amusing the idle hours of the greatest number of readers; not, we may hope, without improvement to their hearts, but certainly without profoundly affecting their intellects or deeply stirring their emotions."^[10]

Meredith Townsend, Richard Holt Hutton and John Strachey[link]

In 1861 The Spectator was bought by a journalist, Meredith Townsend, who soon went into partnership with Richard Holt Hutton, a theologian whose friend William Gladstone later called ‘the first critic of the nineteenth century’.^[11] Townsend’s writing in The Spectator confirmed him as one of the finest journalists of his day, and he has since been called "the greatest leader writer ever to appear in the English Press."^[12]

The two men remained co-proprietors and joint editors for 25 years, taking a strong stand on some of the most controversial issues of their day. They supported the Federalists against the South in the American Civil War, an unpopular position which, at the time, did some damage to the paper’s circulation, though gained readers in the long run when the North won.^[13] They also launched an all-out assault on Benjamin Disraeli, accusing him in a series of leaders of jettisoning ethics for politics by ignoring the atrocities committed against Bulgarian civilians by Turkey in the 1870s.

In 1887 Townsend was succeeded by John St Loe Strachey, a young aristocrat who had replaced H.H. Asquith (the future Prime Minister) as a leader-writer during the previous year. As well as being The Spectator’s sole proprietor and editor, he also became its chief leader-writer, general manager and literature critic. The paper’s circulation doubled under Strachey’s leadership, becoming "the most influential of all the London weeklies"^[14] before 1914. After falling ill in 1925, Strachey finally sold his controlling interest in the paper to his business manager, Sir Evelyn Wrench, and retired, dying two years later in 1928.

1928-1975[link]

Aberdare Miners and 1930s Europe[link]

Perhaps Wrench’s most remembered achievement as editor of The Spectator was his campaign to ease unemployment in the mining town of Aberdare, one of the worst hit by the crisis of 1928, when joblessness reached 40% in South Wales. Within three months, the paper’s appeal for the town’s relief raised over £12,000 (the equivalent of about £500,000 today).^[15] A statuette presented in gratitude to The Spectator, of an Aberdare miner, still sits in the editor’s office, bearing the inscription: "From the Townsfolk of Aberdare in Grateful Recognition: 'The Greatest of These is Love'".^[16]

Wrench retired as editor in 1932 (though he remained the magazine's proprietor), appointing Wilson Harris his successor. Under Harris The Spectator became increasingly outspoken on developing international politics in the 1930s, in particular on the rise of fascism. Beneath a reader’s letter referring to the Nazi party as "peaceful, orderly and kindly", Harris printed the following reply:

"No facts in recent history are established more incontestably…than the numerous cases of murder, assault, and various forms of intimidation for which the National Socialist Party in Germany has been responsible… The organized economic boycott of the Jews is the climax. The Spectator has consistently shown itself a friend of Germany, but it is a friend of freedom first. Resort to violence is not condoned by styling it revolution."^[17]

In general however, Harris supported Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement, praising the Munich agreement, explaining later that he believed "even the most desperate attempt to save the peace was worthwhile".^[18]

Ian Gilmour[link]

Wrench sold The Spectator in 1954 to barrister Ian Gilmour. Assuming the editorship himself from 1954 to 1959, Gilmour adopted a libertarian and pro-European outlook, and "enlivened the paper and injected a new element of irreverence, fun and controversy".^[19] He was critical of Harold Macmillan's government, and while supporting the Conservatives was also friendly to the Hugh Gaitskell wing of the Labour Party.^[20]

Gilmour famously lent The Spectator’s voice to the campaign to end capital punishment in Britain, writing an incensed leader attacking the hanging of Ruth Ellis in 1955, in which he claimed "Hanging has become the national sport", and that the home secretary Gwilym Lloyd George, for not reprieving the sentence, "has now been responsible for the hanging of two women over the past eight months".^[21]

The Spectator opposed Britain’s involvement in the Suez crisis in 1956, strongly criticizing the government’s handling of the debacle. Consequentially the paper opposed Macmillan’s government’s re-election in 1959, complaining: "The continued Conservative pretence that Suez was a good, a noble, a wise venture has been too much to stomach… the Government is taking its stand on a solid principle: 'Never admit a mistake.'"^[22]

The paper also gave its support to the proposals of the Wolfenden Committee in 1957, condemning the "utterly irrational and illogical" old laws on homosexuality: "Not only is the law unjust in conception, it is almost inevitably unjust in practice".^[23]

In March the same year, Jenny Nicholson, a frequent contributor, wrote a piece on the Italian Socialist Party congress in Venice, which mentioned three Labour MPs "who puzzled the Italians by filling themselves like tanks with whisky and coffee…"^[24] All three sued for libel, the case went to trial and The Spectator was forced to make a large payment in damages and costs, a sum well over the equivalent of £150,000 today.^[25] It has since emerged that "all three plaintiffs, to a greater or lesser degree, perjured themselves in court".^[26]

