Record of the nation during the andod of Victor Navasky from the current period when katrina vanden heuvel is the editor and leader of the nation. It is a great privilege, to have the records of a journal of opinion. The strength of our democracy believe rests on the survival of opinion, and the opportunity for the expression of those opinions. To be in a position, to protect forever this material is a great privilege. We now have the opportunity to learn some of the back story, magazine, so writing its 150th anniversary. I promised victor that i would start by asking how the heck he ended up coming to the nation. Victor thank you. Edgarscame from funeral. He played a role that is not publicly known. Was thedgar when he editorinchief and then publisher of dial press where he i see in the audience marvin, he would go to he wouldd say put his manuscript on the desk. Edgar was working on what became the book of daniel, a great novel. I knew edgar from those days. We collaborated on a number of projects, one of which we can talk about later. That thecame evident nation was up for sale, i spoke to hamilton, who lie at from the ramsey clark campaign. He was a fundraiser and everyone took his phone calls because one would jam fish be working for ramsey clark. He was a great fundraiser. When the story appeared, a great documentary filmmaker made this, he was fired from his new film. Called him up. He was fired three British Company and it was supposed to be a onehour film and by the time they got to the third hour the company said enough already. Called and said if i can raise the money will you continue making your movie. It did very well. When the nation was up for sale he ought to do for them hat they did for marcil opels. I grew up in a household that got the nation and the new republic. I was working on a book and i had to read through all of the magazines of the mccarthy years and i came to admire the nation more than any other for his coverage of those years. I said do you want to do that . And he met with the owner and he came back and said i will agree to do that on one condition. You agree to be the editor. Well, i left the New York Times to write this book. Let me think about it. I had a wife and two children at that point. He said suppose i pay you whatever the near times is paying you, suppose you have a total editorial control, suppose you tell me how much money i have to raise for the magazine to survive. And you dont have to start until you finish your book. If you meet all those conditions, how can i say no . In the end i had to do as much fun raising as hamm did and it took longer. To raise money i made one called to my friend, ed doctorow. Nations a fan of the and edgar was [indiscernible] he wrote a check for 10,000, Walking Around money so hamilton could raise money while he was spending edgars 10,000. That was important. In the middle of that situation the publisher didnt want to. Ive us an option to buy it it was for sale for 150,000. We needed 1 million to go into business because it was losing a certain amount of money every year. Ifold him, it it is useless you dont have an option because who knows what will happen. Edgar came to a meeting with ralph nader and a man named [indiscernible] who is a wonderful guy. Option,d us, to get the they spoke eloquently with edgar leading the way on why he ought to give the option and how, etc. , etc. They had a funeral this morning for the family. I blame edgar for the next 20 years of my life. He was responsible as anyone else for my getting there. I came to the nation when it finally, the funding was in place, and we got the opportunity to go there, i had not finished naming names. I spent too much time raising money. I was pleased to start at the , and it was 1978 the ideal job for me. I had been working at the New York Times as an editor. My inclination was to sit at the desk at times when my boss up behind me when i had an idea, to turn around, and felt the first iy i got to the nation turned around and there was my reflection in the window. Timothy naftali were unite timothy for your nice to yourself . I realized it was on my shoulders. Of ourthe great aspects Intern Program is sitting to my left. The rest is history. Timothy what was it like working for him . Katrina to pick up on what victor said, i grew up in a different family. Vital figure. A he cared deeply about political values. I came to the nation in college because i traveled to the soviet union in 1978 and i was always interested in why americans, those who had been disillusioned or found hope in repressediment were ,r subjected to marginalization to committee hearings, to the in this country predicted a course about politics in the press run by clark. R and, i did my papers on press, on ain the journalist known for clearing people. On how ordinary people suffered during the mccarthy. Period. I found the publication that never capitulated to the conventional pressures of the time. Where clark said go in turnout go be an intern at the nation. It was my journalistic boot camp. It was my political education in many ways. I did have great professors challenge conventional orthodoxy dervish andirling Christopher Hitchens who had just come on an exchange program. M. D you cal and i had theuch fortune to work with amy willens. I will never forget, she mar ched into victors office and said the lead editorial is going to be john lennon. We all thought victor thought of another linen. John lennon has been killed. Things, it was a Different Program than victor can speak to this. People have come to this. , nicholas clegg. Emotion has put into the american and other journalistic systems 800 extraordinary journalists, activists over the time. Work was to of my editor of thereat nation, Terry Mcwilliams, the only editor west of the hudson from california in 1952 and never went back. I spent half the day every weekday at Terry Mcwilliams apartment, never met him, got to know his widow, and learned about the Nation