It’s some 5 years since I last did an annotated list of interesting journals, As the number of newspaper titles shrinks, the number of weekly, monthly and even quarterly journals seems to increase - although substack is now offering a highly competitive (paying) model which may challenge their future.
My question then was - which (English language) journals would pass a test which included such criteria as –
- Depth of treatment
- Breadth of coverage (not just political)
- Cosmopolitan in taste (not just anglo-saxon)
- clarity of writing
- sceptical in tone
That’s a tough test but this was the list -
3 Quarks Daily; I last said “my daily fix - an amazing site which offers carefully chosen articles which suit my demanding taste perfectly” but I don’t actually receive it any more. But Nous y verrons
Aeon; an impressive cultural journal (online since 2012) whose articles are about big issues and have real “zing”
Arts and Letters Daily; this daily internet service highlights an article and book but I’ve only recently resubscribed.
Boston Review; a mag I rate highly for originality
Brave New Europe; greatly improved site which contains essential reading for leftists such as this conversation between Varoufakis and Jeffrey Sachs
Consortium News; a leftist radical US site
Current affairs; a bi-monthly and slightly anarchistic American mag
Dissent; a US leftist stalwart
Dublin Review of Books; great crack
Eurozine; a network of some 90 European cultural mags which gives a great sense of the diversity of European writing
Jacobin; a leftist mag which has improved with age.
Lettre International; a fascinating quarterly published in German, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian and Romanian.
Literary Hub; a literary site with daily selections but one, for some reason, I haven’t looked at recently
London Review of Books; my favourite for the past 40 years to which I generally subscribe
Los Angeles Review of Books; tries too hard to run with the politically correct
Marginalia; gives extended excerpts from classic texts about creativity etc. a personal endeavour of a Bulgarian woman now living in the States which, recently, I’ve found it a bit too predictable
Monthly Review; an old US stalwart with good solid analysis
Mother Jones; more journalistic US progressive
N+1; a centrist mag published only 3 times a year
New Humanist; an important monthly strand of UK thought
New Left Review; THE UK leftist journal publishing every 2 months since 1960. Always worth a look
Prospect (UK); rather too smooth centrist UK monthly
The American Prospect (US); ditto US
Public Books – an impressive recent website (2012) to encourage open intellectual debate
Quillette; a "free-thinking" contrarian and libertarian journal
Resurgence and Ecologist; dependable UK Green mag
Sceptic; celebration of important strand of UK scepticism
Social Europe; a european social democratic E-journal whose short articles are a bit too predictable for my taste
Soundings; if you want to keep up with UK leftist thought, this is the journal for you – issued only 3 times a year
Spiked; a libertarian net-based journal with challenging articles always guaranteed to be anti-PC
Sydney Review of Books; still can’t make up my mind
The Alternative UK; an excellent new platform aimed at establishing a "friendly revolution" to transform politics - it actually gives space to interesting new thinkers
The Atlantic; one of the US oldest mags (founded in 1857)
The Baffler; great writing. Apparently founded in 1988, it surfaced for me only recently
The Conversation; a rare venture which uses academics as journalists
The Cultural Tutor; an amazing site which offers each week a taste of music, literature and architecture – produced by Sheehan Quirke
The Nation; America's oldest (1865) weekly, for the "progressive" community
The New Republic Progressive US monthly which has been publishing for more than a century
The New Yorker; very impressive US writing
The New York Review of Books; I used to love this journal but have not renewed my sub – partly in protest about what’s happening in US politics
The Point; a quiet rightist mag
Tribune; the original left paper for which Orwell wrote and to which I am currently subscribed. Has some great writers such as Owen Hatherley and Grace Blakely
Verfassungs blog; an excellent Anglo-German site which focuses on constitutional issues
Washington Independent Review; a new website borne of the frustration about the disappearance of so many book review columns
Words without Borders; a journal of translation
Wrong Side of History; Ed West writes that “every writer has an axe, or multiple axes to grind, and I’m obviously politically conservative – although I would more describe myself as a depressive realist – but I’m not anti-liberal. Liberalism works in certain circumstances, but it needs saving from itself. If there’s a campaigning theme to Wrong Side of History, it’s my belief that there is a political drift towards a form of soft totalitarianism, which includes a fixation with inserting activism into every aspect of our lives, whether it’s sport, education or visiting a cultural attraction. I want less politics in our daily lives”
Substack favourites
Aurelien; very thoughtful posts
Chris Hedges Report; the guy who rivals Chomsky
Critical perspectives; rigorous international research revealing how global systems actually shape our world- from Rex McKenzie
The long memo; posts on politics, collapse, and the architecture of exit by William Finnegan
Thoughts from the shire; highly literary thoughts from a wee Hobbit trying to escape clown world
https://www.kitklarenberg.com/; a male investigative journalist explores global risks
https://athenamac83.substack.com/; Anthropologist and a rare female author, specializing in bioethics and anthropogenic existential risk.
Academic journals
I would not normally deign academic journals with a second glance since theirs is an incestuous breed – with arcane language and specialized focus which breaches at least two of the above five tests. But Political Quarterly stands apart with the superbly written (social democratic) analyses which have been briefing us for almost a century and to which I have recommenced an (internet) sub. Parliamentary Affairs; West European Politics and Governance run it close with more global coverage.
A concept with unrealized potential, I feel, is that of the “global roundup” ” with selections of representative writing from around the globe. Courrier international is a good, physical, Francophone example – with Eurozine takes the main award for its selection of the most interesting articles from Europe’s 90 cultural journals
The archive on journalism
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2011/03/investigative-journalism.html https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2011/07/british-bread-oz-circus-and-bulgarian.html https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2012/03/fighting-big-brother.html https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2012/04/suborning-democracy.html https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2012/06/getting-under-skin.html https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2015/05/confessionals.html Pat Chalmers https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2015/05/is-british-journalism-dead.html https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2017/05/journals-worth-reading.html https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2017/08/in-praise-of-journalists.html https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2017/09/making-sense-of-global-crisis.html https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2018/03/why-we-should-not-be-so-cynical-about.html https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2018/03/brexit-and-reassertion-of-nation-state.html https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-writers-craft.html https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2018/11/kenneth-roy-voice-to-renew-faith-in.html https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-stuff-of-journalism.html https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2019/03/in-praise-of-literary-magazines.html https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2019/03/what-does-brexit-tell-us-about-ourselves.html
