Defining what we do and why we do it

Years ago, I was asked by management consultants to describe what a Publisher did. Perhaps I should have thought about the question harder but in those days it was part of our job to be contemptuous of people with laptops. Parking my Irish antipathy towards process, experience has taught me that the plodders and plotters often end up winning. Some form of structured thinking is invariably better than none, especially when the goal is to create the world's leading tool for thought leaders.

So Prospect Magazine is going to get very serious for a minute, and I'm asking everyone with an interest in trying to make a thing of intellectual beauty even more beautiful to help. In my view, the best people to help with this task are aspirant or actual thought leaders themselves - which means you. So I would appreciate your help and input.

Start by going to www.prospect-magazine.co.uk, if you haven't been there already. Take a look at what we're trying to do. Then tell me what you think of it, (which includes whether it's apparent that we're doing anything tangible at all) or suggest what we should be doing to make it better. I'll start a formal survey on the website itelf later, but let's try and start with an intelligent conversation and see if it goes anywhere sensible . . .

Someone's got to start, so at the risk of alienating those who believe that 'mission statements' are the stuff of David Brent, or New Labour (which includes David Cameron), here is a stab at a description of why we're publishing Prospect Magazine:

“To dig below the surface of everyday understanding, expose the roots of inspired thinking and stimulate intelligent debate for those who aspire to form opinions as opposed to accepting received dogma.”

Is this a realistic ambition? Does Prospect or any other publication get close to doing this? Do you think people want to think for themselves or do they prefer their thinking to be facilitated?

Let's start with these topics and move on when we're bored. I promise that your views will form a part of the exercise we're undertaking to make Prospect Magazine the world's most deadly weapon against institutionalised ignorance.

Please feel free to keep your identity secret but indicate whether you are a Prospect subscriber, writer, admirer or hater. All views are valid, but no xxxxx swearing or senseless cruelty, please. And no management consultants in any shape or form.

John

Comments

[Robert Hanrott]

I am an Englishman living in the United States, but spending extensive time in the UK. Prospect is a blessing to those of us in a state of despair about the bias and the level of political comment in the US media (let's not even think about the British press!).

- the debates are excellent, as are the short pieces on Washington (I learn things that never show up in the Washington Post), France and the EU. Can you expand the scope of these?

- Forget the fiction. It belongs elsewhere.

- Watching from the outside I am distressed at the extent of "little-Englandism" in the UK. Knowledge even about the US is dismal.
As others on the blog have said, let us have more about the big, wider world in this age of globalisation: especially the Moslem world, India, China and, yes, the United States.

- More contributions from readers. I have always wondered why someone does not devote a whole publication to the views of the public. Your readers are, I dare say, educated and opinionated, and might well consider their views to be as good as those of your contributors!

[Rebecca Roberts]

A small point on the mission statement - I think "expose the roots of inspired thinking" doesn't quite work as "expose" has negative connotations and examining the "roots of inspired thinking" is a positive thing. Something like "illuminate" or "elucidate" might make more sense. "Expose" would be better used with "the lazy and superficial reasoning behind debates on contemporary issues"...

[James Leung]

I came across Prospect online via a friend who I believe used to check out the website regularly. I do not believe that Prospect is sold in Mauritius and given its small population of 1.2m, I don't think it would be economically viable here.
Personally, I enjoyed the short stories in May 2006 (RE: An anxious man). On more serious matters, I came across the article by Linda Hirshman about stay-at-home moms in the Washington Post back in June 2007 when I was in DC for business and was reading the weekend Washington Post. And the story about Islam and how it pervaded those practising it is revealing too.
At the end of the day, many articles that I read from Prospect are thought-provoking. Keep up the excellent job.

[Alex Trew]

I am a subscriber. So I will focus on being critical here.

There is a distasteful amount of back-slapping that seems to go on in Prospect's self-analysis. Yes, be confident in its intelligence. But don't ram it down our throats. It will attract a pretentious sort of audience (one that grants itself equal self-regard), but in terms of taking the sorts of intelligent journalism to an audience that really needs it, I think Prospect fails to some degree.

One more thing that bugs, and it's related to the above: Prospect's self-image means that it sometimes feels the need to get 'big name' people to write and engage in debate. Why not be confident enough to *always* seek the actual experts in their fields. Hutton vs. Desai is a case in point: The first is flogging a dodgy book (which I hope Prospect will also be thoroughly reviewing); the second is a slightly batty peer. Both call themselves economists; neither would stand up to proper critique. The debate was amusing, but not for the reasons you intended.

