Opening Shot

C JR’s debut was mostly greeted with “bouquets,” though a few readers, our second issue noted, “reacted with unblemished hostility.” You can’t please everyone, especially in this job. Still, we are alive. Pop a cork and consider the times—some too recent to admit—we flirted with death. Toast our many reanimators, who emerged when cjr needed them. And boy, have we needed them. In an issue full of hosannas, let this space provide some balance: there was the foundation that stanched insolvency, and, two years later, was told the circulation numbers had been cooked. An editor was dismissed after a year of late issues. (From the publisher’s signed kiss-off: he “had incredible and continuing trouble in managing things and people.” Yikes.) Maybe we should stop there. But before draining that glass, pour some out for others—MORE; Buncombe; Thorn; Press On; The Unsatisfied Man; Brill’s Content; the Chicago, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Oregon, and Hawaii journalism reviews—that didn’t make it. And drink to the new voices, online and elsewhere, keeping the press honest. To the next fifty. 

The Editors are the staffers of the Columbia Journalism Review.