As regular readers of this newsletter know, Discourse is the home of intelligent and innovative political, economic and cultural analysis that showcases great ideas and great writers. And now it’ll be easier to access than ever before: I’m pleased to announce that Discourse has moved to Substack.
The new site launched this morning. When you have a chance, please take a look; I think you’ll like what you see. In spite of this move, the important things you love about the magazine will stay the same. For example, Discourse will still be free to everyone. And, as with our old website, you’ll be able to access every essay we’ve ever published. What’s more, if you’ve bookmarked the old site or if you click on a link to a piece published before today’s move, you should automatically be redirected to the homepage or to the article on our new Substack. (If you aren’t, please let us know!) Most importantly, every weekday, we’ll continue to publish new, interesting and thought-provoking articles by some of the brightest thinkers and writers around.
Given all the things that will stay the same, why have we gone to the trouble of moving to Substack? Thanks to you, dear reader, we already have a large and wonderful audience for our work. Still, going forward, we’d like to do everything we can to reach even more people. As Martin Gurri recently wrote in Discourse, Substack has become a venue for much of the best journalism in America, helping many talented writers to attract a large audience. We think the platform will give us the same opportunity to reach and serve more readers. It's that simple.
What will change? Along with our new website, you’ll see some differences in the way we reach out to you. Every week, we’ve sent you an email containing a list of our articles published in the past week, plus a few selections from our archive. That’s about to change … in a good way. Not only will our weekly newsletter continue to offer you a list of just-published articles and selections from our archive, but it will also contain a short letter from me or one of my colleagues on our editorial team, giving you our thoughts about what we’ve been publishing or what’s happening in the news, as well as some brief notes on what we’re reading, listening to or watching. I hope you like this new feature and enjoy getting to know us a little better. Finally, in addition to receiving our weekly newsletter, you’ll now receive every Discourse essay in your email inbox as soon as it’s published.
Discourse was launched just over three years ago, on September 29, 2020. On our first day, I published an essay explaining to readers that our magazine would defend time-tested liberal values such as pluralism, free markets and freedom of conscience and speech, while also looking to meet the challenges of the day by encouraging “the free exchange of ideas in the hope of getting to a productive truth.” No matter where Discourse lives online, that remains and will remain our mission—something I touch on in a new essay I’ve just published today.
On behalf of my fellow editors, Christina Behe and Jen Tiedemann, I want to thank you for subscribing to this newsletter and, of course, for reading Discourse. Whether you’ve been with us since the beginning or just discovered us yesterday, we’re extremely grateful and gratified to have you along on the journey.
As we begin our fourth year, we’re looking forward to offering you even more and better content from both our existing stable of terrific writers as well as some new contributors. I’ll have more to say about this in the coming months. Until then, thanks and see you next week.
David Masci
Editor-in-Chief
New This Week
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, "Government Efforts To Negotiate Drug Price Reductions Will Likely Do More Harm Than Good"
Brent Skorup, "The Big AI Risk We're Not Talking About"
Josh Robbins, "Oppenheimer's Unlikely Indictment of the Administrative State"
Weifeng Zhong, "China’s Broken Ladder Will Halt Further Growth"
Bryan Gentry, "Personal Choice Can Tame the Mental Health Crisis Blamed on Social Media"
From the Archives
Michael Farren, "A Pro-Union Vision for the 21st Century and Beyond"
Amelia Pang, "The China Challenge: The Stain of Forced Labor on Nike Shoes"
Will Rinehart, "We Need an Abundance Agenda"