One of my weekly joys during lockdown has been the rattle of the letterbox on a Thursday or a Friday to mark the arrival of the New Statesman in amidst the usual pile of junk mail and adverts for care homes.
I blogged here last year about how much I appreciated it as a package, not just for the high level political analysis, but the culture writing too. Over the last year that weekly drop has also included some outstanding coverage of the pandemic. At a time when all of the national newspapers I was ever loyal to have gone ever crapper, the Staggers seems to just get better and better. Indeed, in one instance giving a column to a writer who was drummed out of the Times, Philip Collins.
Anyway, this week I've been selected to be "subscriber of the week". I don't win anything, I haven't done anything to achieve it, but I do get to answer a bit of a Q&A in the cool back section of the magazine.
I'm not going to lie, I am dead chuffed about it. It's one of my favourite little corners of the magazine, getting a glimpse into the lives of your fellow readers and what their hinterland is. It comes back to something I've always firmly believed, that any successful media creates an emotional clubbable bond with its readers. It has to be more than a transaction. At the moment, the New Statesman is very much my neck of the woods.
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