[Akin Ajayi]

Ex subscriber

I must confess that I am rather suspicious of 'mission statements': good journalism is often intuitive, instinctive, and is as much about bringing issues of importance to the reading public rather than responding to the dictates of a focus group or target audience. Mission statements, other than the most general of statements, tend to impose artificial restricitions upon good journalism.

Talking of good journalism, I allowed my Prospect subscription to lapse not because I was dissatisfied with the magazine per se, but because articles, commentary and debate seemed (to me, at least) to veer towards the dry and academic. Important issues were tackled and dissected, but from a remote perspective. I like my writing vibrant, lively, entertaining as well as instructive and informative.

Or maybe I'm alone in thinking this.

(ps - I still buy the occasional issue, if there is a topic or writer I am particularly interested in; it is just that Prospect is no longer the centre of of reading agenda.)

[Sophie Masson]

What I like about Prospect is that there is no one 'line'--politically, ideologically-culturally-- followed in the magazine. It is thus unpredictable, and often surprising, which in my book means much more interesting. It's also a much more fertile and lively conversation than most other magazines and journals are, and certainly much more than newspapers, with their ossified niche markets. The quality of the writing is very good, too. I hope all that continues well into the future, mission statement or no mission statement!

[Haddock]

Prospect is indeed an intelligent magazine. Personally I have enjoyed the discussions on nationalism, identity and religion.

I don't read all the articles as I live abroad and foreign magazines are expensive in Denmark. Therefore I only read the free articles on your homepage, but I still find your "digging" and your opposition to established dogmas very refreshing.

Your mission is very precise - continue your work in the footsteps of the enlightenment.

[Jeremy Baer]

As an Englishman resident in the Philippines, I read Prospect to keep in touch with the Western world. In this day of soundbites and YouTube, I think a bit of elitism is a good thing, even if I have trouble with the daily relevance of mission statements. If the fiction reviews are crowding out loftier articles, add more pages!

[Arnab Dutt]

Don't get to introspective about the magazine or imprisoned by the mission statement.I really enjoy the quality of the open intellectual debate in Prospect, I have been a subcriber for a couple of years and feel the magazine has improved over this time. I applaud Prospects' championing of short fiction which is much needed, though I am not sure if Prospect magazine is the place to fight this battle as opposed to Granta etc..

[Oisin Commane]

I’ve been a reader or a subscriber since the beginning although I must confess these days I find myself reading less and less of the magazine. This is partly because I have less free time but also because like many I have become highly apathetic towards the Politics of Britain in 2007. I’ll keep subscribing because it’s easy. I must say I didn’t appreciate it when the magazine asked for more money from me to access previous articles I’d already paid for - an online subscription. To ask subscribers to pay extra for content they’ve already paid for is highly cheeky. I just stopped using the website a couple of years back so for me Prospect is purely an old fashioned magazine. You don’t interact with it as you do with other media brands
First and foremost I like Prospect for the essays. It’s hard to find intelligently written long pieces these days. There’s a good variety too – Prospect is at its best when it gets you to think hard about something you knew little about, when it answers a thirst for knowledge you didn’t know you had. The fiction leaves me cold – I don’t see its place in a non-fiction publication myself but I have to admit it’s variety (just something I don’t want). The diary style single page columnists on the US, France and the EU are great. In fact all of the single pages are good - I like these because they are insights you don’t usually find elsewhere and certainly not collected together in one publication. So to continue to provide a variety of intelligent opinions on a plethora of topics should be part of your mission statement.
You asked “Do you think people want to think for themselves or do they prefer their thinking to be facilitated?” If you read the English papers, even the broadsheets, you’d think the later but I prefer the former. To get people to think is as good a mission as any. We don’t do enough of it.

[John Gelles]

No doubt the "issues" we face and Prospect (UK) has illuminated (or even answered) are numerous: they deserve their long list and your considered treatment. Thanks for your years of serving readers (and their neighbors -- by effect). But there is one issue above all -- and how often you have it on a front burner I cannot say: it to define and implement "Keynes without Debt", as presented by Ron Morrison in PAER # 39. It suggests "how to pay for" attention to all the other issues.

I am a US on-line reader.

[Costa]

I am a Colombian who enjoys some of your articles that contribute to widen my scope about cultural differences, about Islam, about how Britons look at themselves. Prospect shows us such a huge landscape that I relish every single issue as one of my favourite desserts

[Lucas]

Happy to see Prospect going blogging.

