The American Spectator

The American Spectator is a conservative American magazine covering news and politics, edited by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. and published by the non-profit American Spectator Foundation. It was founded in 1967 by Tyrrell, who remains its editor-in-chief, with Wladyslaw Pleszczynski its editorial director since 1980. From 1967 until the late 1980s, the magazine featured the writings of authors such as Thomas Sowell, Tom Wolfe, P. J. O'Rourke, George F. Will, Malcolm Gladwell, Patrick J. Buchanan, Tom Bethell, Terry Eastland, Andrew Ferguson, Christopher Caldwell, Fred Barnes, Roger Scruton, Walter Williams, Raymond Aron, Luigi Barzini, Paul Johnson, Irving Kristol, Jean-Francois Revel, and Malcolm Muggeridge. Major conservative writers and editors, such as Bill Kristol and Bill McGurn, began their careers at The American Spectator, as did Greg Gutfeld and John Podhoretz, who started at the magazine as interns. Some of the earliest published articles by prominent conservatives such as Dinesh D'Souza, Laura Ingraham, and David Frum appeared at The American Spectator. Among the magazine's longest-serving columnists are Sowell, economist and celebrity Ben Stein, Roger Kaplan, and John Coyne. Current frequently contributing writers include conservative health care consultant David Catron, Dov Fischer, Daniel Flynn, Ross Kaminsky, Paul Kengor, Robert Stacy McCain, Scott McKay, George Neumayr, and George Parry. Ali Alexander has also contributed. During the 1990s, the magazine experienced explosive growth, primarily for its widely read and provocative reports on Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton and its "Arkansas Project", funded by businessman Richard Mellon Scaife and the Bradley Foundation. Others to have written for the magazine include Jeffrey Lord, a one-time aide to President Ronald Reagan. Founding and history The name The American Spectator derives from a short-lived magazine by that name founded in 1924 by George Jean Nathan and Truman Newberry. The origins of the current magazine date to its founding by Tyrrell in 1967 in Bloomington, Indiana. That year, Tyrrell and his "Saturday Evening Club" took up the name, calling the magazine The Alternative: An American Spectator.