Ramparts (magazine)

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Ramparts

Type	Monthly
Format	Magazine

Owner
Publisher	Edward M. Keating
Editor	Robert Scheer, James F. Colaianni
Founded	1962
Political allegiance	Left-wing
Ceased publication	1975
Price	seventy-five cents
Headquarters	San Francisco, CA

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Ramparts was an American political and literary magazine, published from 1962 through 1975.

Founded by Edward Keating, under the influence of editors Warren Hinckle, Robert Scheer, James F. Colaianni, and others Ramparts became associated with the New Left. In contrast to most leftist publications, Ramparts was expensively produced and graphically sophisticated. It reached an audience that may have been put off by the grittier "movement" publications of the time.

Between December 1966 and December 1969 newsstand sales of each Ramparts issue increased from 10,000 to 42,250, and the number of subscribers to the magazine jumped from 87,976 to 244,069. Between December 1969 and December 1970, the number of Ramparts' subscribers increased to 299,937. By July 1967, the New Left magazine was also earning around $13,000 per month from its sale of ad space. A share of the magazine was also owned by New Republic magazine owner Martin Peretz, who became a critic of the New Left a few years later.

The magazine was an early opponent of the Vietnam War. James F. Colaianni, Managing Editor, wrote in the August, 1966 issue, Napalm: A Small Town Diary, the first national article to denounce the use of napalm as a military weapon in the Vietnam War. Ramparts also unearthed the first conspiracy theory about the Kennedy assassination, and in 1967 it revealed that the CIA had backed the National Student Association as part of its Cold War strategy. Ramparts also published Che Guevara's diaries with an introduction by Fidel Castro, and the prison diaries of Eldridge Cleaver, later republished as Soul on Ice.

Former Ramparts editor Robert Scheer remains a prominent left-wing commentator in the US. He was a reporter and later featured columnist in the Los Angeles Times until 2005 and is a regular participant in the weekly NPR radio program "Left, Right and Center". Another Ramparts editor, James Ridgeway, is author of many muckraking books and a regular writer for the Village Voice. Two other former Ramparts editors, David Horowitz and Peter Collier, later underwent political conversions and became neoconservative critics of the left.

The magazine featured discussions of arts and culture as well as global politics. It included contributions by artists such as Allen Ginsberg, Hunter S. Thompson, Peter Ustinov and John Lennon.