Backgrounder: Katrina vanden Heuvel

By Mallory Potosky

Katrina vanden Heuvel

Photo courtesy of Michael Lorenzini/The Nation.
© Michael Lorenzini/The Nation.


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Lecture: Katrina vanden Heuvel

In 1980, during her junior year at Princeton University, Katrina vanden Heuvel began work as an intern at The Nation magazine. Nine years later, she was promoted to editor-at-large, and, in March 2005, she became editor-in-chief and publisher of the 141-year-old weekly magazine, well-known for its liberal/left politics.

Under vanden Heuvel’s guidance, the magazine’s circulation has risen more than 50 percent, now reaching 184,000 readers. In an interview with Princeton Alumni Weekly in 2004, vanden Heuvel, 46, credited the rise in readership partly to “the politics of the Bush administration,” and partly to a backlash against the mainstream media, which she contends is reluctant to ask tough questions. Questions that include why the White House is pouring funds into the Iraq war and ignoring the “urgent [need] to upgrade levees and pumping stations in Louisiana,” according to a Nation editorial written by vanden Heuvel in 2005,

“If much of the media had been doing its job and not serving as stenographers to power, we might have been able to avert a war in Iraq,” vanden Heuvel told a Weekly reporter. “[The Nation is] one of the few remaining independent publications, which I think gives us leeway to stand outside and raise larger questions.”

Vanden Heuvel recognizes that The Nation’s reach is relatively limited. To ensure these questions get asked, she appears frequently on TV news talk shows such as Larry King Live, Hardball with Chris Matthews, and even the Fox show The O’Reilly Factor—proof positive that the indefatigable vanden Heuvel can turn “an adjunct of the GOP,” as she called it in a Buzzflash.com interview, into a bully pulpit for The Nation’s message.

“Eighty percent of Americans get their news from TV,” she told Buzzflash. “I get on TV because I think you’re reaching millions of people you’re not going to reach through The Nation.”

In 2003, vanden Heuvel received the Maggie Award from Planned Parenthood for her article, “Right-to-Lifers Hit Russia,” about the anti-abortion movement in Russia. New York University’s Centre for War, Peace and the News Media awarded her the Olive Branch Award in 1988 for her article, “Gorbachev’s Soviet Union,” printed in a special issue of The Nation in June 1987. In addition, she has edited four books, most recently Taking Back America-And Taking Down The Radical Right (NationBooks, 2004), a collection of political essays by noted progressive commentators offering alternatives to Bush administration policies.

“I believe that patriotism is fighting for the values of your country that you believe make it better, stronger, fairer, and more just,” vanden Heuvel told Weekly. “The best defense of patriotism is often a dissenting voice, an unyielding defense of those values and liberties that have made the country strong.”

Mallory Potosky is a senior majoring in journalism at NYU, where she is focusing on print media. After graduation, she hopes to write for an entertainment- or movie-related publication.

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