EDITORIAL
New World Publications are radical in their approach. But it is important to define this radicalism, and to note that it is at no point identifiable with any existing body of political doctrine. It is not, for example, to anticipate the most extravagant of associations, to be identified with Socialism, Liberalism, Radicalism, or Communism. Rather, we envision in these publications a group of journals whose contributors hold this in common: that the exercise of reason can usually be expected to promote human progress. For us, therefore, radicalism is nothing more nor less than a sustained application of thought to the matters that concern us deeply. We begin at a position free of restrictive doctrine; we shall arrive wherever our own uninhibited thinking carries us.
Being radical in this sense, then, these publications make no claim to be “non-partisan” or “impartial”. It is our experience that periodicals which make these claims too often prove to have no opinions, or to be too insincere to draw the logical conclusions from arguments presented; or, simply, they avoid all issues by publishing everything that is frivolous and trivial, to the exclusion of those matters that affect human lives.
We expect to emerge with quite definite positions as we attempt to disavow the mischievous conception that only trivia can be entertaining, by basing the entertainment we offer our readers on the best possible grounds – that is, discussions of those things which matter to people.
In keeping with our magazines’ democratic origins and character we seek to attract the widest possible range of contributors who have anything to say about anything. And in keeping with our aim to maintain these journals as organs of sane and rational appraisal we will limit publication to articles which are not mere effusions of prejudice, or tendentious rationalisations of entrenched values, but earnest and honest attempts to face our common problems squarely and intelligently.
In deciding what to publish we shall be guided by our understanding of the role of journalism in a free society – a society which, though it does not here exist, we must continue to regard as our true point of reference.
And this concept of the role of journalism is, that the function of the press is ideally to provide a democratic device by which the individuals in the society can submit their reasoned views to public scrutiny, and defend them if necessary, so that the society as a whole may move progressively closer to the sane conclusions acceptable to a majority of normal citizens.
Managing Editors: George Beckford, Lloyd Best
Literary Editor: Dennis Scott
Editorial Advisory Board: James Millette, Miles Fitzpatrick, Edwin Carrington, Mervyn Alleyne, Adrian Espinet, David de Caires, Noel Boissiere, Gloria Lannaman, Roy Augier, Erm Davis
