The Baffler

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The Baffler (founded 1988 by editors Thomas Frank and Keith White) is a cultural-political criticism journal headquartered in Chicago, Illinois and sold at bookstores across the US, Canada and the UK. It had subscribers all over the world. It was known for critiquing "business culture and the culture business" and for having exposed the grunge speak hoax perpetrated on The New York Times. One famous and much-republished article, "The Problem with Music" by Steve Albini, exposed the inner-workings of the music business during the indie rock heyday. A self-described goal of the journal is to "blunt the cutting edge". Its models are the satire and cultural criticism of H.L. Mencken and the progressive journalism of Randolph Bourne.

The magazine has always been published sporadically (two issues were published in 1997, followed by two in 1999), especially after the Chicago office of the Baffler was destroyed in a fire on April 25, 2001. (Baffler 14 was in press at the time, and only three new issues have since emerged.)

As of January 2007, the magazine's website has been disabled. The latest issue, number 17, was published in the late winter of 2006.

[edit] Collections

Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from The Baffler. Edited by Thomas Frank and Matt Weiland. ISBN 0-393-31673-4.
Boob Jubilee: The Cultural Politics of the New Economy (Salvos from The Baffler). Edited by Thomas Frank and David Mulcahey. ISBN 0-393-32430-3