The American Prospect

The magazine was founded in 1990 (and initially called The Liberal Prospect) by Robert Kuttner, Robert Reich, and Paul Starr as a response to the perceived ascendancy of conservatism in the 1980s. Kuttner and Starr currently serve as Co-Editors. David Dayen serves as Executive Editor. Ellen J. Meany serves as Publisher.[4]

The American Prospect runs a writing fellows program that offers young journalists the opportunity to spend two years at the magazine, contributing online and print content. Past fellows have included Matt Yglesias,[5] Ezra Klein,[5] Chris Mooney, Joshua Micah Marshall, Dana Goldstein, Nicholas Confessore, and Kate Sheppard. Staff writers and contributors include Gabriel Arana, Steve Erickson, Adele Stan, Paul Waldman, EJ Dionne, and Harold Meyerson.

In March 2010, The American Prospect entered into an affiliation with Demos, a public policy research and advocacy center based in New York City. The official affiliation ended in 2012. That year, the magazine nearly folded due to financial struggles, but it was able to raise enough money to stay afloat.[6] In 2014, the magazine re-purposed itself as a "quarterly journal of ideas." Kit Rachlis announced he was leaving the editorship of the magazine, senior writer Monica Potts and editor Bob Moser were laid off, while several other editorial staffers left the publication.[7] New staff were hired and the organization built back up. In its early years, the Prospect also undertook a cutting-edge project to connect progressive organizations through its Moving Ideas Network (www.movingideas.org), originally called the Electronic Policy Network, where staff wrote policy statements, advocacy actions, and reports from the late 1990s through 2006 when the project was "adopted" by Care2.[8] The network was absorbed into Care2's Frogloop and general operations.[9]

In 2010, The American Prospect was the recipient of Utne Reader magazine's Utne Independent Press Award for Political Coverage.[10]

Originally The American Prospect published quarterly, then bimonthly. In 2000, thanks to a grant from the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, it became biweekly.[11] Financial and logistical difficulties ensued, and the magazine moved to a 10-issue-per-year format in spring 2003 and a bimonthly format in summer 2012. 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. Facing financial issues, the magazine reduced its bi-monthly publication schedule to a quarterly publication schedule in 2014.[7]

Notable contributors to the magazine and blog have included Bruce Ackerman, Spencer Ackerman, Gabriel Arana. EJ Dionne, Michelle Goldberg, Harold Meyerson, Robert Kuttner and Matt Yglesias, as well as Brian Beutler, Jamelle Bouie, Jonathan Chait, Jonathan Cohn, Nicholas Confessore, Ann Friedman, Dana Goldstein, E.J. Graf, Joshua Green, Arlie Hochschild, Randall Kennedy, Ezra Klein, Alyssa Rosenberg, Garance Franke-Ruta, Joshua Micah Marshall, Karen Paget, Jedediah Purdy, Chris Mooney, Michael Massing, Alexander Sammon, Greg Sargent, Michael Tomasky, Ezra Klein, Kay Steiger, Scott Stossel, Murray Waas, and Paul Waldman. Executive editors have included Tomasky, Meyerson, Mark Schmitt, Kit Rachlis, and David Dayen.

• Official website
• The 60-second interview: Robert Kuttner, co-editor, The American Prospect
• Interview with Robert Kuttner, on his own interview with Steve Bannon