For 24 years, the editor and publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel has been the public face of The Nation, the oldest continuously published weekly in the United States. On June 15, she will give up her job as day-to-day editor, and be succeeded in the role by D. D. Guttenplan, an author long associated with the magazine.

“It’s possible to stay in a job too long,” Ms. vanden Heuvel said in an interview. “It’s a time of tectonic shifts, and a new editor is part of the change that I think is important to continue The Nation’s work as a place of progressive ideals and ideas.”

The second woman to edit The Nation, Ms. vanden Heuvel, a part owner of the publication, will stay on as publisher and continue to provide advice to the editorial staff as editorial director, the magazine said on Monday.

Since its founding by Republican abolitionists in 1865, The Nation has published work by, among others, James Baldwin, Noam Chomsky, Eric Foner, Henry James, Toni Morrison and I. F. Stone. Its circulation peaked at 186,000 in 2006 and has since settled at about 132,000, although its online traffic has been growing steadily. It endorsed Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential election.</s>The Nation announced today that journalist and author D.D. Guttenplan will become the magazine’s next Editor, effective June 15. Guttenplan, who is currently Editor at Large for The Nation, succeeds Katrina vanden Heuvel, who will become Editorial Director and remain Publisher of the country’s oldest weekly magazine.

Katrina vanden Heuvel, who marks her 25th year as Editor of The Nation in 2019, will continue to chart the strategic direction of The Nation working with Guttenplan and The Nation’s President, Erin O’Mara. She will also edit select writers and contribute regular commentary. Vanden Heuvel has led The Nation through turbulent political times, steering the magazine into the digital era and winning multiple awards for The Nation’s investigative reporting, commentary, and political impact.

Guttenplan was one of the magazine’s lead correspondents covering the 2016 presidential campaign and is the author of The Next Republic: The Rise of a New Radical Majority. In 2015 he co-edited The Nation’s 150th Anniversary special issue with vanden Heuvel and wrote The Nation: A Biography, a definitive history of the magazine. His book American Radical: The Life and Times of I.F Stone, about The Nation’s former Washington correspondent, won the 2010 Sperber Prize for Biography.

“As my co-editor for The Nation’s 150th Anniversary issue, I saw first-hand Don’s rigor and creative thinking,” said vanden Heuvel. “An accomplished journalist working at the intersection of history, politics, and activism, Don is the right choice to continue to move The Nation forward. I’m excited about The Nation’s future, our expanding reach across all platforms as a critical voice for sanity and progress at this moment in history.”

“I’m thrilled to be taking over at The Nation at such a crucial time in the magazine’s history and in our national life,” said Guttenplan. “The Nation is a beacon for progressive ideas, democratic politics, women’s rights, racial and economic justice, and open debate between liberals and radicals.”

“Under Katrina’s leadership,” said Guttenplan, “The Nation has consistently shown that ideas matter, championing causes often dismissed as radical or marginal at the time only to be embraced by the mainstream years and sometimes decades later. The Nation spoke out boldly against the Iraq War, warned about the dangers of ‘the New Inequality,’ and has consistently been a brave, and sometimes lonely, voice opposing the rush to a new Cold War. I’m immensely proud of our history and look forward to helping our incredibly talented community of editors and writers shape our next chapter.”

In addition to the transition in editorship, The Nation will be hiring a new Executive Web Editor to drive the continued growth of TheNation.com. The Nation is also announcing that journalist Elie Mystal will write regular commentary at TheNation.com focused on politics, law, and racial justice. Mystal joins the Rev. William Barber, the magazine’s Civil Rights Correspondent in covering race, and is part of a growing cohort of diverse and dynamic voices at The Nation.

Under vanden Heuvel’s leadership, The Nation has evolved into a multi-channel media company—print, web, newsletters, podcasts, video, and a robust educational program. The Nation has won a “Shorty” award for its Twitter feed, @thenation, which has more than 1.24 million followers, and has developed a strong presence on Facebook and Instagram. Over 30 percent of the traffic at TheNation.com and audience engagement on social media is from readers 18–34-years old, reflecting The Nation’s continued relevance to a new generation. In 2017, The Nation launched Take Action Now, a weekly newsletter curating the resistance by highlighting three actions the Nation community can take based on the time they have. This newsletter has a passionate following and is part of a portfolio of newsletters that has a combined reach of 800,000 subscribers.

