History by Magazine -- In 1994 magazines were healthy but getting weird
Utne Reader was a Readers Digest for lefties & Mondo 2000 was looking subversively to the future. My weekly take on America's news, culture and ideas -- from exactly 30 years ago.
Utne Reader explores alternatives
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Jan. 6, 1994
The more conservative you are, and the older you are, the less likely it is that you'd like the Utne Reader.
The Reader's Digest of the New Age some call it. And the magazine's subtitle says "The best of the alternative press."
Editor-in-chief and founder Eric Utne says when he set out to publish the Utne Reader 10 years ago, he had in mind a combination of the Reader's Digest, I.F. Stone Weekly and Poor Richard's Almanac, and that is pretty much what he created.
He and his staff of article-pickers put out a good product — as long as you can abide the kind of ideas and opinions found in magazines like Mother Jones, New Age Journal, In These Times, Mothering and Trumpeter — you know, the Canadian ecophilosophical quarterly?
Only occasionally do articles from mainstream magazines or unleftish political think magazines like the New Republic or Reason show up.
The cover package of the January-February Utne is an eight-article discussion of the overly busy lives so many people lead, with suggestions on how to deal with time more efficiently or more meaningfully. Another major package with more news-bite to it is "Nine Ways to Improve Public Schools."
Some of the articles are odd. There’s a call for less parental involvement in schools, for instance. And an ecophilosophical lament (from the aforementioned Trumpeter) about the misplaced values and lessons of education that do nothing to create a "healthier, happier, more harmonious planet."
Among the better pieces is the argument by Deborah Meier of the Nation that it's time to drop the myth of public education's golden past. Except for the elite, she says public schools did not and never really intended to do a good job of educating the mass of students until after World War II.
Another piece (from the Village Voice) discusses and isn't too keen on the value of establishing Afrocentric, all-male academies. Another (from Mother Jones) is an interview with "Reinventing Government" author and Friend of Bill Clinton David Osborne, who says charter schools and a "real competitive system of choice" are the only ways to reform and improve education.
The Utne Reader's success speaks for itself. It always manages to dredge up interesting New Agey, politically correct stuff from publications like Dry Crik Review, which even professional magazine columnists have never heard of.Sometimes it's hard to find on newsstands, though Borders Book Shop carries it. It costs $18 a year to subscribe; call (612) 338-5040.
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Mondo 2000 is a totally scary magazine for the unsuspecting Time reader.
But it'd give nightmares to the hapless techno-dolt who intends to someday learn how to record a program on his VCR, once he gets that clock to stop blinking 12:00.
Like Wired, its less insane, less subversive and more commercial but equally out-there competitor, Mondo 2000 covers the future like it's already here.
Its beat is all that electro-computer-cyber stuff you hear about but haven't bumped into yet at your corner Radio Shack — virtual reality, smart drugs, interactive media, brain implants, hacker-pranking, wetware, pirate mind stations.
It's no accident that Mondo 2000 was born in the revolutionary crib of Berkeley, Calif., or that the list of contributing editors includes LSD pioneer Timothy Leary.
Mondo 2000 has a dangerous sense of humor and an obvious acidic bent, from its mad graphics to jargon-jammed stories with headlines like "The Slacker Factor: Remote Control: The Interactivity Myth" or "Carnival of Junk: RoboFest '93."
Mondo 2000's world is wild, free-spirited and pleasantly anti-authoritarian. The article "Pirate Media" provides everything you need to know about setting up your own inexpensive, low-watt neighborhood pirate radio or TV station.
There are even philosophical attacks on the hapless police powers of the corporate-controlled FCC and two pages of addresses on where to send for kits and other guerrilla communications resources.
Mondo's richness and uniqueness can't be adequately described. You can find it lurking on many newsstands. But if you're really a risk-taker, call (510) 845-9018 for a subscription (five issues, $24).
(Utne Reader still exists but its slogan is “In-depth coverage of eye-opening issues that affect your life.” Mondo 2000 is dead.)