The financial crisis did not bring bipartisanship to Congress, but a difficult media environment may have brought that spirit to two political standard-bearers.
In need of cash and with extra space on its hands, the liberal magazine The American Prospect decided to sublet part of its Washington offices. The American Conservative, tired of working from Arlington, Va., was looking for a new location. When the publishers Jay Harris of The Prospect and Wick Allison of The Conservative were getting lunch in August, they put two and two together.
A six-month lease was soon signed. The self-described bastion of “traditional conservatism” moved in with the self-described “liberal, progressive, lefty” on Dec. 27.
“We have a water fountain labeled conservatives only,” joked Mr. Harris, who cleared the idea with his staff. “We turned to the staff and said, ‘Would you be comfortable?’ To a person, the folks who responded said, ‘Our values are pretty different, but we have a lot of respect for what The American Conservative does journalistically.’ ”
What they lack in ideological viewpoint, the two nonprofit monthlies make up for in an independent, establishment-bucking mind-set. Each has faced the sort of downsizing that has become all too common in the print world.
The American Conservative, founded in 2002 by Pat Buchanan, ran biweekly before it went out of print for six weeks in 2009 and returned as a monthly magazine. It has a circulation of 8,000. The American Prospect, in print since 1990, announced to its staff in April that if the magazine could not find $500,000 in financing, it would close altogether by the end of May. With help from good publicity from Prospect alumni and a few large donors — and by shrinking its staff by four — the bimonthly magazine has endured. The publication has combined paid print and digital circulation of nearly 45,000. The Conservative’s seven staff members will share the white-walled, blue-carpeted 12th floor of 1710 Rhode Island Avenue with The Prospect’s fund-raising and advertising departments. They must share a conference room, a potential source of conflict, though Mr. Harris says it could be a site for events the magazines co-host.
Daniel McCarthy, The Conservative’s associate editor, said the new locale suits its independent outlook.
“Where we had been,” Mr. McCarthy said of the office in Arlington, “was sort of a hotbed of lobbyists and defense contractors. People who represent a different side of Washington.”
Maisie Allison, a Web editor at The Conservative, said the shared space would help both magazines.
“Since we do not directly compete, we can only benefit from sharing ideas, formally and informally,” she said. “They have a bunch of magazine covers on the wall; we’re going to get some of ours up soon.”
Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/american-prospect-and-the-american-conservative-to-share-office-space/?partner=rss&emc=rss