Alongside vanden Heuvel’s new role shaping the future of The Nation as Editorial Director, she will continue writing her regular weekly column for The Washington Post and will be speaking, writing, and collecting articles and essays for a forthcoming book. Vanden Heuvel will continue working with the Congressional Progressive Caucus and other groups to craft a progressive foreign policy.

Guttenplan and vanden Heuvel are both former interns for The Nation, joining hundreds of working journalists, editors, and political leaders as alumni of the program. The Nation intern program is one of the premier editorial fact-checking- and journalism-training programs in the field, and The Nation was one of the first media outlets to pay interns a $15-an-hour wage. The Nation has been deeply committed to nurturing young journalists and working to make the field of journalism diverse, through initiatives like StudentNation, the Nation writing fellowship, Black on Campus, and the Student Journalism Conference.

Guttenplan, who until recently was Editor in Chief of the London-based Jewish Quarterly, is the producer of the acclaimed documentary film Edward Said: The Last Interview and wrote and presented War, Lies, and Audiotape, a radio documentary for the BBC about the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the origins of the Vietnam War. A former education correspondent for the International Herald Tribune, former columnist for New York Newsday and former senior editor at The Village Voice, his essays and reporting have appeared in the Atlantic, The Guardian, Ha’aretz, Harper’s,the London Review of Books, The New York Times, and the Times Literary Supplement.

“This is a moment of continuity and change,” said vanden Heuvel. Don has been a part of The Nation and our success, but also brings new energy, ideas, and bold leadership to The Nation,” said vanden Heuvel. “He is deeply committed to growing a new generation of voices. And he understands the critical role of independent journalism in our society.”

Guttenplan will be the magazine’s 16thh Editor in The Nation’s 154-year history. Guttenplan and vanden Heuvel are available for interviews.</s>Editor: The problem with Joe Biden is that the former vice president is from a time when politics was not as slimy.

I think that I would really like the guy and I am not a Democrat. Where is the support from his former boss, President Barrack Hussein Obama?

I do not believe that Obama ever really wanted someone like Biden on his presidential ticket. Why did he pick Biden? I think that I know the answer.

Editor: In honor of game show legend Alex Trebek, who is courageously soldiering on as host of “Jeopardy!” while battling cancer, I offer the following in that TV show’s format:

The answer is “Touch Me,” a song by the Doors

The question is: If Joe Biden runs for president, which song is least likely to be used as his campaign theme?

Editor: The next time someone asks Joe Biden about his age, the former vice president should tell them, “Age is just a number and mine is unlisted.”

Editor: Joe Rogan (“Unstable non-genius,” March 7) seems desperate to attempt to discredit the president.

The so-called Russian collusion angle seems to be dead in the water. So Rogan attacked President Trump on his academic record. He brought up the issue of President Obama’s’ student records that Trump wanted to be released.

I do not care if they were made public. In fact, I have never spoken or heard a single person who voted for president or any other office based on college or high school academic status.

While researching this opinion, I found an article written by journalist Ethan Trex from 2011 that listed nine highly successful politicians who didn’t achieve outstanding academic success. They include John Kerry, former senator and secretary of state; former Vice Presidents Dan Quayle, Al Gore and Joe Biden. Biden finished 75th out of 86 graduates at the Syracuse University Law School and admitted to plagiarism while there. But that was way back then. This is the new front-runner who will probably get the Democratic Party nomination for president in 2020.

Former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush and Franklin Pierce also made the list. So did Richard Nixon, who excelled in college but resigned as president in disgrace in 1974.

Finally, the New York Military Academy is a coed military school that has admitted females since 1975. Rogan’s remarks about it being a reform school are highly inaccurate. Many graduates go on to fine careers in the military and private industry.

Editor: Over the last decade the natural gas industry has grown from virtually nothing to one of our leading industries, propelling Pennsylvania to become the second-highest producer of natural gas in the United States.

