After 35 years as a tabloid magazine, Boston Review relaunched this fall as a full-color glossy. It also moved to a new home at MIT and adopted the tagline Ideas Matter to reflect its commitment to in-depth print journalism and poetry, for which it received a 2010 Utne Independent Press Award and was nominated for a National Magazine Award for public-interest reporting.
“We’re thrilled,” said co-editor Deborah Chasman. “We now look the part that we’ve played in national debate for so long. We put important ideas to the test.” In addition, the new format has doubled Boston Review’s presence on the newsstand, where it’s now placed near Harper’s and The Economist. “We’re very encouraged so far,” said Chasman. “We still believe there’s an audience for indepth, long form journalism.” Not that Boston Review is ignoring the potential impact of the Web. It’s investing in that, too, and plans to upgrade its Web site (www.bostonreview.net) later this year.
To celebrate the changes, the bimonthly inaugurated an Ideas Matter lecture series this fall in conjunction with MIT’s Political Science department. The talks run the gamut from a discussion of Iraq and Beyond with Nir Rosen, Andrew Bacevich, and Barry Posen to one on Can Technology Solve Poverty? with Kentaro Toyama, Nicholas Negroponte, and Archon Fung.
And Boston Review is continuing its book publishing imprint with MIT Press of short books on public policy like Stephen Schneider’s Preparing for Climate Change, which was published last month. Coming up in 2011 are two titles, including former New York governor Eliot Spitzer’s first book, a manifesto on Government’s Place in the Market (Apr. 30), which draws on his experience as an attorney general.