Gilmour sold The Spectator to the businessman Harold Creighton in 1967 for £75,000.^[27]

‘The Tory Leadership’[link]

In 1963, Gilmour offered the editorship to Iain Macleod, the politician who had recently resigned his cabinet seat in objection to the controversial appointment of Sir Alec Douglas-Home as Prime Minister. The decision caused enormous controversy, especially after Macleod chose to use the paper to explain his recent resignation. In an article entitled "The Tory Leadership", ostensibly a review of a new book by Randolph Churchill, Macleod lay out in great detail Harold Macmillan’s version of events, after his replacement by Home the previous October.

In disclosing, from the horse’s mouth, the mysterious circumstances of Home’s appointment, the article caused an immediate sensation. Churchill’s book was all but obliterated by the review, "four fifths" of which, it said, "could have been compiled by anyone with a pair of scissors, a pot of paste and a built-in prejudice against Mr Butler and Sir William Haley". ^[28] That week’s edition, bearing the headline, "Ian Macleod, What Happened" sold a record number of copies.

Nigel Lawson, George Gale & Harry Creighton[link]

The ‘Tory Leadership’ article prompted a furious response from many Spectator readers and caused Macleod, for a time, to be shunned by political colleagues. He eventually regained his party’s favour, however, and rejoined the shadow cabinet in the same year. On his appointment as Shadow Chancellor in 1965, he stepped down as editor on the last day of the year, to be replaced by Nigel Lawson.

Sometimes called 'The Great Procrastinator’, because of his tendency to leave writing leaders until the last minute,^[29] Lawson had been City editor for The Sunday Telegraph and Sir Alec Douglas-Home’s personal assistant during the 1964 general election.

Largely thanks to Lawson, in 1966 The Spectator opposed America’s increasing military commitment in Vietnam. In a signed article he estimated "the risks involved in an American withdrawal from Vietnam are less than the risks in escalating a bloody and brutal war".^[30]

In 1967 Ian Gilmour, who by then had joined parliament and was already finding the proprietorship less of a help than a hindrance in political life, sold The Spectator to Harry Creighton for £75,000. In 1970, Creighton replaced Lawson as editor (there had been growing resentment between the two men)^[31] with George Gale.

Gale shared Creighton’s political outlook,^[32] in particular his strong opposition to the Common Market, and consequentially much of the next five years was spent attacking the pro-EEC prime minister Edward Heath, treating his eventual defeat by Margaret Thatcher with undisguised delight.

Gale’s almost obsessive opposition to the EEC and antagonistic attitude towards Heath began to lose the magazine readers. In 1973 Creighton took over the editorship himself, but was, if possible, even less successful in stemming the losses. As one journalist who joined The Spectator at that time said: "It gave the impression, an entirely accurate one, of a publication surviving on a shoestring".^[33] George Gale later remarked that Creighton had only wanted the job to get into Who’s Who.^[34]

Henry Keswick[link]

Creighton’s took the magazine in a new more traditional conservative direction, and strongly opposed British membership of the Common Market. Circulation fell from 36,000 in 1966 to below 17,000, and in 1975 Creighton sold The Spectator to Henry Keswick, again for £75,000. However Creighton sold the 99 Gower Street premises separately, so the magazine moved to premises in Doughty Street.^[35]

1975-2005[link]

Alexander Chancellor[link]

In 1975, The Spectator was bought by Henry Keswick, chairman of the Jardine Matheson multinational corporation. He was drawn to the paper, partly because he harboured political aspirations (the paper’s perk as a useful stepping stone to Westminster was, by now, well established), but also because his father had been a friend of Peter Fleming, its well known columnist.

Keswick gave the job of editor simply to "the only journalist he knew",^[36] Alexander Chancellor, an old family friend and his mother’s godson, with whom he had been at Eton and Cambridge. Before then, Chancellor had worked at Reuters news agency and had been a scriptwriter and reporter for ITN. In spite of his relative inexperience, however, he was to become known as "one of the best editors in the history of The Spectator".^[37]

Chancellor’s editorship of the paper relied principally on a return to earlier values. He adopted a new format and a more traditional weekly style, with the front page displaying five cover lines above the leader. Most significantly, he recognised the need "to bring together a number of talented writers and, with the minimal of editorial interference, let them write".^[38] To this end he persuaded Auberon Waugh (who had been sacked by Nigel Lawson) to return from the New Statesman, and enticed Richard West and Jeffrey Bernard from the same magazine. Another columnist recruited by Chancellor was Taki Theodoracopulos whose column ‘High Life’ was then printed beside Bernard’s ‘Low Life’. Taki's column, frequently criticised for its content by the liberal press,^[39] remains in the paper.

