Bush’s policies help spawn the rebirth of the Nation

Friends thought Victor Navasky was “nuts” -- his word, not mine -- when he decided 10 years ago to buy the Nation magazine, the longtime, money-losing darling of the American left.

“The Nation had about 28,000 circulation then -- 7,500 of which were expiring subscriptions -- and it had been losing about $500,000 a year,” he told me over breakfast in New York recently. “Arthur Carter, the publisher, offered to sell it to me for $1 million -- $1 million that I didn’t have.”

Nuts indeed.

And yet Navasky -- who had been the editor of the Nation for 16 years and was then on a year’s leave of absence so he could write a book -- raised enough money to buy the magazine.

“I was told that, financially, it was a good deal at nothing down and $100,000 a year for 10 years at 16% interest,” he says by way of explanation.

His sanity (or at least his judgment) must have seemed even shakier, though, when the magazine’s annual operating loss ballooned to $1.25 million in 1996, his second full year as publisher.

But that was then and this is now. Circulation for the Nation, the country’s oldest weekly, has been climbing steadily, at times dramatically, especially since George W. Bush moved into the White House. This year will be the third in a row that the magazine will take in more money than it’s spent.

The Nation has been in the red for more than a century, and Navasky is reluctant to use words like “profitable” for the Nation because some recent revenue has come in the form of what he calls “significant anonymous gifts that we can’t count on every year.” It’s clear, however, that the Nation has never been healthier, and Navasky attributes that largely to Bush and his policies, especially the war in Iraq.

Liberals eager for serious, critical (but seldom shrill) commentary on the Bush administration have increasingly turned to the Nation. Since Bush first took office, the magazine’s circulation has almost doubled, to a projected year-end estimate of 185,000 (including 29,721 in California, the largest of any state). More than half that growth has come since the war in Iraq began. An additional 2,500 subscribers signed up in the first week after Bush’s reelection last month.

“What’s bad for the country,” Navasky often says, “is good for the Nation.”

Other liberal magazines -- Mother Jones and the American Prospect, to name two -- have also prospered in the Bush years, while the New Republic, which historically had far more subscribers than the Nation, has not. (New Republic circulation is now barely above 60,000.)

One reason for the divergent paths of the two liberal magazines is that, in these polarized times, the Nation is more liberal, indeed radical (or what passes for radical left in this country). It’s also, therefore, more predictable, which makes it more comforting to those on the left seeking solace and confirmation. One of the first postelection issues featured critical commentary on Bush’s reelection, on “the mess in Iraq” and on Bush’s nominations of Alberto Gonzales as U.S. attorney general and Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state.

Frankly, as much as I enjoy the Nation, I often find it too predictable. I’d rather be challenged than confirmed in my political views.

The voice of the opposition

BUT even though I’m a liberal, I’m probably not a typical Nation reader. Political magazines do seem to thrive when the party whose ideology they represent is out of power and adherents of that ideology are seeking a rallying, validating force. The Nation has been the biggest beneficiary of liberals’ hostility toward Bush. Bush and the country’s “drift to the right,” to use Navasky’s phrase, are not the only contributors to the Nation’s burgeoning circulation, though.

The magazine has a consistently excellent book section, and the recent “Fall Books” issue featured more than 30 pages of reviews, many of them more literary than political. I especially liked the thoughtful, evocative review of “Just Enough Liebling: Classic Work by the Legendary New Yorker Writer” and immediately put the book on my Christmas wish list.

The Internet and cable television -- two forces generally perceived as a threat to print media -- have also proven surprisingly helpful.

Cable TV has provided all these talking-head shows on which Nation contributors and, in particular, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Navasky’s successor as editor, can showcase their intelligence, insights and leftist credentials and thus attract potential subscribers.

Even more important, the Internet has turned out to be an enormously lucrative source of new subscriptions for the Nation. Navasky says subscriptions via the website have increased every year since the magazine first went online in 1996 and totaled 28,300 this year alone.

The website also includes archives of the Nation, dating to its founding by abolitionists in 1865. This amounts to a real alternative history of the United States since the end of the Civil War.

Witness to history

Over the years -- the decades -- the Nation has campaigned against Boss Tweed; argued for the creation of the NAACP; urged the release of conscientious objectors imprisoned during World War I; urged a new trial for Sacco and Vanzetti, the Italian anarchists whose 1921 murder convictions became a cause celebre for the American left; fought McCarthyism; opposed the war in Vietnam, editorialized early and fervently in favor of civil rights, feminism and the environment; and opposed both the Gulf War and the war in Iraq. (As a measure of both its longevity and its ideology, the Nation is happy to remind readers that President Theodore Roosevelt -- a Republican -- once warned of the “fearful mental degeneracy” that would result from “reading [the Nation] as a steady thing.”)

Although advertising will account for only about 10% of the magazine’s estimated $10 million revenue this year, that money also contributes to the magazine’s improved bottom line; this will be the first year the Nation has ever surpassed $1 million in ad income.

The Nation will take in an additional $1.4 million by year’s end from Nation Associates, readers who donate $5 to $5,000 each, beyond their annual subscription fees. There are about 25,000 Nation Associates; three years ago, there were 13,000.

The other major factor in the Nation’s brighter financial picture is the magazine’s annual seven-day “seminar cruise,” which -- this year -- ended Dec. 12. More than 600 readers and fans -- the most in the seven-year history of the event -- signed up to listen to speeches and presentations by such Nation contributors and friends as Navasky, vanden Heuvel, Jonathan Schell, Calvin Trillin, Molly Ivins, William Greider and Robert Scheer while they cruised the eastern Caribbean.

Passengers paid an average of $2,000 each -- the price depended on cabin location -- and Navasky says the magazine nets about $750 a head; that adds up to a profit of about $450,000 from this year’s cruise alone.

At 72, Navasky is much less directly involved in the editorial operation of the Nation than he once was. So he’s had time -- finally -- to finish the book he was working on when he bought the Nation in 1994.

Titled “A Matter of Opinion,” it combines his personal journalistic adventures (and misadventures) with his analysis of what he calls “the role of journals of opinion in the modern media world.” It will be published in May. Maybe Navasky will read excerpts aloud during next year’s Nation cruise. On the other hand, I’d rather listen to Trillin.

David Shaw can be reached at david.shaw@latimes.com. To read his previous “Media Matters” columns, please go to latimes.com/shaw-media.