As this industry has grown, it has rejuvenated communities across the commonwealth, improving the economy and our quality of life. This allows more Pennsylvanians to stay local, get good-paying jobs that can support a family and give them health care coverage. In short, Pennsylvania is winning because of natural gas.

Unfortunately, Harrisburg politicians like Gov. Tom Wolf would put that at risk. The latest threat to the progress is Wolf’s proposed Restore PA plan. It would borrow $4.5 billion to finance infrastructure and other development projects around the state. To help pay back the money he wants to borrow, Wolf wants the natural gas industry to pay a severance tax on top of the impact fee, which would threaten jobs, our economy and our quality of life.

This plan is anything but restorative. It is counterproductive, anti-consumer and must be stopped.

Editor: Gee, there are 400 pages that these provokers want, only to see if they can find something or anything with which to harass our president .

Yet, they passed the Affordable Health Care Act that contained thousands of pages they did not read and said it wasn’t perfect, but they would fix the problems later when they came up.

They never did that and to this date I bet they still didn’t read the law. Others read it for them and nothing was done.

My query now would be: Who’s going to read only 400 pages of the report by special counsel Robert Mueller? I bet it will not be Democrats. When are they going to move on ?

Editor: I was disappointed when Sen. Pat Toomey voted in mid-March against President Trump’s emergency declaration regarding his proposed border wall.

He was a traitor to the Republican Party and his constituents, who are tired of footing the bill for the illegals. I want to know where Republicans in name only were when President Clinton and President Obama issued emergency declarations? There was not a word.

These RINOs should all change to become Democrats because they are not good Republicans and do not care about their people. Why did they do this? Is it because Trump exposes their lobbyist contributions and will stop their perks?

When it comes to the election, I hope people remember who betrayed us for the welfare of the illegals. Keep fiddling while Rome burns.</s>Glasstire is pleased to announce that we are seeking a News Editor to add to our team!

Responsible for writing, sourcing, assigning and overseeing daily news articles for Glasstire, this new editor will replace Brandon Zech, the publication’s first-ever dedicated News Editor, as he transitions into his role as Glasstire’s Publisher.

Applications for this position, which is based in our Houston office, are due by May 24, 2019. See below for the full job listing.

Position Summary

 The News Editor plays a vital role in shaping the content our readers will see: published at least twice daily, our news is often the most-read content on Glasstire. This individual sources, writes, and edits short news articles relating to visual art in Texas, and also assigns/commissions up to four news articles per week to contributing writers or Glasstire staff. The ideal candidate will have deep connections in one or more cities in Texas, and will have a reporter’s knack for finding, and telling, interesting stories. The News Editor also participates in other editorial content, including the publication’s weekly Top Five video.

This is an opportunity to use your journalistic skills to reach the one of the largest art audiences in the country, while meeting interesting people in Texas and beyond.

The News Editor must possess outstanding writing and communication skills. This is a public role, and the News Editor acts as a representative of Glasstire in the Texas art community. The ideal candidate is an adaptable team player who understands that, as Glasstire is a small nonprofit organization, all hands are typically on deck.

This position is based in Houston. Some travel is required to other Texas cities. Occasional attendance at evening and weekend art events is required, and should be something the News Editor enjoys doing.

Although it is not required, preference will be given to candidates with a working knowledge of Spanish, in light of Glasstire’s new initiative to publish Spanish-language content.

In this job, the News Editor will enhance existing skills relating to:

 — Writing, researching, and reporting

 — Managing a content calendar

 — Working on an editorial team

 — Video and audio editing

Responsibilities

 — Source, research, and fact-check news stories of interest to Glasstire readers

 — Develop relationships with organizations, arts professionals, artists, and others

 — Manage the publication’s news content calendar, ensuring that stories are covered in a timely manner

 — Oversee twice-daily news articles about the goings on of the art scenes in Texas and beyond

 — Create, check and send weekly newsletters, in collaboration with the Editor-in-Chief

 — Organize and shoot the Glasstire Top Five video with other staff members and guests

 — Support translators in the creation of monthly Spanish-language content on the website, including articles, news, and videos

 — Actively participate in a weekly story conference and other staff meetings.