In September 1978, a 96-page issue was released to mark The Spectator’s 150th anniversary. William Rees-Mogg congratulated the paper in a Times leading article, praising it in particular for its important part in "the movement away from collectivism".

Charles Moore[link]

The 28 year-old Charles Moore replaced Chancellor in February 1984, after the magazine’s then owner, Algy Cluff, had become concerned that The Spectator was "lacking in political weight", and considered Chancellor to be "commercially irresponsible".^[40]

Moore had been a leader writer at The Daily Telegraph before Chancellor recruited him to The Spectator as political commentator. Consequentially the paper under Moore became more political than it had been under Chancellor. The new editor adopted an approach that was, in general, pro-Margaret Thatcher, while showing no restraint in opposing her on certain issues. The paper called the Anglo-Irish Agreement "a fraudulent prospectus" in 1985, came out against the Single European Act, and, in 1989, criticised the handover of Hong Kong to China. Moore wrote that if Britain failed to allow the city’s UK passport holders right of abode in Britain, "we shall have to confess that, for the first time in our history, we have forced Britons to be slaves."^[41]

He also introduced several new contributors, including a restaurant column by Nigella Lawson (the former editor’s daughter), and a humorous column by Craig Brown. When Taki was briefly imprisoned for cocaine possession Moore refused to accept his resignation, explaining publicly: "We expect our High Life columnist to be high some of the time."^[42]

The Spectator changed hands again in 1985, by which time it had accumulated an overdraft of over £300,000 and it was facing financial meltdown. Cluff had reached the conclusion that the paper "would be best secured in the hands of a publishing group", and sold it to an Australian company, John Fairfax Ltd who promptly paid off the overdraft. With the support of its new proprietor, the paper was able to widen its readership through subscription drives and advertising, reaching a circulation of 30,000 in 1986, exceeding the circulation of the New Statesman for the first time. The magazine was again sold in 1988, after an uncertain period during which several candidates, including Rupert Murdoch, attempted to buy the magazine. Moore wrote to Murdoch, saying: "Most of our contributors and many of our readers would be horrified at the idea of your buying The Spectator. They believe you are autocratic and that you have a bad effect on journalism of quality – they cite The Times as the chief example."^[43] In the end The Spectator was bought by the Telegraph Group, of which Conrad Black then had a controlling interest.

Dominic Lawson and Frank Johnson[link]

Moore gave up the editorship in 1990 to become deputy editor of The Daily Telegraph, though he continued to write a column for the magazine. He was replaced by his own deputy editor, Dominic Lawson (the former editor’s son).

Shortly after becoming editor, Lawson became responsible for the resignation of a cabinet minister when he interviewed the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Nicholas Ridley. During the interview Ridley described the proposed Economic and Monetary Union as "a German racket designed to take over the whole of Europe",^[44] and seemed to draw comparisons between the German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl and Adolf Hitler. The interview appeared in the issue of 14 July 1990, whose cover showed a cartoon by Nicholas Garland, of Ridley painting onto a poster of Kohl a crude comb-over and a Hitler moustache. Ridley resigned from Thatcher’s government immediately.

The Spectator caused controversy in 1994 when it printed an article entitled "Kings of the Deal" on a claimed Jewish influence in Hollywood, written by William Cash, who at the time was based in Los Angeles and working mainly for The Daily Telegraph. The Telegraph had considered the article too risky to publish, but Lawson thought Cash's idea was as old as Hollywood itself and that his being Jewish would mitigate adverse reactions to publication. There was, however, considerable controversy. Although owner Conrad Black did not personally rebuke Lawson, Max Hastings, then editor of The Daily Telegraph, wrote with regard to Black, who also owned The Jerusalem Post at the time, "It was one of the few moments in my time with Conrad when I saw him look seriously rattled: 'You don't understand, Max. My entire interests in the United States and internationally could be seriously damaged by this'."^[45]

The article was defended by some conservatives. John Derbyshire, who says he has "complicated and sometimes self-contradictory feelings about Jews", wrote on National Review Online regarding what he saw as the Jewish overreaction to the article that "It was a display of arrogance, cruelty, ignorance, stupidity, and sheer bad manners by rich and powerful people towards a harmless, helpless young writer, and the Jews who whipped up this preposterous storm should all be thoroughly ashamed of themselves".^[46]

Lawson left in 1995 to become editor of The Sunday Telegraph, and was replaced by a deputy editor of the same newspaper, Frank Johnson. After the 1997 election, Johnson averted a decline in The Spectator’s sales by recruiting "New Labour contributors", and shifting the magazine’s direction slightly away from politics. In 1996 the paper featured an interview with The Spice Girls, in which the band members gave their "Euro-sceptic and generally anti-labour" views on politics. Shortly before her death Diana, Princess of Wales was depicted on the magazine’s cover as the figurehead of Mohamed Al-Fayed’s boat, the Jonikal.^[47]

Boris Johnson[link]

Before joining The Spectator as editor, Johnson had worked for The Times, the Wolverhampton Express & Star, and The Daily Telegraph. He had also briefly been political commentator for The Spectator under Dominic Lawson, but Frank Johnson replaced him with Bruce Anderson in 1995. Succeeding Frank Johnson in 1999, Johnson soon established himself as a competent and "colourful"^[48] editor.