As a regular reader waiting for Prospect at the newsstand, I was waiting for a chance to say something about it. The site looks ok, even tidier than previously. Maybe it could be the place to start some common-debate projects using newly-available technology [say, a graphic game where people stick ideas together by connecting them with words] that could end up in the printed paper.

The magazine does its job pretty well. I even like the short story part. Having not much time to go into deep reading, and also usually sticking to social-oriented literature, I find it nice to have a piece of pure fiction monthly which is reconforting.

I liked the regulars a lot. Hate that the Underground column will have to go, it was full of humane insight. Still, the others are great. The debates come tops together. I'd like more of them, maybe even with three people, and some more of the fictious type [i.e. like the one with Gandhi and Osama]. Maybe with readers included, too.

As for the mission statement, having a more accessible site, would bring more people in, which would be great, because your message would spread more to the people that otherwise it wouldn't reach. Last addition: more topics about faraway places would be welcomed, even NG dropped them, even though many people would be glad to see some reporting about them.

Keep on the good job!
Lucas

[edward harkins]

From Scotland can I wish your new initiative a Happy and 'prosperous' New Year.

All of us involved in promoting change, participating in network communities and involved in delivering forums would readily agree to the aims in your mission statement. However, I suspect that we would also agree that these things are difficult to achieve… and it’s difficult to even now when you are achieving them.

As I read Prospect, it is of a high quality and covers a broad range of themes. I appreciate that the breadth is needed to attract and retain an audience. However, the breadth carries with it dangers of being rather too eclectic and resulting in a bit of a boutique feel.

I suggest that the mission statement aims would be best served by offering contributors, readers and participants with the lure of being able to actually inform (and be informed by) policy developments through a degree of sustained debate around particular themes and topics.

With this in mind, can I suggest that a more consistently thematic and/or sequential approach is taken – rather than a series of one-off topics? I think that the Michael Fry article on Scottish independence, followed in the next edition (online anyway) by responses from a number of contributors was an instructive glimpse into the possibilities.

With the same aims in mind I would also suggest that you aim to make articles and themes as, firstly, as timely and timeous, and then as pro-active, as possible with regard to other events, activities and developments in subject areas.

I appreciate that your editorial and marketing staff might roll their eyes at these suggestions and mutter ‘we do all that!’; but I thought it best to anyway make the points.

[Ross McCarthy]

I think your goals or laudable and certainly more worthy than another embaressing tilt at University Challenge by the editorial staff.

Broadly speaking the magazine is provocative and interesting although sometimes it seems almost more for the sake of it than to serve any intellectual end.

The role of the public sector is a little exagerrated in importance in your pages but there are other publications which take a similar view to your periodical.

Finally, I think the right amount of ideas and theory are debated but certainly not enough of the critical/marxist left critiques of the global system that it seems to me that the editorial line softly comes from. In other words global instability, hunger, poverty, development, bretton woods institutions, globalisation and its putative alternatives as well as new trade models, new fuel sources and the front line on green issues are under represented.

National politics is lifted a level by you impressively but broadly speaking its already well covered.

Typing as an Irishman: there are other writers in Ireland than the pin up of middle class, hand wringing anxst that is Fintan O'Toole.

[malcolm whitmore]

Prospect is a communication channel that provides a potential way of contacting a sector of society that I believe will have empathy with my ideas.
A Prospect blog brings a realistic way of developing links that enable these concepts to be developed and to potentially motivate consequentoial action that is concluded appropriate.

[malcolm whitmore]

I am consumed by a need to use the little wisdom that I have accumulated during my days on this glorious planet to help future residents to better adjust to the onerous demands that evolution presses on mankind.
I see in Prospect a channel for communication with intelligence that is difficult to contact through alternative means.
I will support your endeavours to meet my personal crusade.

[TP]

I think Prospect already fufills the ambition of that mission statement.

It's got to the point now where I begin to read a newspaper article online and stop soon after. There is too much dogma, and too many lazy predictable viewpoints in the broadsheets, especially in viewspapers like the Independent. Their audiences expect to see the same opinions recycled over and over again, in order to reinforce rather than challenge thier views and prejudices.

Regarding the website: I don't like it that when the latest issue comes out, all of the big essays and features are free to view, when I have to fork out £4.50 for my copy (I know, I should subscribe)so it could be argued that in effect, I am paying a premium price for just the tidbit pieces like the film,letters and music pieces etc.

I understand that you have to have a excellent web presence and that it's hard to strike a balance; what to give away free, and what not to. A dilemma.

I will miss Notes from the Underground, I can relate to Dan's lackadaisical attitude to work.

