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The New Republic and its Kiwi editor Rachel Morris - Source: Supplied
According to one impartial observer, US magazine The New Republic is where "liberal intellectuals think out loud".
The current issue seems to bear this out, containing a story asking whether the world is becoming (in contrast to the charming Arab Spring narrative) more autocratic than democratic, as well as a piece about singer Paul Simon and Death, and another wondering whether Americans actually like monopolies.
It's the kind of mix you'd expect from a publication that's been running continuously since 1914, and has generated accolades and fierce controversy.
President Obama is known to be a reader. The magazine also featured in American TV drama The Wire. When character Brother Mouzone (an enforcer and hit man from NYC) wanted magazines, TNR - as it's nicknamed - was one of those procured for him.
No prizes for guessing where this is going.
The "impartial observer" quoted above is Rachel Morris, a Hastings born, ex-Hastings Girls' High student, ex Fulbright scholar who has been at TNR since May last year and was appointed executive editor in January.
She has what might be described as an ideal job for a certain kind of character: she reads magazines to find out who is young and clever (yes, and inexpensive), and then she tries to find interesting stories for them to write for TNR. In essence, she's charged with keeping the magazine intelligent, and making it more interesting to read; developing a stable of writers to take the publication into the next era.
And what eras there have been at TNR, including spy and plagiarism scandals. What names too. Hendrik Hertzberg edited the title between stints at the The New Yorker; Michael Kinsley was editor before moving to start Slate (one of the first brave attempts to put intelligent journalism on the net); the previous editor, Franklin Foer, is brother to novelist Jonathan Safran Froer.
The list of contributors reads like a who's who of American print journalism. Ryan Lizza, who now writes for The New Yorker, worked there, as did James Wood, generally agreed to be the leading literary critic of his generation.
Morris' career is an argument for not knowing what you want to do, then knowing for sure, and being extremely focused about it.
After Hastings Girls' High, she went to Victoria University to do music and theatre. She ended up graduating from Auckland University with a degree in English and History.
She went to Vietnam where she worked on a newspaper. The prevailing wisdom about Vietnam at the time was that free markets would produce, as if by magic, democracy.
Morris didn't believe this. She wanted to write about it but felt she didn't know enough about economics. So she went back to university. This time, funded by a Fulbright Scholarship, she went to Columbia in Manhattan.
After graduation, she worked at Legal Affairs, Washington Monthly and Mother Jones.
She describes her current position as "the most fun job I've ever had".
She reads a lot of magazines, but she also reads fiction in her spare time. Why? "I believe all editors should read literature," Morris says. "I fundamentally feel writing is a creative, imaginative act; too much journalism is based on getting stuff out the door."
A creed for all of us who care, surely.
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