In the 2001 general election he was elected MP for Henley, and by 2004 had been made vice-chairman of the Conservative party, with a place in Michael Howard’s shadow cabinet. In 2003 he explained his editorial policy for The Spectator was to "always be roughly speaking in favour of getting rid of Saddam, sticking up for Israel, free-market economics, expanding choice" and that the magazine was "not necessarily a Thatcherite Conservative or a neo-conservative magazine, even though in our editorial coverage we tend to follow roughly the conclusions of those lines of arguments".^[49]

In October 2004, a Spectator editorial suggested that the death of the hostage Kenneth Bigley was being over-sentimentalized by the people of Liverpool, accusing them of indulging in a "vicarious victimhood" and of possessing a "deeply unattractive psyche".’^[50] Johnson had not written the leader but, as editor, took full responsibility for it. Michael Howard subsequently ordered him to visit Liverpool on a "penitential pilgrimage".^[51] Recent articles have resumed the theme in commenting on public declarations of grief following the murder of Rhys Jones.

At this time the paper began jokingly to be referred to as the ‘Sextator’ – a nickname for which Johnson himself was more than a little responsible – owing to the number of sex scandals connected with the magazine during his editorship. These included an affair between columnist Rod Liddle and the magazine’s receptionist, and Johnson’s own affair with another columnist, Petronella Wyatt. Johnson at first denied the relationship, dismissing the allegations as "an inverted pyramid of piffle", but was consequentially sacked from the Shadow Cabinet in November 2004 when they turned out to be perfectly true. In the same year David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, resigned from the government after it emerged he had been having an affair with The Spectator’s publisher, Kimberly Quinn (then Fortier), and had fast-tracked her nanny’s visa application.

Circulation under Johnson reached record levels – as high as 70,000 by the time he left the magazine in 2005 to join David Cameron’s Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Minister for Higher Education. On the announcement of his departure, Andrew Neil, The Spectator CEO, said: "Boris has been a wonderful and magnificent editor of The Spectator and we are sorry to lose him; in many ways he will be irreplaceable… [he] leaves the magazine in better shape than it has ever been in its long and glorious history, both editorially and financially… The editorial breadth and quality under his editorship has been unrivalled."^[52]

Mathew d’Ancona[link]

D’Ancona had been Deputy Editor at the The Sunday Telegraph, and before that an assistant editor at The Times. During his four years as editor of The Spectator, he made several editorial and structural changes to the magazine, "not all of which were universally popular with readers".

He ended the traditional summary of the week’s events, "Portrait of the Week", and, in 2006, launched a new lifestyle section entitled "You Earned It". He removed Peter Oborne as political editor, and appointed Fraser Nelson in his place to and decided not to appoint a new media columnist to succeed Stephen Glover, explaining, "I do not think The Spectator needs a media columnist. Our pages are precious and I do not think the internal wranglings of our trade are high on the list of Spectator readers’ priorities."^[53]

Perhaps the magazine's most important innovation under d’Ancona was the Coffee House blog, lead by Peter Hoskin and James Forsyth, launched in May 2007.^[54].

In 2007 The Spectator moved its offices from Doughty Street, which had been its home for 31 years, to 22 Old Queen Street in Westminster, leaving Bloomsbury for the first time since the paper’s founding in 1828.

Fraser Nelson[link]

The Spectator’s current editor is Fraser Nelson, who replaced d’Ancona in August 2009.

In 2010 he unveiled a slight redesign of the paper, shrinking the cover illustration slightly, shifting the cover lines, in general, to the bottom, and spreading the contents section over a double-page. Playing down the changes, Nelson described the new look as "a tidy-up… rather like restoring an old painting."^[55]

An article in November 2011 by Rod Liddle on the trial of two men eventually convicted for the murder of Stephen Lawrence led to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) deciding to prosecute the magazine for breaching reporting restrictions. A court hearing is scheduled for 7 June 2012^[56] which the magazine will not contest, according to Nelson.^[57]

Policy positions[link]

