Throughout the Bush years, the American Conservative was one of the few voices on the right that consistently stood up to the war-mongering neocon rule. Founded by Pat Buchanan, the magazine is consistently thought provoking (sometimes maddening), and garnered a nomination for best political coverage in the 2009 Utne Independent Press Awards.

Last month, the magazine nearly folded. Writing for Campus Progress, Daniel Strauss profiled the American Conservative and its efforts to stay independent from the right and the left. The magazine now operates as a nonprofit, and has recently published articles by both left wing blogger Matthew Yglesias and right-wing blogger Steve Sailer. I may not always agree with the magazine, but it’s good to know they’ll be around for a while.

Sources: The American Conservative, Campus Progress 

POZ, an indispensable magazine of “life, health, & HIV,” turns 15 this year—and to mark its anniversary, the publication is donating all advertising revenue from its forthcoming May issue to the Denver Principles Project, a new initiative from the National Association of People with AIDS (NAPWA) that seeks to dramatically increase the group’s membership and, as it follows, political and social clout.

In its March issue, POZ asks people to (re)commit to the cause:

The last eight years have seen a dramatic reversal of what our movement accomplished in the early years:

• Science-based HIV prevention programs have been gutted in favor of abstinence-only or abstinence-until-marriage programs. The result? Hundreds of thousands of new HIV infections, mostly among young people of color.
• Hysteria-driven prosecution of people with HIV for failing to disclose their status has helped create an image of so-called “AIDS Monsters” in the media and further fueled the criminalization—and stigmatization—of people with HIV. The result? We are increasingly marginalized and portrayed as vectors of disease who must be controlled and regulated rather than as what we are: human beings struggling with a life-threatening disease who deserve compassion, human rights and adequate, affordable health care.
• While the United States has technically lifted the specific ban on HIV-positive people from entering the country, HIV remains on the list of contagious diseases that can be used to prohibit people with HIV from immigrating to or visiting America. The result? The nation that represents itself as a beacon of freedom is, instead, a leader in discrimination, setting a shameful example of intolerance and ignorance.

Now, it is time for all people who want to end the AIDS epidemic to recommit to the spirit of The Denver Principles—thus ensuring that the voices of people with HIV are heard.

In addition to donating May’s ad revenue, POZ also will republish the original Denver Principles manifesto, which, drafted in 1983, articulated the foundation of the self-empowerment movement for people with HIV/AIDS. To get involved in the Denver Principles Project, visit NAPWA online.

More to read/love: POZ is an Utne Independent Press Award winner for health/wellness coverage. Its editor in chief Regan Hofmann recently guest blogged for our daily best-of-the-web extravaganza, Alt Wire.

Source: POZ

Two and a half years after he co-founded Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, which won last year’s Utne Independent Press Award for best new publication, Kenneth Baer nabbed a job in the new administration. He’s now heading up communications and strategic planning at the Office of Management and Budget, the office President Obama has charged with boosting government transparency.

Baer is leaving Democracy with a supremely talented staff, including Andrei Cherny, the co–founding editor, and E.J. Dionne, Jr., who was named chair of the journal’s editorial committee in December. The new issue takes stock of Obama’s America, with dispatches from Orlando Patterson (on equality), Geoffrey Stone (on liberty), Jedediah Purdy (on community), and others.

We’ve all received them as gifts: prettily packaged cookbooks with titles proclaiming the excellence of the food you’d be able to devour if only your pantry could store all of the items on each recipe's page-long ingredient list. Finally, someone’s calling them what they are—useless tabletop decor. Writing for British current affairs weekly the New Statesman, Nicholas Clee suggests that independent publishers (specifically the UK houses Grub Street and Prospect Books) are more apt to deliver food writing and recipes "that [are] intended to be of more than ephemeral interest."

Clee's food column sits with the magazine's hefty arts and culture section, a phenomenal collection of criticism and discussion that earned the newsweekly a 2007 Utne Independent Press Awards nomination for arts coverage. Well into 2008, the New Statesman remains a breath of fresh air on both the cultural and political fronts. The June 23 issue includes commentary on master sitar-player Salil Tripathi's farewell concert, and a review of the 1988 documentary Afghantsi, lamenting the lost art of television documentaries.

In the same issue is a discussion of Barack Obama’s "first presidency," his editorship at the Harvard Law Review back in 1990. The writer digs through some back issues of the journal and speculates that perhaps his legal career never took off because “Obama, despite being a lawyer, is a really good person.”

In the latest episode of the UtneCast, editor in chief David Schimke and librarian Danielle Maestretti sit down with Utne.com assistant editor Bennett Gordon to talk about the 2007 Utne Independent Press Awards. After 19 years, the awards have changed quite a bit, with two new categories (In-Depth/Investigative and Health/Wellness) added this year. Schimke and Maestretti talk about the new categories and how the staff picked the best magazines of the year. 

For more on the awards, visit www.utne.com/uipa2007, and stay tuned for Part 2 of our UtneCast on the winners. 

 UtneCast: UIPA 2007 : Play in Popup