Politics Makes Strange Webfellows

Several political commentary journals are among America's best-known print journals. This article analyzes their online editions to see how well they are making use of such elements as interactive discussion, rapid publication, and ancillary links. Political discourse has been a mainstay of journal publishing since Addison and Steele started the Spectator, the first periodical for a popular audience, in London in 1711. Some of the oldest American journals are those featuring political commentary. Such journals proliferated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when some of their writers and editors like William F. Buckley Jr. grew to be considered powerful political forces in their own right.