Santa Barbara publishing entrepreneur and philanthropist Sara Miller McCune announced this week the launch of a national magazine and Web site in her name that focuses on providing well-researched solutions to society’s most serious problems.
The magazine will begin with a circulation of 100,000 that includes opinion leaders from government, academia, business, philanthropy and journalism in the United States and Canada. The Web site, Miller-McCune.com, publishes a daily stream of policy-related articles and blogs, as well as all the content from the print magazine, Miller-McCune.
The Miller-McCune editorial team is headed by editor-in-chief John Mecklin, former editor of High Country News, an award-winning magazine covering the politics and environment of the American West; and online editor Michael Todd, former business editor of the Santa Barbara News-Press.
“In an age of fact-free spin, blowhard punditry and abject truthiness, I honestly think there is a huge potential audience for well-researched solutions provided in an engaging way that doesn’t descend into happy-talk or ‘good news,’” Mecklin wrote in the magazine’s premiere issue.
Miller-McCune and Miller-McCune.com are published by the Miller-McCune Center for Research, Media and Public Policy, a nonprofit public benefit foundation that employs seven other full-time staff members and one fellow in its journalism program.
“Miller-McCune will focus on significant research and researchers, explaining what they offer in practical options for dealing with pressing social problems, here in the U.S. and around the world,” said McCune, now the chairwoman of Sage Publications, a leading international publisher of academic journals, references and books for professionals in many fields.
“Our goal is to acknowledge the issues and promote discussion of viable solutions, leaving purely political rhetoric, sound bites and private interests behind.”
McCune and her late husband, George, founded Sage Publications in 1965. Sage is providing lead support for the center.
McCune supports a wide range of research and scholarship projects in the social sciences, medicine, engineering and humanities, through Sage Publications. She is also president of the McCune Foundation, which provides funding for grass-roots and social building community programs in Central California, and the Miller-McCune Foundation, a nonprofit corporation dedicated to disseminating research for society’s benefit. She also has contributed to many arts and cultural projects in the Santa Barbara area, including, most recently, the Granada Theater restoration project.