Myron Kolatch (born 1929) is an American magazine editor, who served as managing editor and then executive editor of ''
The New Leader'' from 1960 to its closure in 2006.
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Background
Kolatch was born on September 26, 1929, in the United States; his parents were also born in the USA.
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Career
During the Korean War
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Korean War
, partof = the Cold War and the Korean conflict
, image = Korean War Montage 2.png
, image_size = 300px
, caption = Clockwise from top: ...
, Kolatch served in the United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...
(1951-1953).
In 1953, Kolatch joined the staff of ''The New Leader'' magazine (1923-2006), long run by Sol Levitas (who, among other things, was a member of the American Committee for Cultural Freedom). In 1957, he was an editor. In 1960, he became managing editor; in 1961, he became executive editor.[
Assuming leadership of the magazine, Kolatch also inherited a scandal. ''The New Leader'' was co-publishing with ]Farrar Straus
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger Williams Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. FSG is known for publishing literary books, and its authors have won numerous awards, including Pulitzer ...
an anti-Communist
Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when the United States and th ...
book of essays. Book of the Month Club
Book of the Month (founded 1926) is a United States subscription-based e-commerce service that offers a selection of five to seven new hardcover books each month to its members. Books are selected and endorsed by a panel of judges, and members ...
had selected''Strategy of Deception: A Study of Worldwide Communist Tactics'', edited by Jeane J. Kirkpatrick. Then, it became known, the book had received secret funding from the United States Information Agency
The United States Information Agency (USIA), which operated from 1953 to 1999, was a United States agency devoted to " public diplomacy". In 1999, prior to the reorganization of intelligence agencies by President George W. Bush, President Bil ...
. Although Kirkpatrick was serving at the time as "consultant for various Government agencies," she claimed no knowledge of the secret funding.
Kolatch hired Diane Ravitch
Diane Silvers Ravitch (born July 1, 1938) is a historian of education, an educational policy analyst, and a research professor at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Previously, she was a U.S. A ...
as a writer; other writers included Daniel Bell
Daniel Bell (May 10, 1919 – January 25, 2011) was an American sociologist, writer, editor, and professor at Harvard University, best known for his contributions to the study of post-industrialism. He has been described as "one of the leading A ...
and Nathan Glazer. He also hired Stanley Edgar Hyman as book reviewer with a regular column called "Writers and Writing."
In 1963, TIME magazine describe the magazine as "a Manhattan-based biweekly with a circulation of only 28,500, wields influence out of all proportion to its size."[
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In 1965, the magazine received some funding from the Tamiment Library
The Tamiment Library is a research library at New York University that documents radical and left history, with strengths in the histories of communism, socialism, anarchism, the New Left, the Civil Rights Movement, and utopian experiments. The ...
after the sale of its Tamiment camp.[
Kolatch remained executive editor until the magazine's closure in 2006.][
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Personal life
On politics, during a 2007 interview, Koltach said, "I have an uneasy feeling that Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who holds the office of president of Russia. Putin has Russia under Vladimir Putin, served continuously as president or Prime Minis ...
may be a twenty-first century variety of Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...
."[
On publishing, during the same interview, Kolatch said: ]Yes, there is and that is one of the reasons we did it as a PDF
Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
n ''The New Leader'' website so that you could print it and have it in your hand. Since I was a kid I was very interested in the whole growth and development of typography and moveable type, and I was in print shops, so I care a lot about graphic design. I care about the appearance of the magazine, and I don't want anybody messing with it.
Works
After ''The New Leaders reportage on Yugoslavian writer Mihajlo Mihajlov landed him in 1964, Kolatch wrote a foreword to his book, published in 1966.[
* ''Moscow Summer'' by Mihajlo Mihajlov with foreword by Myron Kolatch (1966)
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See also
* '' The New Leader''
References
1929 births
Living people
20th-century American writers
American magazine editors
American male journalists
20th-century American journalists
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