In addition, the News Editor will be expected to:

 — Occasionally travel across Texas, acting as a representative of Glasstire at events, art galleries, and museums

 — Participate in other organizational endeavors, including fundraisers and other public events

This position reports to the Editor-in-Chief.

Qualifications

 — Bachelor’s degree required

 — Minimum of 2 years’ prior relevant work experience

 — Outstanding written and verbal communication skills. Familiarity with written and spoken Spanish a plus

 — Must be detail-oriented, highly organized, and a self-starter

 — Proven ability to work with efficiency, flexibility, and good humor

 — Demonstrated ability to build and maintain relationships with a wide array of people

 — Solid computer skills. Must be comfortable with MS Office, WordPress and Adobe Photoshop.

This is a full-time position. Salary is commensurate with experience. Glasstire offers a flexible work schedule with some opportunities for working from home.

To apply, email your CV, three references, a writing sample (no more than 500 words) and cover letter specifying your requested salary to brandon@glasstire.com. Please use the subject line “News Editor Job Application.” Please specify where you saw the posting.

About Glasstire

 Glasstire is the oldest online-only art magazine in the country. We are proud to have promoted the visual arts in Texas to a local, regional and national audience since 2001. Glasstire is the only publication in Texas that is producing serious art criticism on a daily basis. We are the journal of record for the Texas visual art community.</s>Editor: April 7, 1911, started as an ordinary day for the men and boys who worked at the Pancoast Colliery in Throop.

 By day’s end, the mine workers and residents of Throop had experienced tremendous loss, pain and shock following the worst mining disaster in Lackawanna County history.

 At 9 a.m. that Friday, a fire broke out in a wooden engine house at the head of a mine slope at the convergence of the so-called Dunmore and China coal veins, which ran some 750 feet below the surface. The fire, which occurred at an air intake for the shaft, remained isolated but smoke poured into the China vein, so there was no full evacuation of the mine until 11 a.m.

 By early afternoon, it was determined that 72 mine workers and breaker boys and one government rescuer had died of asphyxiation from the toxic fumes. Twelve of the victims were boys ranging in age from 14 to 16.

 Victims of the tragedy left 56 widows and more than 120 children, newspaper accounts reported. Fifty funerals were held in Throop on April 10, 1911. The three local churches held funerals for a week. A fund was set up by local businesses and the public to aid the devastated families.

 By the following June, the state Legislature had passed a law banning construction of flammable interior structures in mines.

 Six days after the fire, 70 men of Polish and Hungarian ancestry went back to work at the mine. There was work to be done and families had to be fed. No disaster could change that circumstance.

 The Pancoast mine continued to operate until 1941. Throop’s “black Friday” became part of local history.

 

 ROSE ZIELINSKI

 

 THROOP

 

 

 Commit to education

 

 Editor: While many of us wring our hands about the state of the nation, we need to use the power we possess to make the town that we live in the place where we want to live.

 We want to live in a place that we can be proud of, that is safe for us and our children, where children can get the education that will serve them well for the rest of their lives.

 It is fortunate that the media are concerned enough about the Scranton public schools that school issues make the headlines often. It is not, however, encouraging to read about the needs and failures of our public schools without news of what our school board and our community are doing to improve them. We must have schools that will prepare the children who grow up here for a successful life — whether they go on to higher education or training or jobs. As early in our nation’s history as the days of the Founding Fathers, they understood that free public schools were a necessary part of the neighborhoods people lived in. They knew that democracy was an experiment that required a population of citizens who not only wished they lived in a good place— but were determined to make it a good place.

 Urban schools are challenged everywhere. Their students run the full gamut from the best and brightest who live in comfort to those with similar intellectual capacities for whom English is a second language and those who come to school hungry. Citizens are obliged to insist on an education system that works for all.

 It is clearly in our best interest to demand of our elected officials the support that is required to educate our children. It should go without saying — but, in fact, we still must make our voices heard.

