Ramparts (magazine) - History

History

Founded by Edward M. Keating as a Catholic literary quarterly, the magazine was closely associated with the New Left. Executive editor Warren Hinckle hired Robert Scheer to replace James F. Colaianni as managing editor when Colaianni was promoted to Assistant Publisher. Contributors included Murray Rothbard, Noam Chomsky, Cesar Chavez, Seymour Hersh, Tom Hayden, Angela Davis, Jonathan Kozol, Todd Gitlin, Sol Stern, Tariq Ali, Alexander Cockburn, Christopher Hitchens, Saul Landau, David Welsh, and John Beecher. Unlike most leftist publications, Ramparts was expensively produced and graphically sophisticated. It reached an audience that may have been put off by the grittier "movement" publications of the time.

Between December 1966 and December 1969, newsstand sales increased from 10,000 to 42,250, and the number of subscribers jumped from 87,976 to 244,069. Between December 1969 and December 1970, the number of Ramparts' subscribers increased to 299,937. By July 1967, the magazine was also earning around $13,000 per month from its advertising sales. A share of the magazine was owned by New Republic magazine owner Martin Peretz, who became a critic of the New Left a few years later.

Ramparts was an early opponent of the Vietnam War. Its April 1966 cover article concerned the Michigan State University Group, a technical assistance program in South Vietnam that Ramparts claimed was a front for CIA covert operations. In August 1966, managing editor James F. Colaianni wrote the first national article denouncing the U.S. use of napalm in that conflict. One of the magazine's most controversial covers depicted the hands of four of its editors holding burning draft cards, with their names clearly visible. Ramparts also unearthed the first conspiracy theory about the Kennedy assassination, and in 1967, editor Sol Stern's interview revealed that the CIA had backed the National Student Association as part of its Cold War strategy. The magazine published Che Guevara's diaries, with an introduction by Fidel Castro, and the prison diaries of Eldridge Cleaver, later republished as Soul On Ice. Cleaver was a Ramparts editor when he witnessed a confrontation between Huey Newton and a police officer outside the magazine's office in February 1967; he soon became the Black Panther Party's minister of information.

In June 1972, the magazine printed the wiring schematics necessary to create a mute box (a variant of the Blue box). All sold issues were recalled or seized from newsstands by police and officials of Pacific Bell, causing financial loss to the magazine.

The magazine's temporary shift to a biweekly format and an expensive trip to cover the 1968 Democratic National Convention led to financial instability, as did a drop in subscriptions. With a reduced budget and a smaller staff, Ramparts continued publication, but finally closed its doors for good in 1975.