Magazine aimed at 'reasonable people who give a damn' purges editorial staff

GOOD Magazine, a quarterly journal and website dedicated to "pushing the world forward," has abruptly laid off almost its entire editorial staff.

One discharged staff member, who did not want their name revealed at this point, told Raw Story the purge included "everyone except the head designer, the assistant editor, and the education editor (whose work is underwritten by U of Phoenix)."

According to Poynter.org, among those who lost their jobs on Friday were Executive Editor Ann Friedman and Lifestyle Editor Amanda Hess. Friedman, who had held her position only since March of last year, had previously worked as a deputy editor at The American Prospect and had blogged at Feministing.

When GOOD was launched in 2006, the New York Timesprofiled its founder, 26-year-old multimillionaire heir Ben Goldhirsh, who put the project together with his prep school and college friends. Although Goldhirsh acknowledged that neither he nor his friends were in the habit of reading serious magazines, he insisted that his generation was in need of "a free press for the critical idealist.”

"We are the reasonable people who give a damn,"the magazine's website states. "No dogma. No party lines. No borders. We care about what works--what is sustainable, prosperous, productive, creative, and just--for all of us and each of us. This isn’t easy, but we are not afraid to fail. We’ll figure it out as we go."

It's possible that there were never as many affluent young idealists with a taste for cutting-edge infographics as Goldhirsh might have hoped. Or perhaps in 2012 there are no longer any "reasonable people who give a damn." Either way, it appears that GOOD is struggling.

Photo of Ben Goldhirsh in 2006 from GOOD.is via Flickr