Why The American Conservative Purged Its Own Publisher

It became obvious to me that financial pressures were a leading factor behind this growing reluctance to publish controversial material, and after I received my copy of TAC’s 2012 federal tax return, I was struck by the large growth in operating expenses. The existing staffing levels seemed completely disproportionate to TAC’s actual output.

Leaving aside the postings of its regular bloggers, TAC usually published just a single main article each day on its website plus a couple of short blog posts, with the material generally provided by outside paid contributors or sometimes even syndicated columnists. It seemed incomprehensible to me how this minimal workload required seven full-time editorial and business employees, or what most of them did each day. This was certainly a larger staff than had been necessary during the years when TAC published a meticulously edited 35-40 page print magazine every two weeks, with all the attendant effort of meeting strict deadlines in article solicitation, editing, layout, and cover design.

TAC’s print issue frequency had dropped to just six times per year and the website had become the primary means of its distribution, so it was obvious that staffing levels and costs could be drastically reduced without loss of output or quality, bringing expenses into much closer alignment with likely donations. In mid-May I was alarmed to discover that no significant new contributions had arrived since January. Therefore, I soon began pressing this issue with Allison, McCarthy, and my fellow board members. But people hate to admit that their aggressive growth strategy of the last year or two had ultimately proven unsuccessful.

Ideological organizations and publications often confront this exact dilemma. They can remain small, poor, and fiercely independent or they can take the path of growing in size and expense, hoping for greater impact and influence, but usually forcing them to make their peace with the wealthy sources of establishmentarian funding. My own opinion was that since American political journalism already contained such a vast number of different media outlets in the latter category, TAC should avoid merely becoming another one, but I can understand why others might see things differently.

During this heated dispute over TAC’s budgetary problems and strategic direction, I had also been completing my quantitative analysis of urban crime, and I finally submitted my draft at the end of May. If my American Pravda article had made Allison very nervous for its possible impact upon donors, my Race and Crime article must have terrified him, coming as it did soon after the Jason Richwine Affair but several weeks before the George Zimmerman trial eventually pushed that exact same subject to the top of every media outlet in America.

Even more importantly, Allison and my other opponents in the budgetary dispute surely saw denouncing my article as a perfect means of deflecting my financial arguments without addressing them, while undercutting my influence with certain of TAC’s board members and major donors. An accusation of “racial insensitivity” has become an extremely powerful political trump card to play against one’s adversaries in our society, not merely among liberals but these days among conservatives as well.

And that’s the story of why “Pat Buchanan’s Magazine” purged its publisher for submitting a Public Interest-style article analyzing urban crime in America.

Related Reading:

• The Myth of Hispanic Crime
• Race/IQ: The Jason Richwine Affair
• Our American Pravda
• Race and Crime in America