Video of Columbia University’s recent conference on opinion journalism in American intellectual history, which was cosponsored by the  Rare Book & Manuscript Library, is available at the Columbia Journalism Review site. Conference speakers included Victor Navasky (former editor and publisher of The Nation, who delivered the keynote), jazz and social critic Stanley Crouch, Dissent editor Michael Kazin, and Bitch Media co-founder Andi Zeisler, among others.

The event also celebrated the presence of the archives of The New Leader magazine at Columbia’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library. From 1924 to today, The New Leader, a social-democratic journal of "news and opinion," has printed significant work by prominent intellectuals on an array of subjects, but it devoted its best energies and much of its editorial space to criticizing the Soviet Union. Originating as the official newspaper of the American Socialist Party, it evolved into a liberal anti-communist magazine that truly found its voice as an untiring adversary of Stalinism.

The Journalism of Opinion Conference Participants

• Introduction: Dean Nicholas Lemann (Henry R. Luce Professor, Columbia Journalism School)
• Keynote: Victor Navasky (Delacorte Professor of Journalism, Columbia Journalism School; Chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review; former editor and publisher of The Nation)

Panel 1: Journalism of Opinion in the Twentieth Century

Moderator: Casey Blake (Columbia University)

• Eric Alterman (CUNY; columnist at The Nation)
• Howard Brick (University of Michigan)
• Rochelle Gurstein (independent scholar)
• Michael Kazin (Georgetown University, co-editor of Dissent)

Panel 2: Journalism of Opinion in the Twenty-First Century

Moderator: Katrina vanden Heuvel (editor and publisher of The Nation)

• Stanley Crouch (columnist at the Daily News)
• Mark Lotto (editorial page, New York Times)
• Bob Neer (co-founder of Blue Mass Group)
• Andi Zeisler (co-founder of Bitch Media)

A Friends of the Libraries event cosponsored by

• Columbia University American Studies Program
• Columbia University Journalism School
• Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library
• Herbert H. Lehman Center for American History at Columbia University