Reason
50 Years Ago
Joanna Andreasson
Behold the very first pages of the debut issue of Reason magazine, published in the summer of 1968. With hand-drawn masthead lettering and typewritten text, founding editor Lanny Friedlander previews the content on the pages to follow—reflections on violence, racism, and poverty, three subjects that have continued to be of great and terrible concern in the decades since—and introduces to the world the journalistic philosophy that is to guide his creation. "Others preferred to be incomprehensible and incoherent," he writes. "We don't. Others preferred to ignore your mind. We won't." For 50 years, the writers, editors, and artists of Reason have sought to make good on the promises first articulated in this inaugural issue.
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