 

 SONDRA MYERS

 

 SCRANTON

 

 

 Questionable mental fitness

 

 Editor: Lance Dodes, M.D., is a psychiatrist who, prior to retirement, taught at Harvard Medical School.

 In a recent interview he listed the seven traits that define antisocial personality disorder. President Trump has exhibited behavior for each trait:

 - He fails to conform to social norms by denigrating women and minorities.

 - His deceitfulness manifests in his habitual lying.

 - His impulsiveness surfaced when he announced a total force withdrawal from Syria after talking to the leader of Turkey.

 - He displayed aggression by publicly mocking a foreign leader.

 - He displays recklessness by disregarding long-standing allies.

 - His irresponsibility emerges when he ignores intelligence briefings.

 - He exhibited a lack of remorse by displaying an absence of feelings for the Warmbier family, whose son died from mistreatment in a North Korea prison.

 Dodes believes Trump suffers from a dangerous sociopathic disorder, where his one goal is to enhance himself. Dodes states Trump becomes delusional when confronted with facts that require him to admit failure or acknowledge that others know more or are more capable than he is.

 Dodes claims sociopathy is the president’s most serious mental disability and fears that Trump may start a war to distract the country from his multiple failures. Dodes also fears Trump risks destroying democracy by eroding the balance of powers, attacking the judicial system and Congress and attacking the free press.

 Maybe Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, was correct during the 2016 presidential campaign when he called Trump “crazy.”

 

 GEORGE J. MOTSAY, M.D.

 

 UPPER MACUNGIE TWP., (LEHIGH COUNTY</s>Letters to the editor on topics of general interest are welcomed and encouraged.</s>Editor: Businessman Louis DeNaples has invested much trust in his assistant, Al Magnotta. In the service of DeNaples, Magnotta apparently has gone from engineer to adviser to all-purpose Svengali.

When he takes on the task of environmental expert, his projections of ecological safety at Keystone Sanitary Landfill are largely unfounded, I think. I understand that better by contrasting them with the assessment of Eugene Ogozalek. An architect by trade, Ogozalek has been, in addition, a serious student of what is going on in this portion of Northeast Pennsylvania’s jeopardized environment.

If you missed Ogozalek’s inspired letter on April 1 in The Times-Tribune (“Halt health menace”), it can still be read online. It was a devastating account that left friends at the cafe aflutter with the implications — quickly noting that it was no April Fools’ joke. Ogozalek has nothing to gain by putting himself out there, except a priceless honor and dignity.

The apparent desire of Magnotta and DeNaples to cash in seems to become more and more obvious. They will move on; neither probably wants to be around when the alleged ill effects from the landfill may become obvious.

This site could be better used as a welcome to the region rather than an offense.

Editor: In 1931, mobster Al Capone was sentenced to prison for tax evasion.

I think people who have decided that Scranton’s garbage tax does not apply to them should go to jail for one month for each year that they have not paid.

Some of them may say that they shouldn’t be classified with Capone, a notorious killer. These people are not guilty of murder but they are helping to kill a city.

Most of the $16.8 million in delinquent garbage fees and penalties probably would have disappeared down the black hole that takes most of our tax revenue, but some of it may have helped save our city. The Times-Tribune should publish a complete list of all the people who think they are above this law.

If I were a gambler, I would bet that some city employees are on that list. If there are, why aren’t the taxes being taken out of their paychecks, or why aren’t they being given one month to pay all back taxes or lose their jobs? Of course, if they choose to forfeit their jobs, they would still owe the back taxes.

I also would like to know what Northeast Revenue Service, the city’s collection firm, has been doing with the money it has been paid to collect these taxes. If the company is incapable of fulfilling its contract, hire someone else to do the job. Since there is a list of everyone who hasn’t paid, how hard can it be to find them in this digital age?

Northeast Revenue employees need to do their jobs. If this involves overtime and weekends, it should be done without increased payment from Scranton citizens. The company has dropped the ball and it is time to pick it up and get us our money.

Editor: I was disappointed when Sen. Pat Toomey joined 11 other Republican senators to vote against border security.

