Dear Reader —
Today there are ever more publications that push back against the spirit of our age. Often they become like a beautiful village outside a troubled city.
I would like to think that that is what we have built in The New Atlantis. Refuge is essential in troubled times.
But I believe we have also achieved something rarer: when we turn back to the city, people listen.
Consider “No Other Options,” a landmark investigative article from our Winter 2023 issue on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada.
The article was a bombshell. It was discussed in the Atlantic and the New York Times, widely circulated among Canadian legislators, physicians, and euthanasia practitioners, adapted for Apple News, and is still frequently cited a year later. It forced MAID advocates to publicly acknowledge the grim realities of the practice. It changed the debate.
Or consider our Covid coverage, which brought us 1 million readers in 2020. Or my New York Times opinion piece when Dr. Anthony Fauci retired on why his “science says” leadership lost the public’s trust. Or the growing influence in the tech world of “Reality: A Post-Mortem.” Or the enormous popularity of “Shop Class as Soulcraft” and “Do Elephants Have Souls?”
The New Atlantis has achieved a dual feat that very few publications do. Again and again, we have published challenges to mainstream thinking that reach a mainstream audience.
What does this demonstrate?
1: That our model of humane dissent from technocracy is not just an end in itself but the most effective way to reach the minds that need reaching.
2: That serious funding creates real change.
Getting the story of “No Other Options” right, for example, took hundreds of hours across a year of intense work. The focus it takes to develop work at that level can happen only when our funding is unusually strong. This article and its impact were the direct result of your generosity, which produced the strongest funding campaigns in our history in 2021 and 2022.
Now think about the issues looming in 2024…
…and imagine that a year from now, I am writing to you recounting debate-changing publishing success that you made happen on not just one or two but many of these questions.
But making it happen requires a new level of funding strength. Our goal is to expand our typical $500,000 budget to $750,000 in 2024. With that, we could grow our staff size, our capacity for original investigations, and our public profile. Our editors could write regularly for national outlets and publish timely responses to urgent debates, as we did during Covid. And we could do all this while maintaining the reflective work of the village.
We could reach a broad mainstream audience that is already numbed by “science says” and just needs the words to know why.
Your gift could make that real.
With thanks for your support and your readership,
Ari Schulman
Editor, The New Atlantis
Donations are tax-deductible.
By Check
Payable to “The New Atlantis” and mailed to:
1730 M Street NW, Suite 910
Washington, D.C. 20036
By Credit Card or PayPal
Online here.
By Donor-Advised Fund
501(c)(3) name: The Center for the Study of Technology and Society
EIN: 51‑0399261
Phone: (202) 715-3488
Contact: Brady Lee, blee@thenewatlantis.com
Pledges
Please email Brady Lee, Director of Development, at blee@thenewatlantis.com.