About The Progressive

The Progressive is a monthly leftwing magazine of investigative reporting, political commentary, cultural coverage, activism, interviews, poetry, and humor. It steadfastly stands against militarism, the concentration of power in corporate hands, and the disenfranchisement of the citizenry. It champions peace, social and economic justice, civil rights, civil liberties, human rights, a preserved environment, and a reinvigorated democracy. Its bedrock values are nonviolence and freedom of speech.

The Progressive is fortunate to have some of the best writers in the country grace its pages, including Wendell Berry, Edwidge Danticat, Barbara Ehrenreich, Jim Hightower, Eduardo Galeano, Luis Rodriguez, Terry Tempest Williams, and Dave Zirin. The magazine also provides comic relief with columns by humorists Kate Clinton and Will Durst.

Some of America’s leading poets—Adrienne Rich, Martín Espada, C.K. Williams, and Rita Dove—publish original work in The Progressive. The magazine also publishes a monthly interview with an activist, artist, writer, scholar, or political figure. Here are some of the people we’ve interviewed in the last decade: Howard Dean, Ani DiFranco, Steve Earle, Janeane Garofalo, Danny Glover, Amy Goodman, Mikhail Gorbachev, Seymour Hersh, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, Barack Obama, Michael Pollan, Robert Redford, Martin Sheen, Joseph Stiglitz, Helen Thomas, Alice Walker, and Elizabeth Warren.

The Progressive has a storied history. On January 9, 1909, Senator Robert M. La Follette Sr. of Wisconsin founded La Follette’s Weekly to be “a magazine of progress, social, intellectual, institutional.” The goal, he wrote, was “winning back for the people the complete power over government —national, state, and municipal—which has been lost to them.” He attacked private greed in the form of corporate monopolies that hoarded power. He championed the public interest, campaigning for social and economic justice. And he urged the United States not to entangle itself in foreign wars.

In 1929, La Follette’s Weekly changed its name to The Progressive, but the views of the magazine have remained remarkably consistent over the years.

In 2009, The Progressive celebrated its centennial by publishing its anthology, Democracy in Print: The Best of The Progressive magazine, 1909-2009 (Univ. of Wisconsin Press). And the April 2009 issue of The Progressive was a special commemorative one. Devoting a single page to each year of The Progressive, this issue served up kernels of wisdom from the archives. It’s a walk through 100 years of U.S. history and progressive history. And it includes quotations from Jane Addams, James Baldwin, Louis Brandeis, Theodore Dreiser, Sen. Russ Feingold, Molly Ivins, June Jordan, Helen Keller, Martin Luther King, Jr., Sinclair Lewis, Milton Mayer, Arundhati Roy, Bertrand Russell, Edward Said, Cindy Sheehan, Upton Sinclair, Gore Vidal, Paul Wellstone, and Howard Zinn

Meet the Editors

Matt Rothschild, Editor

Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine, which is one of the leading voices for peace and social justice in this country. Rothschild has appeared on Nightline, C-SPAN, The O'Reilly Factor, and NPR, and his newspaper commentaries have run in the Chicago Tribune, the L.A. Times, the Miami Herald, and a host of other newspapers. Rothschild is also the author of a book entitled You Have No Rights: Stories of America in Our Repressive Age (New Press, 2007). A graduate of Harvard University, Rothschild prior to coming to The Progressive worked as the editor of Multinational Monitor, a magazine founded by Ralph Nader. Rothschild came to The Progressive in 1983, and has worked for the magazine in many different capacities, first as associate editor, then managing editor, then publisher, and since 1994 as editor. Rothschild brought on distinguished social critics as columnists, including Barbara Ehrenreich, Eduardo Galeano, and Howard Zinn. He added monthly original poetry from the likes of Martín Espada and Adrienne Rich, and he added the humorists Kate Clinton and Will Durst. On the magazine's website, Rothschild contributes several times a week with his "This Just In" commentaries. And he keeps a running tally of civil liberties infringements in his "McCarthyism Watch." Rothschild writes monthly in The Progressive. He has interviewed Senator Russ Feingold, singer Ani DiFranco, Robert Redford, and the journalist Robert Fisk. He also hosts Progressive Radio, a syndicated weekly half-hour program, and he does radio commentaries Monday through Friday. Rothschild is also the co-founder and director of The Progressive Media Project, which since 1993 has been distributing opinion pieces to newspapers around the country in an effort to diversify and democratize the national debate. In 2007, Rothschild published his first book, You Have No Rights: Stories of America in an Age of Repression (The New Press). In 2009, he edited Democracy in Print: The Best of The Progressive, 1909-2009 (Univ. of Wisconsin Press)

Amitabh Pal, Managing Editor

Amitabh Pal came to the Progressive Media Project, an affiliate of The Progressive magazine, in 1997 as the associate editor. A few years later, he became the managing editor of The Progressive magazine. And for the last several years, he has served both in that capacity and as the co-editor of the Progressive Media Project. For The Progressive, Pal has written several articles on nonviolence, including a profile of Badshah Khan, the Frontier Gandhi. For The Progressive, he has interviewed Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, the Dalai Lama, and Joseph Stiglitz. He also is finishing up his first book about nonviolent activism in Muslim societies, forthcoming from Praeger

Ruth Conniff, Political Editor

Ruth Conniff covers national politics for The Progressive and is a voice of The Progressive on many TV and radio programs. Conniff was a regular on CNN’s Sunday Capital Gang and is now a regular on PBS’s To the Contrary. She also has appeared frequently on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal and on NPR and Pacifica. Conniff’s op-ed commentaries have appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. She also contributes regularly to Isthmus, Madison’s weekly newspaper. Conniff became The Progressive’s Associate Editor in 1991, and Managing Editor in January 1997. In recent years, she has interviewed William Greider, Rep. Marcy Kaptur, and Elizabeth Warren.

Elizabeth DiNovella, Culture Editor

Elizabeth DiNovella is Culture Editor of The Progressive magazine. She writes about activism, politics, music, books, and film. She also produces Progressive Radio, a thirty-minute public affairs program hosted by Matthew Rothschild.

In recent years, she has interviewed Amy Goodman, Linton Kwesi Johnson, and Elena Poniatoska for The Progressive.

DiNovella joined The Progressive staff in 2001. She became Associate Editor in 2002 and Culture Editor in 2003.

Before working for The Progressive, DiNovella was the News and Public Affairs Director at WORT-FM, the community radio station of Madison, Wisconsin. She now volunteers in the news department at WORT-FM.

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