Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Who are you, anyway?
A: We are a loose collective of disaffiliated culture critics, knowledge workers, poets, illustrators, and closet utopians.
Q: Well, where are you?
A: The basement of Old Cambridge Baptist Church in Harvard Square serves as our headquarters, though staff members also live in New York City, Washington DC, and Madison, Wisconsin, and contributors and subscribers hail from across the United States.
Q: Do you have a mission statement or something?
A: Nah, nothing so fancy as a mission statement, but our motto has always been “the journal that blunts the cutting edge”—which means, we suppose, that we jab at consensus thinking in all its nauseating ooze. If you really want to read about our quarter-century history of bloody engagements with the brands, icons, and pet ideologies of contemporary America, just click on over to our About page. There’s a video.
Q: Can’t you just self-medicate, like everyone else?
A: Oh, we try. But we live on tight budgets, and our prescription-drug plans aren’t exactly up to snuff.
Q: What’s up with this website?
A: This website is a peace offering to our longtime readers and a fresh introduction for everyone else. From our early zine-like gestation phase in the tobacco fields surrounding Mr. Jefferson’s university, The Baffler has been, well, hard to find. In the 1990s, the magazine and its crew headquartered on the South Side of Chicago, perching precariously over a bicycle shop, and nodding to its agrarian roots with a lush tomato garden in the back. But that office and most of the back stock were destroyed in a 2001 fire. This website solves the perennial problem of finding The Baffler. It’s all here.
Q: So you really intend to stand around smugly and gloat?
A: Only part of the time. Come on, it’s a target-rich environment. America’s New Information Economy stands exposed as a business fraud, environmental menace, and thought-killer. That’s why we’re continually lofting new salvos into the ether. In addition to landing such productively unproductive jabs, we enjoy kicking back and mulling over the eternal questions too, like sex, play, friendship, and fashion, to cite the themes of recent issues. And we have public programs hatching in our bLab, including one called called Screen Suckers Inc., so watch this space for developments.
Q: Har har, where do I sign up?
A: Visit our subscription page, and yer privileges and necessaries shall appear.
Q: That’s enough about you. Where can I tell you what I think about The Baffler?
A: Sure thing; send your letter. We’ll be happy to read it; overjoyed, actually.
Q. And where can I send my essay, book, or film for your comment or review?
A: We will be happy to receive evidence of your brainstem on Baffler. Ship it off to our business address, P.O. Box 390049, Cambridge, Mass. 02139, USA. If you have something you’d like us to consider publishing, send us a pitch (no manuscripts) through our submissions page. We’ll do our best to respond.
Q: You know, I think I actually might have subscribed to your publication some time ago. Where do I inquire about refreshing my memory or repairing broken links in my relationship with The Baffler?
A. Right here, friend.
Q. Now that I’m feeling more appreciated, I might like to consider working for you or, even better, sending my nephew Spencer over for an internship. Spencer just graduated from Brown, and he’s looking for something to do.
A: Now and then we hire for special projects, and in those cases we look for candidates with experience and skills in editorial production and digital design. Visit our jobs page.
Q. But what about your internship program?
A. We don’t have one. No interns are used in the making of The Baffler. Back in 1997 we published Jim Frederick’s “Internment Camp: The Intern Economy and the Culture Trust,” which lodged a protest against unpaid labor that feels as fresh as news of the latest class-action lawsuit.
Q. I feel vaguely disappointed by this exchange. Can I find anything on this website to cheer me up?
A. You bet! You can read a free selection of articles, stories, and poems and gawk at the art in our gallery. We even have a store. There you can purchase back issues, books, art prints, and, yes, tote bags. (What, you don’t shop?)