[Khemvirg Puente]

I enjoy reading Prospect online because it's very difficult to find it in Latin America. Additionally the world is not just Europe & US, I would enrich it with what is happening in Cuba, Venezuela, Chile, etc.

[Ben Gibbs]

Great stuff. It is a pleasant affirmation of one's ego (and I suspect that most Prospect readers have healthy egos) to be asked to contribute in this way. Thank you.

So you are defining what you do and why you do it. A laudable aim.

I had not considered the possibility that to define is to confine, but upon reflection, I can see that it is probably true.

So I wonder whether it might be useful to actively try NOT to define it. To come up with the antithesis of a definition. To look upon Prospect in the most vague terms and through an opaque glass darkly.

In this sense, it has a seemingly unlimited breadth. It has colour, and where the colours meet, they run. It has depth, not so much like the ocean, but like love, wherein one might discover as much about oneself as about one's other. If we could hear it, would it sound like Bach or Stravinsky I wonder. What might it smell like?

“To dig below the surface of everyday understanding, expose the roots of inspired thinking and stimulate intelligent debate for those who aspire to form opinions as opposed to accepting received dogma.”

I like that. There's nothing wrong with a mission statement that seeks to catch an essence. It's when they try to sell or mislead that they stink.

[Bronwyn Davis]

I tend to agree with Carl Hubbard. Call me a cynic, but having seen too many mission statements that are empty rhetoric, I tend to wonder if they distract from an organisation’s aims rather than focus them. I think the thing I enjoy the most about Prospect is that it combines news and discussions of issues that are not normally picked up in the mainstream media, commentary on the current political situation and articles that are hard to categorise except as ‘interesting’. It’s difficult to improve on this kind of a mix!

[John Ellis]

I have been a Prospect subscriber since the late '90s (can't remember the exact year). The magazine has remained reasonably close to the 'mission statement' above over that time, which is quite an achievement in itself. But the use of the word 'dig' does not work and moves it in the direction of more populist writing whilst the remainder, at the same time, betraying an elitist tendency as Ann Hannigan says. I haven't got time now to offer an alternative but a more thoughtful reworking of the sentiment should be attempted. The balance of the magazine - political or social articles, debates, reviews of the arts, the short story - is pretty good. In the reviews, I have really liked Mark Cousins on cinema (we even invited him to a special feature programme at our film club in Wales). I also like the more light-hearted but insightful titbits from Brussels, the US and France. I have been most annoyed by David Goodhart's rather odd forays into immigration and multiculturalism, which almost had me reaching for the 'stop subscription' button. If there is a weakness, it is a bit like that of the BBC: there is a tendency to concentrate on what is in the news and what is Western-centric. I would like to see more in the vein of Channel 4's 'Unreported World' (or the late-lamented BBC 'from our own correspondent), going to places in the world that stay below the radar - whatever happened to Aung San Suu Kyi? How is Evo Morales doing? Prospect is weak about global warming and equivocates. For one article telling us about the science of global warming (rare) we get one from a non-believer such as Bjorn Lomborg (an idiot). There are thousands of scientists who will attest to evidence showing global warming but the establishment is still, collectively, hoping that the problem will go away. Never has a Prime Minister's intellect been so sorely exposed - and where is Prospect in all this?

[Tom Ellis]

I read prospect on and off but dont have a subscription.

It is good to see prospect joining the world of blogs but this blog should not be password protected but open to all. This is because by publishing more up to date articles and 'extra' items it will lead to increased readers of both the magazine and the website. A sucessful blog can be used to make money via advertising to pay for the cost of writers and hosting off typepad is fairly cheap. The top political blogs by Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale are updated daily to keep the content fresh and readers returning regularly.

The actual website is well designed and easy to navigate so large changes are not needed.

[Steve Murphy]

We live in conformist times where many things appear to be beyond the bounds of debate. As long as this continues Prospect is essential. The focus on challenging and thoughtful essays, reviews and interveiws should always be at the heart of the magazine, over bitesized, personality driven tripe or girls aloud interviews.

[Cass]

I would agree with some of the comments made here, particularly regarding the nature of the debates and the non-partisanship (is there such a word? Never mind) But what brings me back to Prospect, as opposed to other publications, again and again are two things. First the sense of freshness - there is very rarely cynicism, but nor is there the odd Economist-style rose tinted spectacle moment. I always feel that the author of the article cares about what he or she is writing about. And secondly the fun. Prospect has a great sense of humour throughout - and you have left this entirely out of the mission statement! I probably shouldn't admit it, but the first part I read every month? The cartoons.