by robtherobber | 2025-06-18 11:53:58+00:00
I'm terrible at selling stuff, in fact I quite hate it. But this request is so unexpected that I feel I can at least give it a try.

A. The design for the print editions (https://jacobin.com/issue/speculation).

It's distinctive, carefully laid-out content with smartly used negative space, uses fresh and modern colour palettes, bold typography, moving away from the “Courier New typeface”. (For font nerds, Courier was designed in the mid-50s as a typewriter face for IBM [0] and has been adopted by many publishers because it was considered cool and was in the public domain.)

For visuals, Reimecke Forbes' fresh style and creative direction is clearly a winner: the editorial illustrations are beautiful and artistic, as are the rich and playful infographics and data visualisations, many created via freelance art commissions. In fact, the magazine owes much of its success to the design of its print editions; as this article states, "It’s the single most gorgeous and visually clever magazine currently being published in print" [1]. It's argued that creating a beautiful object is essential to the magazine's business model, which centrally relies on a small base of premium subscribers [2] and because the majority of its content is available for free [3].

I quite like website as well. It's making full use of the space, the choice of colours is to my taste (bar the intense red in the footer navigation menu), and the content is smartly structured on the page for the various site sections, such as the author [4] and taxonomy pages [5].

B. The magazine's social and political analyses

Whilst US readers are their main audience, they do look at global events and often address political and social issues and challenges on a country basis. Depending on where you're based, there's a good chance that you'll find something of (political) interest.

One may not necessarily share the left perspectives for whatever reasons, but the quality of the writing is rather good and they don't mess around with their analyses: for the most part they are rigorous, historically grounded critiques of neoliberalism [6] and current events, little to no populist fluff or shallow takes, and employing clarity of language. They write a lot about democracy and its processes, wealth inequality, the power of mass protest, environmentalism, healthcare, collective action/unions, economics, politics, the BS of philanthropy [7], and building societies that work for all, not just for the rich.

The magazine is considered to be the most relevant and important publication of the American political left today – "timely, globally oriented, and topically eclectic" [1]. Described by the Nieman Journalism Lab as a journal of "democratic socialist thought" [2], the magazine is involved with projects beyond publishing analytical essays, for example coordinating a nonfiction series via Verso Books. The shared commitment of the founder and the co-editors to advancing a critique of liberalism that is free of obscurantist academic theory or “cheap hooks” also matters [8].

People like Chomsky recommend it ("a bright light in dark times") [9] and professor Corey Robin says [1] in Vox Mag that "it’s completely in-your-face in its style and tone; it has this name, Jacobin, that just seems designed to push people’s buttons.” The article goes on to say that "Jacobin isn’t a traditional journalistic outfit, and purposely so. Seth Ackerman, one of the magazine’s earliest contributors, says he and Sunkara (the founder) wanted to explicitly avoid what the latter called 'rosy reports from the front'." Sunkara's approach is "put your ideas out there, write as clearly as possible, and let it be challenged," which I quite like.

The editorial standards are commendable, in my opinion: there's no clickbait, no "both sides" nonsense when holding power to account.

One can certainly disagree with many of the things written in it, but it would be hard to deny that its content is intellectually stimulating and informative, often providing a fresh view over the political situation in the US, Europe, and Latin America, as well as plenty of historical context that helps the general public understand how we got here and perhaps offer some lessons from the past.

[Message continues, as there's a limit imposed by HN]