The American Spectator is a
conservativeConservatism in the United States is a major American political philosophy. In contemporary American politics, it is often associated with the Republican Party...
U.S.The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
monthly
magazineMagazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles, generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
covering news and politics, edited by
R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.Robert Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. is an American conservative magazine editor, New York Times bestselling author, and columnist. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of The American Spectator. He writes under the byline R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. but is known socially as Bob Tyrrell. Mr. Tyrrell is a 1961...
and published by the non-profit American Spectator Foundation. From its founding in 1967 until the late 1980s, the small-circulation magazine featured the writings of authors such as
Thomas SowellThomas Sowell , is an American economist, social commentator, and author of dozens of books. He often writes from an economically laissez-faire perspective. He is currently a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In 1990, he won the Francis Boyer Award, presented by the...
,
Tom WolfeThomas Kennerly Wolfe, Jr. , known as Tom Wolfe, is a best-selling American author and journalist. He is one of the founders of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s.-Biography:...
, P.J. O'Rourke, George F. Will,
Malcolm GladwellMalcolm Gladwell is a British-born Canadian journalist, author, and pop sociologist, based in New York City. He has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996...
, Patrick J. Buchanan, and
Malcolm MuggeridgeThomas Malcolm Muggeridge was a British journalist, author, satirist, media personality, soldier-spy and, in his later years, a Christian convert and writer.- Biography :...
, although today the magazine is best known for its attacks in the 1990s on
Bill ClintonWilliam Jefferson "Bill" Clinton was the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He was the third-youngest president; only Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy were younger when entering office...
and its "
Arkansas ProjectThe Arkansas Project is the general name of a series of investigations that were designed to damage and end the presidency of Bill Clinton...
" to discredit the president, funded by billionaire
Richard Mellon ScaifeRichard Mellon Scaife is an American billionaire and newspaper publisher.Scaife owns and publishes the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. With $1.2 billion, Scaife, a principal heir to the Mellon banking, oil, and aluminum fortune, is No...
and the
Bradley FoundationThe Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is a conservative foundation with about half a billion US dollars in assets. According to the Bradley Foundation 1998 Annual Report, it gives away more than $30 million per year...
.
Founding and history
The American Spectator was founded as
The Alternative in 1967 by Tyrrell and other students at
Indiana UniversityIndiana University is the flagship campus of the Indiana University system. It is also known as Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana, or simply IU, and is located in Bloomington, Indiana....
, and was originally published in a
tabloidA tabloid is an industry term for a smaller newspaper format per spread; to a weekly or semi-weekly alternative newspaper that focuses on local-interest stories and entertainment, often distributed free of charge ; or to a newspaper that tends to sensationalize and emphasize or exaggerate or...
format (it is now published in a traditional
magazineMagazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles, generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
format).
After operating under the name
The Alternative: An American Spectator for several years, in 1977 the magazine changed its name to
The American Spectator because, in editor Tyrrell's words, "the word 'alternative' had come to be associated almost exclusively with radicals and with their way of life." In fact, Tyrrell had started the magazine as a conservative alternative to the
studentThe word student is etymologically derived through Middle English from the Latin second-type conjugation verb studēre, meaning "to direct one's zeal at"; hence a student could be described as "one who directs zeal at a subject"...
radicalismRadicalisation or Radicalization is the transformation from passiveness or activism to more revolutionary, militant or extreme postures...
at the nation's universities in the 1960s.
During the
Reagan AdministrationThe United States Presidency of Ronald Reagan, also known as the Reagan Administration, was a Republican administration headed by Ronald Reagan from January 20, 1981 to January 20, 1989. Reagan was the first U.S. president since Dwight D...
, the magazine moved from
Bloomington, IndianaBloomington is a city and the county seat of Monroe County in the southern region of the U.S. state of Indiana. According to the 2000 census, the city population was 69,291 with a 2007 estimate of 72,254....
to suburban
Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C. , formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States, founded on July 16, 1790...
The publication gained prominence in the 1990s by reporting on
political scandalA political scandal is a scandal in which politicians or government officials are accused of engaging in various illegal, corrupt, or unethical practices. A political scandal can involve the breaking of the nation's laws or plotting to do so...
s. The March 1992 issue contained
David BrockDavid Brock is an American journalist and author and the founder of Media Matters for America. He was a journalist during the 1990s. During that time he was best known for his book The Real Anita Hill and authoring the Troopergate story, which led to Paula Jones filing a lawsuit against Bill Clinton...