History through that. Timothy it is 1978. Jimmy carter is president. Nation what role is it playing in the american left . Victor it is hard to say. Aople would talk about stereotypical image when they talk about the nation. It was a place where you could have a debate. The debate would not be between the democrats and the republicans. It would be between the radicals and the liberals. The libertarians eventually joined the debate. Nation was one of the few places you could have the debate. Its influence on american politics or World Politics is hard to document. To me it takes place over time. You said you wanted to talk about the iran contra thing. The nation invited the Great British social historian ep thompson to write for us and we published his version of his British NuclearDisarmament Movement but also it may the social case for Nuclear Disarmament and explained all of the ramifications. I personally believe the iran partlydeal going on is the result of ep thompsons writings, and that is the result of the nation discussion that kerry,people like john and hillary grew up being exposed to the ideas in the nation whether they subscribe to them and not. Who came toeone the nation when victor was editor and i had the fortune to work with jonathan, a decade before president obama called for the abolition of Nuclear Weapons. Jonathan wrote about the case for abolition. It takes time. The role of the journal of opinion is to see those ideas. It may take a decade, 15 years, 20 years. One of the values is you stand for values and ideas which may seem heretical. I use the word carefully. A decade may seem more in the mainstream. Abolition of Nuclear Weapons is wasl but president obama influenced by the Nuclear Freeze movement which began with an editorial in the nation in 1980 reporting on the freeze movement, a year and a half later there were Million People in central park for one of the marches ininuclear the world. Victor the nation had its own contention in the march. Katrina we are people of values and principles, but there is the question of i feel it now because there is a movement movement. We are not activists. We are thinkers, journalists, writers. That is something in the same way the debate isnt just between republicans and democrats. The nation has a special time recovering how to cover movements in the way the Mainstream Press does not. To go inyou dont have Chronological Order but talk about the challenge of covering occupy. Let me step back and say in 2008 the nation decided to do an issue on the new inequality. We thought the inequality was going to lead to at best protests, at worst violence, and this came out you could tomorrow. T the nation wrote an editorial castigating the repeal of glasssteagall, which key people are calling for the reinstatement of. Three years later, occupy emerged. I felt with occupy that because and victor may speak to this. Because Terry Mcwilliams published 68 editorials opposing the vietnam war, published bernard fall calling for a 54. Tiated end to vietnam in he didnt capture the countercultural protest in the streets. I thought when occupy iraq did it was key to send a couple of young reporters down there to embed, at occupied. Nd report give a sense of the voices, the lee, politically in the beds and streets, and the confrontation with cops, which precedes what were seeing. T wasnt as an activist there was coverage and a debate over whether this was a movement. What kind of movement was it . It didnt have concrete demands and concrete leaders. We continued this debate. My husband and i interviewed Edward Snowden had a discussion with him where my husband who isnt here, stephen cullen, he said occupy what did it lead to . They zig and zag. They dont have outcomes you predict in the beginning. My favorite sentence for the launching of a magazine of all time is the first sentence on the first page of the first issue of the nation magazine, 1865, a sentence which ive committed to memory, and the cover hangs in our Conference Room to this day. It is as follows the week was singularly barren of exciting events. [laughter] sentencen i love that would teena brown have had the courage to publish that . Ntence the reason i love that sentence is what it really says is not singlyat the week was barren of exciting events, it says that we are not going to play the game of false sensationalism. We are not going to hype stories that do not deserve it. You can trust us. We are going to tell the truth. Were not going to do what the New York Times would do in on , theresd paragraph another opinion that the week was not that barren of exciting events. That sentence today was one half donation stood for. The other half is what katrina has been talking about with reference to occupy in part, that the nation inherited 5000 garrisonrs from oswald excuse me, from William Lloyd garrison magazine in favor of abolition, and his favorite sentence was, i will not excuse, i will not compromise, i will not retreat a single inch. You put those sentences together, the idealism and the willingness to fight all by yourself on behalf of the ideals that you believe to be right, and a journalism of trust, and youve got something that at its best, it seems to me, is what the nation helps incarnate. Journalists opinion writ large all attempt to do that, but i , which hasation been in business longer than any of them, for good reason, does it as well as it has been done. Mr. Naftali how did you strike the balance . Ask katrina that question, too, but ill tell you in my case, it probably was unbalanced, and it depended on which week. When you get a great investigative story where you can reveal something that no one , you go published on with it, and you devote your resources to it. On the other hand, when you have opinion journalists like , alex cockburn, and others, you give them space to have their say. They had shared values, but there was a great difference of opinion between our various ublemaking columnists