Unanswered (marketing) prayers: Loyal reader gives New Statesman the boot

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KULTURKAMPF

NS’s first issue, in 1913. (Click to expand.)

[box type=”info”] Editor’s Note: The last 50 years have seen many once respectable and relatively progressive magazines “of the left” (or at least left of center), organs representing the old liberal establishment intelligentsia (Walter Lippman, Reinhold Niebuhr, et al on this side of the Atlantic), move sharply to the center right or even the right wing of the spectrum—with no apologies to the old faithful. A high percentage of these titles were affected by nothing more sinister than outright sale to rich rightwingers, zealots, and Zionists (i.e., The New Republic, to Martin Peretz), who promptly perched conservatives on their top slots (vide TNR’s choice of Andrew Sullivan as editor, a man whose outspoken Burkean conservativism is rooted in his British Catholic background and in the political philosophy of his mentor, Michael Oakeshott. ⁽¹⁾).

In the case of The News Statesman the displacement was not terribly dramatic, as the publication was at best a Fabian relic, although it once boasted the likes of HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and of course Sidney and Beatrice Web, who founded the mag in 1913, but the utter editorial degeneracy it has now embraced in the age of open and blatant imperial corporatism, has proven too much even for loyal and terribly patient readers, a flock that includes our own London correspondent and fellow editor Mike Faulkner. It was not surprising, therefore, that a recent invitation to renew his lapsed subscription prompted Mike to pen the letter we reproduce below. —P. Greanville[/box]

⁽¹⁾ A. Sullivan/Wiki

From: Mike Faulkner
To: New Statesman subscription department
Subject: RE: Your New Statesman subscription has expired

Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2015

Dear: (Name of subscription contact person withheld for obvious reasons, and sheer politesse.)

Thank you for your letter reminding me that my subscription has expired. It is with regret that I must inform you that I shall not be renewing it. I feel I need to tell you why. 

As you note, I have been a subscriber for a very long time and I have been a reader for much longer. I started reading the NS as a teenager in the 1950s while Kingsley Martin was still the editor and John Berger was your art critic. Over the years I have not always agreed with everything I have read, neither would I have expected to. But for most of the time I have been a reader and subscriber, I have not doubted that the heart of the NS was on the left and that it sought to remain true to its Fabian social-democratic origins. The quality of the magazine’s journalism was not in doubt. Several years ago I was happy to donate to your archive a large number of old issues going back to the first year of publication in 1913.  At times I have disagreed strongly with the editorial line of such former leftists as Paul Johnson and John Lloyd, but I have always felt that the NS would survive them. I no longer have that confidence. 

Since Jason Cowley became editor I have become increasingly dismayed by the direction in which he has chosen to take the New Statesman. His attitude was, in my view, clearly expressed in his interview last week with Jeremy Corbyn. Whatever one thinks of Corbyn’s bid for the Labour leadership, Cowley’s observation that until he entered the competition he would never have qualified for an interview in the NS says it all. Such arrogance and condescension is, I am afraid, typical of Cowley’s whole approach. I was astonished that last year he saw fit to devote pages of the NS to an unpleasant article by Steven Glover, that had already appeared in the Daily Mail,  attacking the courageous investigative journalist, Nick Davies, who has done so much to expose the criminal activities of the Murdoch empire. That John Pilger’s disappearance from the pages of the NS has been replaced by John Bew, the mediocre apologist for Henry Kissinger, is beyond a joke. If I want to read this sort of stuff I can always find it in The Daily Mail, where it rightly belongs. 

So, with some sadness, after having been a reader all my adult life (and for more than half the lifetime of the New Statesman itself) I shall no longer be a subscriber. I shall transfer my subscription to The Nation, published in the United States, which has, unlike The New Statesman, remained true to its radical roots.

With kind regards,

Michael Faulkner

FACT TO REMEMBER:
IF THE WESTERN MEDIA HAD ITS PRIORITIES IN ORDER AND ACTUALLY INFORMED, EDUCATED AND UPLIFTED THE MASSES INSTEAD OF SHILLING FOR A GLOBAL EMPIRE OF ENDLESS WARS, OUTRAGEOUS ECONOMIC INEQUALITY, AND DEEPENING DEVASTATION OF NATURE AND THE ANIMAL WORLD,  HORRORS LIKE THESE WOULD HAVE BEEN ELIMINATED MANY YEARS, PERHAPS DECADES AGO.  EVERY SINGLE DAY SOCIAL BACKWARDNESS COLLECTS ITS OWN INNUMERABLE VICTIMS. 

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