's expose on
Clarence ThomasClarence Thomas is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, having served since 1991. Justice Thomas is the second African American to serve on the nation's highest court, after Justice Thurgood Marshall, whom he succeeded.Thomas grew up in Georgia, and graduated from...
accuser
Anita HillAnita Faye Hill is a professor of social policy, law, and women's studies at Brandeis University at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management and a former colleague of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas...
, famously calling Hill "a bit nutty and a bit slutty". Brock and his colleague
Daniel WattenbergDaniel Eli Wattenberg is an American journalist and musician. He was raised in Bethesda, Maryland. His father is the pundit Ben Wattenberg. He received his BA degree from Columbia University in 1983.-Early life and career:...
soon moved on to a target of somewhat longer-lasting relevance: Hillary and
Bill ClintonWilliam Jefferson "Bill" Clinton was the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He was the third-youngest president; only Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy were younger when entering office...
. A January 1994 article about then-President Bill Clinton's sex life contained the first reference in print to Clinton accuser
Paula JonesPaula Corbin Jones is a former Arkansas state employee who sued President Bill Clinton for sexual harassment. Eventually, the court dismissed the lawsuit, before trial, on the grounds that Jones failed to demonstrate any damages...
, although the article focused on allegations that Clinton used
Arkansas state troopersThe Arkansas State Police is the state police agency for Arkansas, which has jurisdiction anywhere in the state. It was created to protect the lives, property and constitutional rights of people in Arkansas.On March 19th, 1935 when Arkansas Governor J.M...
to facilitate his extramarital sexual activities (
see Troopergate). It only referred to Jones by her first name and corroborated few if any elements of her story. This article was the basis for the claim of damages a
sexual harassmentSexual harassment is intimidation, bullying or coercion of a sexual nature, or the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors. In some contexts or circumstances, sexual harassment may be illegal. It includes a range of behavior from seemingly mild transgressions and...
lawsuit which started the chain of events resulting in
President Clinton's impeachmentBill Clinton, President of the United States, was impeached by the House of Representatives on December 19, 1998, and acquitted by the Senate on February 12, 1999. The charges, perjury, obstruction of justice, and abuse of power arose from the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the Paula Jones lawsuit...
.
David BrockDavid Brock is an American journalist and author and the founder of Media Matters for America. He was a journalist during the 1990s. During that time he was best known for his book The Real Anita Hill and authoring the Troopergate story, which led to Paula Jones filing a lawsuit against Bill Clinton...
recanted his accusations upon his departure from the conservative movement. For his part, Wattenberg eventually incurred the displeasure of many fellow conservatives when he belatedly admitted that he had killed a story about rumors of President Clinton fathering a child out of wedlock (with a young
African AmericanAfrican Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa. In the United States, the terms are generally used for Americans with at least partial Sub-Saharan African ancestry...
woman.) Wattenberg actually tracked down a videotape of the woman being interviewed (by an unnamed third party who asked her what Wattenberg described as "softball" questions), but he never was able to interview her himself. Wattenberg's rationales for killing the story were that he had no proof that the story was true and that the woman's testimony was unconvincing. He said that she "seemed like a junkie." (The story was revived in 1999 by
Matt DrudgeMatthew Nathan Drudge is the creator and editor of the Drudge Report, a news aggregation website in the United States. Drudge is described as being conservative, populist, and libertarian. Drudge has also authored a book and hosted a radio show.-Early years:Matthew Drudge was raised in Takoma...
.)
Internal strife eventually led to the departure of long-time publisher Ronald Burr after a disagreement with Tyrrell led Burr to call for an independent audit of the magazine's finances. The departure of Burr and several prominent conservative figures from the magazine's board of directors resulted in conservative foundations pulling much of the funding the nonprofit had relied on to pay high salaries to Brock and Tyrrell, as well as to fund direct-mail campaigns needed to keep up the monthly's circulation. Faced with a budget crisis, the magazine, then led by publisher Terry Eastland, a former spokesman in the
ReaganRonald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States and the 33rd Governor of California .Born in Tampico, Illinois, Reagan moved to Los Angeles, California in the 1930s...
Justice DepartmentThe United States Department of Justice is a Cabinet department in the United States government designed to enforce the law and defend the interests of the United States according to the law and to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans...
, laid off staffers and cut spending significantly. The magazine also struggled to pay legal bills incurred from an investigation launched against it by President Clinton's Justice Department for alleged witness tampering in the
Whitewater investigationThe Whitewater controversy was an American political controversy that began with the real estate investments of Bill and Hillary Clinton and their associates, Jim and Susan McDougal in the Whitewater Development Corporation, a failed business venture in the 1970s and 1980s.A New...
. The Justice Department investigation led to revelations about the "
Arkansas ProjectThe Arkansas Project is the general name of a series of investigations that were designed to damage and end the presidency of Bill Clinton...