and so, its a week by week balancing, and i have to say, now that katrina is running the show, you know, when people come to me and complain about something, i say, i have nothing to do with it. Its katrina running the magazine. On the other hand, when they praise the magazine, i take full credit for it. Ms. Heuvel i have one point behind my desk a famous line, cant we all get together . Fromed to get letters readers that you guys are all a circular firing squad squabbling. Theres a line between the debate. At one point, you had columnists writing 5000were denunciations 5000wordhers cap denunciations of each others cat. The old media order is disappearing and a new one is yet imaging. I say that because what is a magazine . The print remains our anchor, but you try to have pacing and different forms each week. You might have a 5000word investigative piece reporting on new forms of warfare, covert special ops before people even knew what that was, and out of , or yourged blackwater might have had a position of the iraq war, but in that opposition abolishinga case for Nuclear Weapons. Verynk the nation plays different roles. I think the important thing is when there is a consensus. I think one of the most important moments for me was in the runup to iraq, when the conventional wisdom was coercively brutal. We forget the liberal hawks, and there were very few who were opposing that more full throated late full throatedly. Is not a path to oppose government fulltime. Calledtion was unamerican, but again, as i say earlier, that opposition, which was considered heretical, 10 years later, everyone is saying iraq was a debacle. Part of that is that the nation for 150 years, if there is a consistent thread there are not fully consistent threads, but it is the belief that empire is toxic for democracy. In that belief, theres also the understanding that militarism is toxic and that you find. Lternatives to war were not a pacifist publication, but i think it was that animating principle that has animated editors through time. That was in our dna. Mr. Navasky the other part is that even when you have , one of thewriters things that the nation interns do is they fact check. Does not hide inconvenient facts, no matter how passionate the case it is making on whatever the subject is. It deals with them in a direct way, and it seems to me that is part of the journalistic nonopinion side even of opinion pieces. Mr. Naftali i was watching werenas face when you describing debates that occurred at the magazine. I wonder if we could talk about some of the people you have edited. Tell us a little bit about editing gore vidal skate gore editing goree but all posses editing gore vidals piece. Both of you had that opportunity. Me, avasky he was, to great writer and a lot of fun and a troublemaker. He agreed right away to join our board because he had a lot of inration for the nation years past. I had known him a little bit. In correspondence. I used to put out a satire magazine, and he was an admirer of it. So he agreed to join our board on the one hand. On the other hand, you could suggest assignments to him, but he also had his own things that he wanted to say. The first article he published was an article i forget what it was called, making thebasically argument that the jewish should besuit the supportive of gay rights, and he made it in a gore event all a Gore Vidalian way. He was a lot of fun to be with, but he was not someone who you somete or assigned to editor to say, we want you to put the beginning at the end or do end in the middle and things that editors do, often for purposes of clarification. The thing was that was one half because of his temperament, but it was one half because he was a superb writer and advocate for the things he believed in. He was terribly funny, and he , so youout words a lot stayed out of his way when you. Re editing him basically my experience was you said yes or no to what he wanted to do. You could say no and its not for us, but i like to say yes to gore vidal. Ms. Heuvel i was going to speak of someone else in the tradition of great writers and essayist contributing to the nation. Tony krishna, who are brought on to the editorial board. In 1994, he was so incensed by an Andrew Sullivan piece on the case for gay marriage because it was in a very patriarchal, capitalist, militaristic framework, and we talked about it, and he wanted to reply. I knew that, as victor has done brilliantly over the years, he wanted to put tony krishna together with not only a great editor thinker, and i put him together with andy comecon, who was really someone who came to the nation came to the nation with a sensibility and had not previously had. Piece tony finally produced called the socialism its an extraordinary piece about liberation and the project of liberation and also about the importance of utopia and the sight of utopian vision, even as it is grounded in today. Tony, in some ways, does not fully agree with that piece anymore, and thats fine. Many people in a different context are people who came to the nation of the left and turned to the right, but that is victor also brought Toni Morrison onto to the editorial board, so the tradition is one of having great essayists. Writer iky another will tell you a story about, what it was like to edit him, Christopher Hitchens, who was the supreme stylist. Christopher had his own differences, even before he left over what he decided was a political reason to leave. Because hishe left column was called minority report, and i encourage him to say even though he did not agree with much of what we were saying about the war in those days, it was a voice that it was worth hearing, it seemed to me. Anyway, christopher used to have on issuessagreements of abortion, feminism, this and that. To theher he came nation because i had written some i had read something she had written for the new statesman, and i invited him to write for us, and he sent us two or three pieces that we were pub