Started by Abolitionists in 1865, The Nation Magazine Marks 150 Years of Publishing Rebel Voices

The Nation magazine, the oldest news magazine in the United States, is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year. The first issue was published on July 6, 1865 — just weeks after the end of the Civil War and three months after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Over the years, The Nation has published many of the nation’s leading dissidents, academics and activists. We broadcast an excerpt from the new documentary, "Hot Type: 150 Years of The Nation," and speak with the magazine’s editor and publisher, Katrina vanden Heuvel. The Nation is celebrating its anniversary with a quintuple-length, blockbuster edition.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The Nation magazine is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year. It is the country’s oldest news magazine. The first issue was published on July 6, 1865, just weeks after the end of the Civil War and three months after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Over the years, it has published many of the nation’s leading dissidents, academics and activists. This is an excerpt from the new documentary, Hot Type: 150 Years of The Nation.

ERIC ALTERMAN: Everybody has kind of written for the The Nation. Pat Buchanan wrote for The Nation. Hunter Thompson wrote for The Nation .

UNIDENTIFIED: Theodore Dreiser, H. L. Mencken, John Dos Passos, James Agee, Sinclair Lewis.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: Tony Kushner, Toni Morrison, Emma Goldman, Henry James, W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Willa Cather, Kurt Vonnegut, E. L. Doctorow, Gore Vidal.

VICTOR SAUL NAVASKY: It was the first to publish James Baldwin.

AMY GOODMAN: [Hot] Type was produced by Barbara Kopple. In a minute, we’ll be joined by The Nation's editor and publisher, Katrina vanden Heuvel, live in studio, but first, this is another clip from Hot Type: 150 Years of The Nation in which Katrina talks about the magazine's early history with contributing writer D. D. Guttenplan. The piece ends with the reading of a story that appeared in The Nation in 1932.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: This is the essay I was telling you about. It’s about The Nation future. It’s 1955, but it says, "The Nation must change, as it has changed in the past. Within the last 40 years," and think about how this could be written today. "Within the last 40 years, one-third of our daily newspapers and more than 3,000 weeklies have ceased publication."