From its founding in 1828 The Spectator has taken a pro-British line in foreign affairs. Like its sister publication The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator is generally Atlanticist and Eurosceptic in outlook, favouring close ties with the United States rather than with the European Union, and supportive of Israel.^{[citation needed]} However, it has expressed strong doubts about the Iraq war, and some of its contributors, such as Matthew Parris and Stuart Reid, express a more old-school conservative position. Some contributors, such as Irwin Stelzer, argue from an American neoconservative position.^{[citation needed]} Unlike much of the British press it is approving of the unilateral extradition treaty that allowed the Natwest three to be extradited, and in July 2006 the magazine devoted a leading article to praising the US Senate.^[58]

Cultural positions[link]

The Spectator is one of the few British publications that still ignores or dismisses most examples of popular culture, in the way that (for example) The Daily Telegraph did under Bill Deedes, or The Times did under William Haley.^{[citation needed]} The magazine coined the phrase "young fogey" in 1984 (in an article by Alan Watkins).^{[citation needed]}

The Spectator does have a popular music column, though it only appears every four weeks, while a cinema column contains a review of one film each week by the non-specialist Deborah Ross. By contrast, opera, fine art, books, poetry and classical music all receive extensive weekly coverage.

Contributors[link]

Although there is a permanent staff of writers, The Spectator has always had room for a wide array of contributors. Some of these include:

Editors[link]

The editors of The Spectator have been:

• Robert Stephen Rintoul, 1828 - 1858
• John Scott, 1858 – 1861
• Meredith Townsend and Richard Holt Hutton, 1861 - 1886
• Meredith Townsend, 1886 – 1887
• John St Loe Strachey, 1887 – 1925
• Sir Evelyn Leslie Wrench, 1925 – 1932
• Henry Wilson Harris, 1932 – 1953
• Walter Taplin, 1953 - 1954
• Ian Gilmour, 1954 - 1959
• Brian Inglis, 1959 – 1962
• Iain Hamilton, 1962 – 1963
• Iain Macleod, 1963 – 1965
• Nigel Lawson, 1966 – 1970
• George Gale, 1970 – 1973
• Harold Creighton, 1973 – 1975
• Alexander Chancellor, 1975–1984
• Charles Moore, 1984 – 1990
• Dominic Lawson, 1990 – 1995
• Frank Johnson, 1995 – 1999
• Boris Johnson, 1999 – 2005
• Matthew d'Ancona, 2006 – 2009
• Fraser Nelson, 2009 - present

References[link]

• Spectator editor Matthew d'Ancona interviewed in The Guardian, 2009-02-2

External links[link]

• The Spectator official site
• Exact Editions digital edition
• The Spectator iPhone/iPad app

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Jens Voigt

Voigt in 2007
Personal information
Full name	Jens Voigt
Born	(1971-09-17) 17 September 1971 (age 40) Grevesmühlen, East Germany
Height	1.89 m (6 ft 2 in)
Weight	76 kg (170 lb)
Team information
Current team	RadioShack-Nissan-Trek
Discipline	Road
Role	Rider
Rider type	All rounder/Breakaway specialist
Amateur team(s)
Berlin TSC
Professional team(s)
1997 1998–2003 2004–2010 2011–	ZVVZ-Giant-Australian Institute of Sport GAN Team CSC Leopard Trek
Major wins
Tour de France, 3 stages Giro d'Italia, 1 stage Paris-Bourges (2003) Grand Prix des Nations (2001) Deutschland Tour (2006 & 2007) Tour de Pologne (2008) Critérium International (1999, 2004, 2007–09) Tour Méditerranéen (2005)
Infobox last updated on 5 January 2012

Jens Voigt (born 17 September 1971 in Grevesmühlen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, East Germany) is a German professional road bicycle racer for UCI ProTeam RadioShack-Nissan-Trek. Voigt is known for his propensity to attack, and for his positive racing attitude. He is capable of repeated attacking, holding a high tempo, and breaking away from the peloton. He has worn the yellow jersey of the Tour de France twice, though he has never challenged for the overall title due to his lack of ability in the mountains. In cycling folklore, he is considered as one of the best rouleur riders to this day.

He is the riders' representative on the UCI ProTour council, for the Cyclistes Professionels Associés (CPA),^[1] and Voigt has spoken against doping.^[2]

Voigt is generally popular with cycling fans, both for his riding style and his affable, forthright and articulate style in dealing with the public and media.^[3]

Personal life[link]

Voigt and his wife Stephanie have six children, the youngest being born January 2011.^[4]

Biography[link]

Jens Voigt in the Ster Elektrotour (2006) in Schimmert

Early life[link]

Jens Voigt was born in a small town about 100 km north-east of Hamburg, in the same area as Tour de France winner Jan Ullrich. Jens was encouraged by his parents to participate in sports, since he often got into troubles as a youngster thanks to his excessive energy. His early performance indicated he had good endurance potential, and he joined a national sports school at age 14 and trained in cycling and track and field.^[4]

Career debut[link]

He won the Peace Race in 1994 and topped the UCI "Challenge Mondial Amateurs" rankings in December 1994.^[5] After a four-year stint in the German Army, much of it spent with a special sports unit,^[4] he started professional cycling in 1997, winning races for the Australian team ZVVZ-Giant-Australian Institute of Sport.