I have supported Toomey the vast majority of the time, but this vote was the most egregious violation of the trust of the American people I can imagine. We finally have a president who is willing to stanch the flow of illegal aliens, drugs, white slavers and their ilk and Toomey and contemporaries lacked the intestinal fortitude to vote with him.

I am utterly ashamed to call myself a Republican. I cannot recall Republicans in the House or Senate successfully opposing any major policy initiatives of the Obama administration, yet Toomey has helped thwart President Trump on major policies — for which he was elected — on more than one occasion. With control of both houses of Congress, Republicans could not muster sufficient support for the president to finally secure the U.S.-Mexico border. I don’t recall this level of outcry when Obama implemented Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals. Congress passed and President Gerald Ford signed the National Emergencies Act in 1976. It has been used more than 50 times and not once had Congress overturned a presidential declaration of an emergency.

Save the platitudes about constitutionality. Toomey’s predecessors passed the emergencies act. If he had questions about its infringement on the separation of powers, why wasn’t it repealed? Our representatives in Congress no longer represent those who elected them; they represent the paymasters who fund their campaigns. Now we know who Toomey is. I will support a primary challenge to him if he runs again.

Editor: For two years, resisting President Trump for some people has been a moral imperative, an all-consuming preoccupation, an aberration that violates every constitutional and civic norm of American life.

There’s no doubt that Trump’s election transformed the Republican Party; however, no institution was changed like the Democratic Party.

Trump has advocated conservative policies, such as tax cuts and border security, resulting in Democratic responses marked by hysterical and apocalyptic rhetoric. Democrats conflate their anti-Trump policy with democracy, decency and patriotism. They would usher in an unprecedented radicalization of the left. Democrats are laying waste to a constitutional system they claim to be saving. Their No. 1 goal is to delegitimize Trump.

They have adopted once-umfathomable positions and transformed Washington into a stage to air the evils of Trump. Democrats have a long tradition of wanting to reduce the rights of individuals and increase federal control. Trump has caused Democrats to take a sharp left turn. Socialism used to be a dirty word in politics, but not anymore.

Democratic contenders for the 2020 presidential election are jumping on the bandwagon of socialism. Most Democratic presidential hopefuls support the Green New Deal. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey unveiled the ridiculous Green New Deal, which could cost trillions. Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell called it “just good old-fashioned state-planned economy garden variety 20th century socialism.”

Democrats’ goal is to remove Trump from office or make him unelectable in 2020. Trump is an entertaining speaker and a resourceful politician. He was wise enough to grab the re-election theme of combating the threat of socialism.

How could the Democratic Party be so out of touch with the American people? Democrats have wandered so far to the left with a socialist agenda that Trump may easily win a second term.</s>Letter to the Editor: Upgrades to roads to consider</s>MISSOULA, Mont. — A Missouri newspaper editor will direct a new journalism center at the University of Maryland.

The Missoulian reports that its editor, Kathy Best, will become the first director of the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the university’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism.

The newspaper reports that prior to her three years at the Missoulian, Best served as executive editor of the Seattle Times when the newspaper won two breaking-news Pulitzer Prize awards and two Online Journalism Awards.

The Missoulian reports that Best will oversee about 100 students per semester, including direct center participants and members of the journalism school’s Capitol News Service.

Jim Strauss, the publisher of the western Missouri newspaper, says City Editor Gwen Florio will serve as acting editor during the search for a replacement.

Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</s>A Montana newspaper editor will direct a new journalism center at the University of Maryland.

The Missoulian reports that its editor, Kathy Best, will become the first director of the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the university’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism.

The newspaper reports that prior to her three years at the Missoulian, Best served as executive editor of the Seattle Times when the newspaper won two breaking news Pulitzer Prize awards and two Online Journalism Awards.

The Missoulian reports that Best will oversee about 100 students per semester, including direct center participants and members of the journalism school’s Capitol News Service.

Jim Strauss, the publisher of the western Montana newspaper, says City Editor Gwen Florio will serve as acting editor during the search for a replacement.

——

 This story has been updated to correct the location of The Missoulian.

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The Nation's editor Katrina vanden Heuvel announces that she will step down as editor after 24 years, on June 15, 2019.