The Carnegie Reporter is five years old. For a journalist like myself, and a poet—editor Eleanor Lerman’s higher calling—producing a magazine of ideas is clearly a labor of love. We began the magazine with one goal in mind—to create an appealing space where ideas important to the Corporation could be explored and examined. We wanted it to be well written, provocative and probing.

Vartan Gregorian’s vision for the magazine was simple—to become the expression of Andrew Carnegie’s famous mandate to his foundation: to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge. We sought to be a hub for the best ideas, no matter what their origin and reflect the work, strategies, successes, priorities and plans of many foundations.

It’s a bit ironic that our cover story at this five-year marker focuses on journalism and the threat it faces as technology and reading habits change the way Americans consume the news. Journalism is a business, but in America it is so much more: it is the front line of democracy, where the debate in our society about values, budgets, ideas, policies, peace and war is engaged. Journalism is at a pivotal juncture as the forces of change reshape the business; the quality of American discourse and debate awaits the shakedown. The Corporation is focusing on how tomorrow’s journalists will be educated for a more complicated society, and will weigh in on that question later this year.

As mainstream news collapses information into bite-sized headlines available on cell phones and in Internet dispatches, others wanting more appear to be turning to niche magazines like the Carnegie Reporter, the Carnegie Endowment for Peace’s FP, to Boston Review and others to read deeper into ideas beyond the headlines. For all of us, the longer-style stories live beyond these printed pages—on the Internet—thus becoming timeless, and searchable, no longer just simple liners for birdcages! We believe the word remains the dominant force in this information rich, information overloaded society and join with other journals, periodicals and magazines that have emerged in this more superficial journalistic environment to serve a public yearning for understanding, not just news.

Journalism is a profession that intrigued Andrew Carnegie, but his attempts at publishing a
newspaper in Scotland failed. Journalism is a calling and profession that has shaped my life and it seemed right to begin a magazine in his name five years ago. With it we could revive his publishing and progressive dreams. He believed passionately knowledge would bring understanding, and we believe words are the route to both.

Susan Robinson King
Vice President, Public Affairs