In 1998, with the support of his former Australian Institute of Sport Sports Director, German-born Heiko Salzwedel he moved to the big French team GAN (which became Crédit Agricole) where he spent the five years amassing 20 wins, among them a day in the maillot jaune in the 2000 Tour de France, and a stage in the 2001 Tour de France. Voigt played a part in Jan Ullrich's 2000 Olympic Games win for the German team.

2004[link]

In 2004, Voigt joined his former Crédit Agricole teammate Bobby Julich with a move to Team CSC, as Saxo Bank was then known. Being tempo specialists, they formed a strong pair as they dominated the 2004 and 2005 LuK Challenge race, a two-man time trial.

Voigt rode the 2004 Tour de France for Team CSC captain Ivan Basso. Voigt and team mate Jakob Piil were often in breakaways, covering the break for CSC. On the 15th stage, Voigt was in a break as Ullrich attacked up the Col de l'Echarasson, leaving race leader Lance Armstrong and 2nd-placed Basso. With Armstrong's team unable to pull Ullrich back in, Voigt was ordered back from his breakaway to help Basso defend his place. Voigt saw Ullrich ride past as he waited for his captain, before he single-handedly closed the gap to Ullrich. Next day was a time trial up the Alpe d'Huez with 900,000 spectators at the roadside. Voigt was heckled by German fans calling him Judas for his effort to ruin fellow Ullrich's chances. Voigt criticised German TV-channel ARD for starting a witch-hunt against him and pleaded that he was paid by Team CSC, not Germany and that (as he stated in Overcoming) thanks to his help Ullrich won olympic gold medal.^[6]

2005[link]

Jens Voigt (in front) at stage 8 of the 2005 Tour de France

At the start of 2005, Voigt won the Tour Méditerranéen, ahead of teammates Fränk Schleck 2nd and Nicki Sørensen 4th. Voigt won the first UCI ProTour event, the prologue time trial of the 2005 Paris–Nice, a race Julich won overall. Voigt nearly won the 2005 classic Liège–Bastogne–Liège when he was beaten on the line by Alexandre Vinokourov, Voigt having been on a breakaway almost the entire race.

After a strong placing in the stage 1 time trial of the 2005 Tour de France, Voigt was only trailing race leader Armstrong by 1 minute and he tried hard to take the overall lead. He took part in many attacks, and the 9th stage, before the first rest day, finally got in a break-away that lasted to the line. He finished third, 3 minutes ahead of Armstrong. Voigt's time in the maillot jaune would be short-lived however, as he fell to 168th at stage 10 after a fever, and he was eliminated for failing to finish stage 11 within the time limit. Voigt ended 2005 as 29th on the UCI ProTour individual rankings.

2006[link]

Voigt at the 2006 Rund um den Henninger Turm race.

The 2006 season started at a slower pace for Voigt compared to 2005 in order to save energy and be in a position to help Basso in his quest to win the 2006 Giro d'Italia and 2006 Tour de France races.^[7] His only result until the Giro in May was an attack on the fifth stage of the Vuelta al País Vasco, but he had to settle for second behind stage winner Thomas Voeckler.

For the Giro d'Italia, Voigt rode in support of Basso. Following Team CSC's team time trial win on stage 5, Voigt found himself second, trailing race leader Serhiy Honchar by six seconds. During the first mountains, Voigt helped Basso take the overall lead, while he slid down the board and finished 37th. On mountainous stage 19, Voigt and Julich were in a 20-man break, but as Team CSC was leading the peloton to defend Basso's first place, Voigt and Julich did not work. Up the last climb, Voigt was alone with Spanish rider Juan Manuel Gárate, but as Voigt did not think he had done enough to deserve the victory, he let Garate take the win.^[8] Voigt finally got his first win of the season in the Ster Elektrotoer race in June. Here he won stage 4 and helped teammate Kurt Asle Arvesen to the overall win, two weeks before the Tour de France.

In the days before the Tour, Basso was suspended by Team CSC after his name had been brought up in the Operación Puerto doping investigation. Carlos Sastre became team captain. Voigt took the role of early attacker, to lessen the load for the team, and he formed or joined unsuccessful breakaways on several stages. On the memorable stage 13 from Béziers to Montélimar, the longest stage of the 2006 Tour at 231 km, Voigt got in a five-man breakaway which finished 29 minutes and 58 seconds ahead of the main bunch. At the line, Voigt outsprinted Óscar Pereiro to take his second Tour stage win.^[9] On stage 15, Voigt helped Fränk Schleck from Luxembourg, pulling hard in the break with teammate David Zabriskie of the USA, which eventually gave Schleck the win. Voigt finished the 2006 Tour 53rd, helping Sastre finish 4th.

