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Current: a “little magazine” for the digital age

John Fea   |  January 6, 2023 Leave a Comment

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.

Little magazines rely on reader support. Learn how to support our work by clicking the red button in the top right corner of this page. Thanks so much for considering this.

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

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