Somewhat inspired by this thread Vote here: Most irritating mainstream magazine, I thought it might be a kick to see what people think is the most thought provoking/best written magazine published today.
I personally think that both Atlantic Monthly and The Economist are both well written and thought provoking publications.
Here are some great titles:
Harper’s
The Baffler
Beer Frame
Dishwasher (is it still around?)
Gauntlet
The Nation
Temp Slave
McSweeny’s Quarterly
I like Harper’s.
DISCOVER
SKEPTICAL INQUIRER or SKEPTIC
BIG REEL (just because I’m an old movie geek)
Tried and true, The New Yorker rarely disappoints.
MeThinks Mother Jones does the trick. The Nation and The Onion are also a delight.
Swank
Another vote for the New Yorker.
ah, c’mon!
National Geographic!
…adventure, science, anthropology, fresh fruit.
Adding votes for Discover and New Yorker. I also like Adventure…sorta like the old Men’s Journal back when it was good.
Votes here for The Economist, plus Private Eye and (once you get past the obvious bias) The New Statesman.
Loathe as I am to give credit to a magazine with that title, The New Yorker does do it right.
I’ve only started reading National Geographic in the last few years, and the articles are usually as good as the photography. (Which magazine has the largest ratio of subscribers to actual readers, Nat’l Geo or Playboy?)
My favorite, though it’s really a paper rather than a magazine, is High Country News, especially their syndicated columnists, who are known as Writers on the Range. As the OP asks, the columns are consistently well written and thought provoking. It’s environmentalism by the people who are live in the environment they write about, as opposed to the “fly-in/figure it all out/fly-out” stuff you get from, say, Outside or Mother Jones. Try it:
http://www.hcn.org/wotr/
Teen Beat is, like, so cool.
<runs like hell>
I just subscribed to a new rag called “Brain, Child”
It’s like Salon’s “Mothers Who Think” but a whole magazine of it. Alas, it comes out bimonthly.
Shoot, can’t find the right website.
Scientific American
I’ve been a Harper’s fan for years. I’m in the middle of a three-year subscription. I even sent them a résumé—no, I actually brought my résumé into their lobby in December 1996. They didn’t call. I did the same for Mad, offering my services as a proofreader. They didn’t call, either, but a couple of months later, the cover of “Maad” magazine announced, “Proofreader wanted.” Coïncidence? Probably… but I like to think I inspired something.
Biotop—Beer Frame is one of the greatest magazines out there. I’d certainly call it thought-provoking. Murder Can Be Fun isn’t what I’d call thought-provoking, but certainly worth a glace or two.
The Nation? The Baffler? Mother Jones?
C’mon people. See? Stoidela was dead wrong in supposing liberals to be outnumbered on the SDMB.
I’d suggest National Review and The American Enterprise as very excellent magazines.
Also, I’ll second The Economist. Though it keeps calling itself a “newspaper”, it looks like a magazine to me.
Scratch1300 wrote: C’mon people. See? Stoidela was dead wrong in supposing liberals to be outnumbered on the SDMB.
It’s not that. It’s just that conservatives don’t read.
Scientific American and National Geographic beat all else so, unless someone else agrees with me, we can consider this uestion conclusively answered.
Oh, and also Smithsonian magazine is consistently interesting and well-written.