2007[link]

In February 2007, Voigt won the third stage of the Tour of California, which had numerous climbs. After the bunch caught 17 escapees, Levi Leipheimer of Discovery Channel attacked, and only Chris Horner (Predictor-Lotto) and Voigt could keep up with him. Voigt ultimately prevailed in the sprint over the two men and approached to only 3 seconds behind Leipheimer for the General Classification thanks to time bonuses.^[10] He managed to hold on to his second place over the next 4 stages, finishing 21 seconds behind the winner of the Tour, Leipheimer.^[11] In April, he met another success at the Criterium International, winning the overall classification and stage 2, a short, undulating stage of 98.5 kilometers finishing in Monthermé. Voigt attacked near the Côte du Mont Malgré Tout, with almost 25 kilometers to go, and crossed the finish line solo, 48 seconds in front of the chasers.^[12] The last stage of the race was a short individual time trial of 8.3 kilometers which was raced in the afternoon of the same day, and Voigt stated he gave everything he had but was very careful while negotiating the turns. He finished seventh, keeping his leader's jersey and winning the 3-stage race, while the Swede Thomas Lövkvist of Française des Jeux took second place.^[13] Another major win of the 2007 season came for him in the Deutschland Tour, which he won for the second year in a row, with Levi Leipheimer taking second place at 1'57" and David Lopez of Caisse d'Epargne completing the overall classification podium. Voigt stated that his victory was harder to accomplish than the preceding year, when it was somewhat of a surprise. He was a marked man.^[14]

2009[link]

Voigt started the season well by winning the Critérium International for the fifth time in his career, tying Frenchman Raymond Poulidor's record while grabbing a stage win, the points classification and the mountains classification.^[15] He abandoned the 2009 Tour on 21 July 2009 as a consequence of a violent crash suffered while descending the Col du Petit-Saint-Bernard with the yellow jersey group during stage 16. He incurred a fracture of the right cheekbone and concussion.^[16] He had to skip several races to recuperate from his injuries, including the Cycling World Championship held in Mendrisio, Switzerland.^[17] He was inactive for a 6 week period and came back to competition at the Tour of Missouri, where he got a warm welcome from cycling fans.^[18]

Jens Voigt in the Prologue of the 2008 Tour of California, battered from a training crash the week before.

2012[link]

In 2012, Voigt came in second of the fifth stage of the Tour of California, an individual time trial contested in Bakersfield, 23 seconds behind David Zabriskie.^[19]

Palmarès[link]

Jens Voigt

Teams[link]

• 1997: ZVVZ-Giant-AIS
• 1998: GAN
• 1999–2003: Crédit Agricole
• 2004–2008: Team CSC
• 2009–2010: Team Saxo Bank
• 2011–: Leopard Trek

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jens Voigt

• Profile at Saxo Bank
• JensVoigtFacts.com – humorous "facts" about Jens Voigt
• Jens Voigt profile at Cycling Archives

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2007)

The American Spectator is a conservative U.S. monthly magazine covering news and politics, edited by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. and published by the non-profit American Spectator Foundation. From its founding in 1967 until the late 1980s, the small-circulation magazine featured the writings of authors such as Thomas Sowell, Tom Wolfe, P.J. O'Rourke, George F. Will, Malcolm Gladwell, Patrick J. Buchanan, and Malcolm Muggeridge, although today the magazine is best known for its reports in the 1990s on Bill Clinton and its "Arkansas Project", funded by businessman Richard Mellon Scaife and the Bradley Foundation.^[1]

Founding and history[link]

The American Spectator was founded as The Alternative in 1967 by Tyrrell and other students at Indiana University, and was originally published in a tabloid format (it is now published in a traditional magazine format).

After operating under the name The Alternative: An American Spectator for several years, in 1977 the magazine changed its name to The American Spectator because, in editor Tyrrell's words, "the word 'alternative' had come to be associated almost exclusively with radicals and with their way of life." In fact, Tyrrell had started the magazine as a conservative alternative to the student radicalism at the nation's universities in the 1960s. The Spectator is also a British magazine of somewhat similar format and anti-establishment conservatism.

During the Reagan Administration, the magazine moved from Bloomington, Indiana to suburban Washington, D.C.

The 1990s[link]

The publication gained prominence in the 1990s by reporting on political scandals. The March 1992 issue contained David Brock's expose on Clarence Thomas accuser Anita Hill. Brock and his colleague Daniel Wattenberg soon moved on to a target of somewhat longer-lasting relevance: Hillary and Bill Clinton. A January 1994 article about then-President Bill Clinton's sex life contained the first reference in print to Clinton accuser Paula Jones, although the article focused on allegations that Clinton used Arkansas state troopers to facilitate his extramarital sexual activities (see Troopergate). It only referred to Jones by her first name and corroborated few if any elements of her story. This article was the basis for the claim of damages a sexual harassment lawsuit which started the chain of events resulting in President Clinton's impeachment.

