The American Prospect is a monthly American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 political magazine

Magazine

Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

 dedicated to American liberalism

Liberalism in the United States

Liberalism in the United States is a broad political philosophy centered on the unalienable rights of the individual. The fundamental liberal ideals of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion for all belief systems, and the separation of church and state, right to due process...

. Based in Washington, DC, The American Prospect is a journal "of liberal ideas, committed to a just society, an enriched democracy, and effective liberal politics" which focuses on United States politics

Politics

Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...

 and public policy

Public policy

Public policy as government action is generally the principled guide to action taken by the administrative or executive branches of the state with regard to a class of issues in a manner consistent with law and institutional customs. In general, the foundation is the pertinent national and...

. Politically, the magazine is in support of modern American liberalism, similar to The New Republic

The New Republic

The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...

and The Nation

The Nation

The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...

, which likewise target an intellectual audience.

Mission

According to the website of The American Prospect, "at the dawn of a new progressive era and a time of economic transformation for the United States and the world, the magazine's founding purpose was to demonstrate that progressive ideas could animate a majority politics; to restore to intellectual and political respectability the case for social investment; to energize civic democracy and give voice to the disenfranchised; and to counteract the growing influence of conservative media."

History

The magazine was founded in 1990 by Robert Kuttner

Robert Kuttner

Robert Kuttner is an American journalist and writer. Kuttner is the co-founder and current co-editor of The American Prospect, which was created in 1990 as "an authoritative magazine of liberal ideas," according to its mission statement...

, Robert Reich

Robert Reich

Robert Bernard Reich is an American political economist, professor, author, and political commentator. He served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997....

, and Paul Starr

Paul Starr

Paul Starr is a Pulitzer Prize-winning professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University. He is also the co-editor and co-founder of The American Prospect, a notable liberal magazine which was created in 1990...

 as a response to the perceived intellectual ascendancy of conservatism

Conservatism

Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...

 in the 1980s. It currently enjoys a monthly readership of 100,000 and an online readership of nearly 1 million.

The American Prospect has run a writing fellows program that offers young journalists the opportunity to spend two years at the magazine, blogging as well as contributing to the print magazine. The current fellows are Patrick Caldwell and Jamelle Bouie; past fellows have included Adam Serwer, Tim Fernholz, Matt Yglesias

Matt Yglesias

Matthew Yglesias is an American political blogger and a prominent voice in the American liberal blogosphere.-Life:Matthew Yglesias's father Rafael Yglesias is a screenwriter and novelist and the son of novelists Jose Yglesias, of Cuban and Spanish descent, and Helen Bassine Yglesias, daughter of...

, Ezra Klein

Ezra Klein

Ezra Klein is a liberal American blogger and columnist for The Washington Post, columnist for Bloomberg, a columnist for Newsweek, and a contributor to MSNBC...

, Chris Mooney

Chris Mooney

Christopher Cole Mooney is a U.S. journalist and academic who focuses on science in politics.-Biography:Mooney was born in Mesa, Arizona, and grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana...

, Joshua Marshall, Dana Goldstein

Dana Goldstein

Dana Goldstein is a journalist, a Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation, and a Puffin Fellow at The Nation Institute. She is a former associate editor at The Daily Beast and in 2010 won the Spencer Fellowship in education journalism at Columbia University...

, and Kate Sheppard

Kate Sheppard

Katherine Wilson Sheppard Some sources, eg give a birth year of 1847; others eg give a birth year of 1848. was the most prominent member of New Zealand's women's suffrage movement, and is the country's most famous suffragette...

.

In March 2010, The American Prospect entered into an affiliation with the Demos

Demos (U.S. think tank)

Demos is a United States-based research and policy center that was founded in 2000. Based on its widely cited work in the media and growing impact on national and state policy, Demos continues to influence North American debate about election reform and economic security, with a particular emphasis...

, a public policy research and advocacy center based in New York City. Every issue of The American Prospect includes a detailed, single-issue feature by Demos.

