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BEGINNING with the January 2007 issue, ownership of COMMENTARY has passed from the American Jewish Committee (AJC), which founded the magazine in 1945 and sponsored it continuously thereafter, to a new nonprofit entity named Commentary, Inc. We thought you might like to know something about the background of this change, and to learn a bit about our plans for the future.
Let us say first what the change does not signify. It was not occasioned by differences of opinion between us and AJC, or indeed by substantive differences of any kind. As we wrote last May in a tribute to AJC on its 100th anniversary, COMMENTARY from the start has enjoyed complete editorial autonomy, a guarantee made over 60 years ago and never breached or amended. For this truly unique gift of intellectual independence, as well as for decades of generous support, our debt of gratitude to AJC is one we remain proud to acknowledge and to commemorate.
There was, however, one previous shift in relations between AJC and COMMENTARY. This occurred in 1990, when the magazine for the first time was asked to assume responsibility for raising independently the funds needed to cover its operating budget, leaving AJC with the lesser financial burden of continuing to provide overhead and various administrative services. In view of that earlier change, the current one...