5 new magazines with small circulations and big ideas

The New Republic is in chaos, and the American Prospect is now a shadow of what it was a decade ago, leading Ezra Klein to proclaim an end to the era of center-left DC-based policy magazines. But in parallel, something of a renaissance is taking place in the larger universe of "small magazines" — the kind of publications that deliberately eschew a mass audience in favor of a deep engagement with a niche.

The same digital technologies that enable viral hits on social media have also made it cheaper and easier than ever for committed intellectuals to produce well-edited and increasingly well-designed journals. At their best, the small magazines challenge the terms of mainstream debate. Here are five newish ones that are worth your time, along with a few recommended articles from each.

Jacobin

What is it? This is not your grandfather's socialist quarterly, though I happen to think my socialist grandfather would like it (my other grandfather would be deeply annoyed). Jacobin's hallmark is the fusion of just about the most old-school Left politics you'll find anywhere these days with a vibrant, witty, inspired visual style courtesy of genius creative director Remeike Forbes. Also Kareem Abdul-Jabar wrote for them recently.

A great piece from the latest issue. Ava Kofman's "Les Simerables" takes a critical look at class and power relations in the SimCity series.

A great blast from the past. "Keynes' Jetpack" by Mike Beggs starts with the perennial question of why work hasn't disappeared despite rising productivity, but ultimately wends its way to a more profound exploration of the meaning of economic progress.

The New Inquiry

What is it? The most youthful and editorially "webby" of the new small magazines (there are blogs). As much cultural as political, TNI is in many ways the most literal descendent of the small magazines of yore, but the seminar room is now drastically more diverse.

A great piece from the latest issue. "Taking Shit From Others" is Janani Balasubramanian's literary, moral, and philosophical treatise on FDA-approved shit-storage facilities to facilitate fecal transplants. Where others deliver a scientific or jocular view of the matter, Balasubramanian digs in on the question of why, exactly, this strikes the mainstream as so obviously disgusting/amusing.

A great blast from the past. "The Real Beach Lives of Miami" by Cord Jefferson is my favorite article in an all-around inspired special supplement on Harmony Korine's 2013 film Spring Breakers.

National Affairs

What is it? The oddball of the group for being DC-based, more strictly "policy"-focused, and ideologically on the right. Launched in 2009 under the leadership of Yuval Levin, it's as much a reaction to the slogans-over-substantive policymaking of the Bush years as to the liberalism of the Obama administration.

A great piece from the latest issue. "Overselling the Earned Income Tax Credit" probably could have used a more exciting headline but Lawrence Mead's argument that politicians from both parties are overestimating the EITC's ability to bring poor men back into the workforce is very important.

A great blast from the past. "Taxes and the Family" by Robert Stein was the opening salvo in what's become the most interesting policy argument in politics today in which Stein (now joined by Utah Senator Mike Lee) argues that conservatives need to move beyond the obsession with tax rate cuts for high-income individuals that's characterized the entire post-Reagan party.

N+1

What is it? Ten years old now, N+1 is a flagship journal for 21st Century literary Brooklyn. Deliberately anachronistic like an artisanal pickle shop, but with a cosmopolitan flair — like a pickle shop that also sells kimchi.

A great piece form the latest issue. A masthead editorial on "privilege" and privilege, and the coming together of class politics and identity politics in a time of massive economic inequality.

A great blast from the past. "The Face of Seung-Hui Cho" by Wesley Yang is a masterful meditation on a mass murder and the rarely discussed subject of Asian male identity in America.

The Baffler

What is it? Not a new publication, per se, but a 2009-relaunch of one of the great small magazines of the 1990s. The hallmark here is a kind of self-conscious crankiness. The Baffler's basic worldview is that everything is terrible, and also that all change is for the worse. In a world of enthusiasts, this is the voice of dyspepsia.

A great piece from the latest issue. "Dads of Tech" by Astra Taylor and Joanne McNeil, an essay on gender bias in the technology world.

A great blast from the past. "The God That Sucked" by Thomas Frank is a vicious and entirely warranted takedown against the financial market populism of the 1990s, a period when people were seriously trying to tell you that an army of day traders was going to transcend the historic conflicts between labor and capital.