In 2010, The American Prospect was the recipient of Utne Reader

Utne Reader

Utne Reader is an American bimonthly magazine. The magazine collects and reprints articles on politics, culture, and the environment from generally alternative media sources, including journals, newsletters, weeklies, zines, music and DVDs...

magazine's Utne Independent Press Award for Political Coverage.

Kit Rachlis

Kit Rachlis

Kit Rachlis is an American journalist and editor who has held top posts at The Village Voice, LA Weekly, Los Angeles Times, and Los Angeles magazine. In April 2011, he became editor of The American Prospect magazine, a leading liberal political monthly based in Washington, D.C...

 has served since 2011 as the magazine's executive editor. Kuttner and Starr share the title of co-editor.

Format

Originally The American Prospect published quarterly, then bimonthly. In 2000, thanks to a grant from the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy

Schumann Center for Media and Democracy

The Schumann Center for Media and Democracy was established in 1961, by Florence Ford and John J.Schumann Jr. The foundation states that its purpose is to renew the democratic process through cooperative acts of citizenship, especially as they apply to governance and the environment...

, it became biweekly. Financial and logistical difficulties ensued, and the magazine moved to its present monthly format in spring 2003. The online version of the magazine includes an active blog called TAPPED (derived from TAP, the acronym of The American Prospect), as well as a blog by Adam Serwer.

Contributors

Notable recent contributors to the magazine and blog have included Harold Meyerson

Harold Meyerson

Harold Meyerson is an American journalist and opinion columnist. In 2009 The Atlantic Monthly named him one of "the most influential commentators in the nation" as part of their list "The Atlantic 50."...

, Robert Kuttner and Matt Yglesias. Past contributors include Jonathan Chait

Jonathan Chait

Jonathan Chait is a writer for New York magazine. He was previously a senior editor at The New Republic and a former assistant editor of The American Prospect. He also writes a periodic column in the Los Angeles Times.- Personal life :...

, Jonathan Cohn

Jonathan Cohn

Jonathan Cohn is an American author and journalist who writes mainly on United States public policy and political issues. Formerly the executive editor of The American Prospect, Cohn is currently a senior editor at The New Republic magazine and a senior fellow at Demos.-Works:Cohn's writings have...

, Joshua Green

Joshua Green

Joshua Green is an American journalist who writes primarily on United States politics. He is currently senior national correspondent at Bloomberg Businessweek and a weekly columnist for the Boston Globe.-Education:...

, Joshua Micah Marshall, Jedediah Purdy

Jedediah Purdy

Jedediah S. Purdy is a professor of law at Duke University and the author of two widely-discussed books: For Common Things: Irony, Trust, and Commitment in America Today and Being America: Liberty, Commerce and Violence in an American World...

, Chris Mooney, Matthew Yglesias, Michael Massing

Michael Massing

Michael Massing is a contributing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review. Michael Massing received his Bachelor of Arts from Harvard and an MS from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He often writes for the New York Review of Books concerning the media and foreign affairs...

, Joe Conason

Joe Conason

Joe Conason is an American journalist, author and political commentator. He writes a column for the weekly New York Observer newspaper, for Salon.com and has written a number of books, including Big Lies , which addresses what he says are myths spread about liberals by conservatives.-Life and...

, Michael Tomasky

Michael Tomasky

Michael Tomasky is a liberal American columnist, journalist and author. He is the editor in chief of Democracy, a special correspondent for Newsweek / The Daily Beast, a contributing editor for The American Prospect, and a contributor to The New York Review of Books.-Biography:Tomasky was born...

, Ezra Klein, and Scott Stossel

Scott Stossel

Scott Stossel is an American journalist and editor. He is deputy editor of The Atlantic magazine, and previously served as executive editor of The American Prospect magazine...

. Recent executive editors have included (from oldest to latest) Michael Tomasky, Harold Meyerson, and Mark Schmitt

Mark Schmitt

Mark Schmitt is an American political scientist and author, and executive editor of The American Prospect, who focuses upon tax and budget policies and the history and role of ideas in politics. He primarily writes, amongst other numerous articles for popular newspapers, a column called 'The Out...

.