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Current: a “little magazine” for the digital age

John Fea   |  January 6, 2023

I am often asked to describe Current.

It is not a blog, although The Way of Improvement Leads Home blog (and a future blog–stay tuned) is part of it.

It is not a Substack, although you can subscribe to it newsletter form.

We like to think of Current as a “little magazine” for the digital age.

What is a “little magazine?” The late cultural critic Christopher Lasch, a regular contributor to such magazines, defines it:

The so-called little magazine, which addresses neither the mass market nor an audience of academic specialists, occupies a special position in the structure of American publishing.  Instead of trying to please everybody, like the mass magazines, it speaks in its own voice.  Although it addresses a select group of readers, as academic and scholarly journals do, these readers share neither a field of academic expertise nor a common interest in some particular field of research but something more elusive—a sensibility, an allegiance to certain intellectual traditions, in some cases merely a common set of prejudices—which a good editor intuitively understands and cultivates.

Source: “Introduction: Ten Years of Salmagundi,” Salmagundi 31-32 (Fall 1975-Winter 1976): 3-9.

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Filed Under: Way of Improvement Tagged With: Christopher Lasch, CURRENT, little magazines