Boston Review

Boston Review, a bimonthly political and literary magazine founded in 1975, aims to foster public discussion and thus promote a more deliberative democracy by publishing both essays by experts and unbiased investigative reporting, together with select poetry, fiction, and visual art. By the 1990s, the magazine was committed to making all its content available for free online. Today it hosts more than 150,000 readers each month online plus another 30,000 who discuss its content via social media.

Boston Review is a magazine of ideas, independent and nonprofit, founded on the premise that addressing the most profound contemporary social and political challenges requires serious public discussion. This project will challenge the neoliberal paradigm of meritocracy, which views individual achievement as an outcome of individual capacity and effort. While exploring new policy proposals, the goal is to rethink the philosophical foundations of ideas about opportunity, to imagine collective visions of opportunity and success, and offer alternatives to meritocracy as an idea that can deliver on the promise of equal opportunity. Through this grant, Boston Review will co-sponsor a conference on the topic with Brookings Institute and publish a series of (free) online articles, with the strongest featured in a print issue.

Boston Review, a bimonthly political and literary magazine founded in 1975, aims to foster public discussion and thus promote a more deliberative democracy by publishing both essays by experts and unbiased investigative reporting, together with select poetry, fiction, and visual art. The Foundation has supported Boston Review since 2005. Readership has continued to grow in recent years, but the Review continues to struggle financially. Earned income now represents 40 percent of the Review’s budget but is unlikely to increase dramatically in light of the organization’s mission to provide on-line content free of charge. The Review will likely thus continue to raise 60 percent of its budget from small and large donors, which it has struggled to do. A matching grant from the Hewlett Foundation would provide Boston Review with a leveraged opportunity to take the first steps in a new fundraising strategy: hiring an in-house fundraiser and, ultimately, a publisher to support both the Review's business and editorial management.