MAGAZINE WRITING
Finds
Some winners you might have missed
Legal Affairs
www.legalaffairs.org
Launch: May 2002; bimonthly; 10,000
This slickly designed magazine, associated with Yale Law School, bills itself as "the magazine at the intersection of law and life." It makes reading about the law a pleasure even when the subject is serious. No legal dictionary required. Cover stories so far: feature on Israeli Supreme Court, tale of a New York City public defender banned from the courtroom, and package on the Rwandan International Criminal Tribunal.
American Demographics
www.demographics.com
Launch: January 1979; ten issues; 17,000
It's like having the Census released each month. Part of the Primedia empire, Demographics is a gold mine for story ideas and full of data to use in nut graphs. Though it's used mainly by marketers, enterprising reporters shouldn't leave home without it.
El Andar
www.elandar.com
Launch: December 1998; quarterly; 10,000
Formerly a newspaper in Santa Cruz County, California, now a sixty-page glossy covering political and cultural trends in the Latino community. Recent issue had excerpt from Sandra Cisneros's new novel, an investigative piece about the Vatican Bank, a hard look at Latino think tanks, and an opinion piece on Bush's neglect of Latin America. An ethnic magazine that's more than ethnic cheerleading.
AI
www.ai-magazine.org
Launch: 1999; fall, spring, summer
The magazine of Arts International, a non-profit devoted to arts interchange across the world, is truly global in its scope. Recent pieces: the art on Mullah Omar's walls and China's crackdown on performance art. Includes interviews with artists, features on new work, and coverage of trends. It's not just for the arts aficionado, and it's now available to subscribers.
The Week
www.theweekmagazine.com
Launch: April 2001; weekly (fifty issues); 150,000
Everyone's heard of Maxim, but The Week is Dennis Publishing's entry into newsmagazines. Think of it as Economist Lite. Some forty pages of politically neutral and sharply edited shorts. "Mr. Magazine," Samir Husni says: "In the seventeen years that I have been preaching the idea of 'more information in less time and less space,' I have never seen a magazine that encompasses my philosophy as well as The Week."
Bitch
www.bitchmagazine.com
Launch: Winter 1996; quarterly; 29,550
The "feminist response to pop culture" started as a homegrown 'zine, but its summer issue was 104 pages of lively departments and well-written, sometimes humorous features. Journalism with an attitude.
Transition
www.transitionmagazine.com
Launch: March 1991; quarterly; 1,150
This thoughtful international review of politics, culture, and ethnicity features a dazzling array of journalists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and scholars, from Spike Lee and Ice Cube, to Edward Said and Jamaica Kincaid.
Technology Review
www.technologyreview.com
Launch: 1899; ten issues; 310,000
It's over 100 years old and still more than cutting edge, the first look at what is coming out of the labs. Read by lots of M.I.T. grads, but the degree is unnecessary to read about (and understand) scientific innovation.
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