Nearly three years ago I began to reevaluate what I was doing at my relatively successful blog, The Way of Improvement Leads Home. There was money to be made at Substack, and I considered signing-up, but something didn’t seem right about this ever-growing site for writers. I wanted to bring my daily blogging into some kind of larger conversation. Substack had a comments section, but I wanted a community that went beyond “followers” reacting to my posts. At the very least, I wanted to write at a space where other voices, not just my own, could be heard.
It was time to build something.
So I got together with two friends and longtime collaborators and we started Current. The public intellectual Eric Miller, the author of, among other things, an award-winning biography of the late cultural critic Christopher Lasch, agreed to serve as editor. We sealed the deal on a cool September evening while sitting on a bench outside a Microtel Inn in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. That was followed the next morning by a breakfast at a local Beaver Falls eatery. Within hours our friend Jay Green, a historian at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, was on board as the managing editor. Since then we have spent countless hours brainstorming and dreaming, meeting at conferences, Airbnbs, and on Zoom. We were united in the belief that an online journal like Current might do some good work in the world. Soon we had an editorial staff, a board of contributing editors, and a web manager. We were thrilled when Nadya Williams agreed to come on as book review editor and curator of a new blog at the site, “The Arena.”
I know there are a lot of writers asking for your money right now. But Current is not just another Substack. We are doing something different by bringing together a community of writers and thinkers. Readers of Current get a steady diet of diverse and talented writers reflecting on a host of political, religious, social, and culture issues. We aim to educate, entertain, inform, and contribute to a flourishing democracy. Read our mission statement here.
As we continue to fine tune Current and think together about the best way to move this journal forward, we could really use your help.
For the record, we at Current HATE the paywall. We wish we could deliver all of our content for free. Maybe someday that will be possible. But at this point in our journey the paywall is the only way we can keep this journal of commentary and opinion afloat. We need to pay our maintenance costs, our business staff, and, of course, our writers.
If you dislike the Current paywall as much as we do, please consider helping us get rid of it by becoming a Current MEMBER. For as little as $5.00 a month, members get access to all of our Daily Features and posts at The Arena and The Way of Improvement Leads Home. Members get full access to the comments section on everything we publish. AND NO MORE PAYWALL.
Thanks for supporting our work at Current. If you are interested in supporting us, click the read MEMBERSHIP button in the top-right corner of this site to learn more!
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.