," a campaign by billionaire
Richard Mellon ScaifeRichard Mellon Scaife is an American billionaire and newspaper publisher.Scaife owns and publishes the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. With $1.2 billion, Scaife, a principal heir to the Mellon banking, oil, and aluminum fortune, is No...
to discredit the Clintons by funding investigative reporting at several conservative media outlets. The Justice Department investigation led nowhere and the
Spectator was exonerated.
As shortfalls continued, conservative gadfly
George GilderGeorge F. Gilder is an American writer, techno-utopian intellectual, Republican Party activist, and co-founder of the Discovery Institute...
, a long time supporter of the magazine who was newly wealthy from an Internet business, purchased the magazine with the goal of turning it into a profit-making glossy with significant media buzz. Numerous staff members, demoralized by the ever-looming budget crises, were laid off or departed after Gilder's hand-picked but inexperienced editors, Joshua Gilder and Richard Vigilante, took the reins and vowed to reach a new technology- and business-savvy audience. Circulation and budget losses continued and even increased in the Gilder era, and at one point the entire Washington-based staff other than Tyrrell and executive editor and web site editor
Wladyslaw PleszczynskiWladyslaw "Wlady" Pleszczynski is an American conservative editor and writer. He is editorial director and web editor of The American Spectator...
were laid off as operations were moved to
MassachusettsThe Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. Most of its population of...
, where the rest of George Gilder's businesses were based. In 2003, George Gilder, who had lost most of his fortune with the bursting of the Internet stock bubble, sold the magazine for $1 back to Tyrrell and the American Alternative Foundation, the magazine's original owner (the name was later changed to the American Spectator Foundation). The magazine then moved operations back to the Washington, D.C. area. Later that year, former book publisher
Alfred S. RegneryRegnery Publishing in Washington, D.C. is a publisher which specializes in conservative books characterized on their website as "contrary to those of 'mainstream' publishers in New York." Since 1993, Regnery Publishing has been a division of Eagle Publishing, which also owns the weekly magazine...
became the magazine's publisher. By 2004, circulation hovered at around 50,000.
The 2008 book Turkmeniscam, by Harper's Magazine journalist Ken Silverstein, reports that American Spectator editor R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. was paid by the Carmen Group on behalf of the Kazakhstan government to visit Kazakhstan in 2000 and write favorable articles. Tyrrell wrote such an article for The Washington Times. The funding was never publicly disclosed.
Core Editorial Staff:
Publisher: Alfred S. Regnery
Editor in Chief: R. Emmett Tyrrell
Editorial Director:
Wladyslaw PleszczynskiWladyslaw "Wlady" Pleszczynski is an American conservative editor and writer. He is editorial director and web editor of The American Spectator...
Managing Editor: Joseph Lawler
Associate Editor: W. James Antle III
Reporter: Philip Klein
External links
- The American Spectator official site
- Byron York
Byron York is a American conservative columnist and author who lives in Washington, D.C..-Journalism:York is the Chief political correspondent for The Washington Examiner, a post he joined in early 2009 following his work as White House correspondent for National Review magazine and a columnist...
, "The Life and Death of The American Spectator," The Atlantic MonthlyThe Atlantic is an American magazine founded as The Atlantic Monthly in Boston in 1857. It was created as a literary and cultural commentary magazine. Though based in Boston, it quickly achieved a national reputation, which it held for more than a century. It was important for recognizing and...
, November 2001
- "Olson by a whisker", Salon.com
Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online magazine, with content updated each weekday. American liberal politics is its major focus, but it covers a range of issues. Reviews and articles about music, books and films are also a prominent feature of the site....
, May 2001 (article containing background information on the "Arkansas Project")
- David Brock, "The Real Anita Hill", The American Spectator, March 1992 (unofficial site)
- David Brock, "His Cheatin’ Heart" ,The American Spectator, January 1994 (the "Troopergate" story)
- David Brock, Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative, Crown
The Crown Publishing Group is a subsidiary of Random House, the world's largest book publisher. Its imprints include Crown Books, Crown Business, Crown Forum, Three Rivers Press, Clarkson Potter, Potter Craft, Potter Style, Broadway Books, Broadway Business, Doubleday Religion,...
, 2002. ISBN 0-8129-3099-1
- R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. (ed.), Orthodoxy: The American Spectator's 20th Anniversary Anthology, Harper & Row
Harper & Row was a publishing company based in New York City. It was formed through the 1962 merger of Harper & Brothers with Row, Peterson & Company. It was acquired by News Corporation in 1987 and combined with the publisher William Collins, Sons & Co, a British company, in 1990 to form...
, 1987. ISBN 0-06-015818-2