David Brock recanted his accusations upon his departure from the conservative movement. He also denounced his Anita Hill article in his 2003 book Blinded by the Right: the Conscience of an Ex-Conservative. He implies that Rush Limbaugh's coverage of his Anita Hill article instigated advertising on Limbaugh's network, which resulted in a large increase in the magazine's circulation. He also implies that this caused the magazine's content to '[move] away from thoughtful essays and scholarly reviews and humor pieces' to 'hit jobs'.^[2]

For his part, Wattenberg eventually incurred the displeasure of many fellow conservatives when he belatedly admitted that he had killed a story about rumors of Clinton fathering a child out of wedlock (with a young African American woman). Wattenberg actually tracked down a videotape of the woman being interviewed (by an unnamed third party who asked her what Wattenberg described as "softball" questions), but he never was able to interview her himself. Wattenberg's rationales for killing the story were that he had no proof that the story was true and that the woman's testimony was unconvincing. He said that she "seemed like a junkie." (The story was revived in 1999 by Matt Drudge.)

Internal strife eventually led to the departure of long-time publisher Ronald Burr after a disagreement with Tyrrell led Burr to call for an independent audit of the magazine's finances. The departure of Burr and several prominent conservative figures from the magazine's board of directors resulted in conservative foundations pulling much of the funding the nonprofit had relied on to pay high salaries to Brock and Tyrrell, as well as to fund direct-mail campaigns needed to keep up the monthly's circulation. Faced with a budget crisis, the magazine, then led by publisher Terry Eastland, a former spokesman in the Reagan Justice Department, laid off staffers and cut spending significantly. The magazine also struggled to pay legal bills incurred from an investigation launched against it by Clinton's Justice Department for alleged witness tampering in the Whitewater investigation. The Justice Department investigation led to revelations about the "Arkansas Project," a campaign by businessman Richard Mellon Scaife to discredit the Clintons by funding investigative reporting at several conservative media outlets. The Justice Department investigation led nowhere and the Spectator was exonerated.

2000s[link]

As shortfalls continued, George Gilder, a long time supporter of the magazine who was newly wealthy from an Internet business, purchased the magazine with the goal of turning it into a profit-making glossy with significant media buzz. Numerous staff members, demoralized by the ever-looming budget crises, were laid off or departed after Joshua Gilder and Richard Vigilante took the reins and vowed to reach a new technology- and business-savvy audience. Circulation and budget losses continued and even increased in the Gilder era, and at one point the entire Washington-based staff other than Tyrrell and executive editor and web site editor Wladyslaw Pleszczynski were laid off as operations were moved to Massachusetts, where the rest of George Gilder's businesses were based. In 2003, George Gilder, who had lost most of his fortune with the bursting of the Internet stock bubble, sold the magazine for $1 back to Tyrrell and the American Alternative Foundation, the magazine's original owner (the name was later changed to the American Spectator Foundation). The magazine then moved operations back to the Washington, D.C. area. Later that year, former book publisher Alfred S. Regnery became the magazine's publisher. By 2004, circulation hovered at around 50,000.

2010s[link]

In 2011, Assistant Editor Patrick Howley published a piece detailing his infiltration of a Washington, D.C. protest. In the article, Howley asserts his aim to "mock and undermine" the protest against American Imperialism, and writes in the first person about his experiences protesting at the National Air and Space Museum.^[3] This article, and the methods detailed within, was condemned by other publications due to perceived conflagration of journalism and politics.^[4][5][6] Prominent supporters of the article include Slate's David Weigel, who called it "conservative media gold." The Economist wrote that Howley "winds up offering a vision of politics as a kind of self-focused performance art, or perhaps (to say the same thing) a version of "Jackass."

Core editorial staff[link]

• Publisher: Alfred S. Regnery
• Editor in Chief: R. Emmett Tyrrell
• Editorial Director: Wladyslaw Pleszczynski
• Associate Editor: W. James Antle III

References[link]

External links[link]

• The American Spectator official site
• Byron York, "The Life and Death of The American Spectator," The Atlantic Monthly, November 2001
• "Olson by a whisker", Salon.com, May 2001 (article containing background information on the "Arkansas Project")
• David Brock, "The Real Anita Hill", The American Spectator, March 1992 (unofficial site)
• David Brock, "His Cheatin’ Heart" ,The American Spectator, January 1994 (the "Troopergate" story)
• David Brock, Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative, Crown, 2002. ISBN 0-8129-3099-1
• R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. (ed.), Orthodoxy: The American Spectator's 20th Anniversary Anthology, Harper & Row, 1987. ISBN 0-06-015818-2