Changes at Progressive Magazine

The Progressive Magazine has been keeping the faith for 104 years, founded in 19i09 by the Progressive Senator Robert LaFollette. No other publication in America has helped define and support the progresive cause for so long and so well.

Now its fine longtime editor, Matthew Rothschild is moving on. But not too far. He will remain as senior editor. and the new editor will be Ruth Conniff, whom you may have seen on the Ed Schultz Show and who has been a columnist at the magazine for the past 15 years. The fine story will definitively continue.

Isthmus, Madison, WI 2009 - Matthew Rothschild grew up in a liberal Democratic family in Highland Park, Ill. His father was a Chicago attorney and served on the school board. His mother was active in local civil rights and fair-housing issues, while raising eight kids. "Biggest Jewish family this side of Haifa," Rothschild says with a broad smile.

By 1972, young Matt was handing out leaflets and bumper stickers for George McGovern's presidential bid.

"I was such a square, geeky kid," he remembers. "A fat kid. I was an uncoordinated kid until seventh grade." He studied hard and didn't skip class: "It was expected that I would get A's, and I tried to get those A's."

Riding the A's to Harvard, Rothschild studied Karl Marx and Antonio Gramsci, became involved in the anti-apartheid movement on campus and was introduced to anti-corporate politics. "It was an eye-opening experience," he says...

Erwin Knoll, then editor of The Progressive, hired Rothschild as associate editor in 1983, when he was 24. Under Knoll's tutelage, he honed his skills as a writer, editor and political commentator.

Launched by Sen. Robert M. La Follette Sr. on Jan. 9, 1909, La Follette's Weekly stood for social and economic justice, civil rights and liberties - and against corporate greed, war and environmental degradation. The magazine changed its name to The Progressive in 1929 and its publication schedule to monthly in 1948, but remains faithful to its core ideals.

Going back through 100 years of The Progressive to select its best work for the new book, published by the UW Press, deepened Rothschild's appreciation for the magazine's "continuity of concern."

"You can go back from the beginning and see the central concerns of progressivism today represented very well back then," says Rothschild. For instance, the term "living wage" was used by the magazine almost a century ago.

The Progressive decried the brutality and torture of German prisoners of war by U.S. interrogators. It stood up to Wisconsin Sen. Joe McCarthy's red-baiting witch hunts in the 1950s. And it faced down the U.S. government's efforts to stop it from publishing the "secret" of the H-bomb in 1979.

"The courage of The Progressive," says Rothschild, "is what impresses me over time."