Why fund The New Critic?

The New Critic is a non-political, non-ideological magazine dedicated to developing extraordinary gen z writers and addressing the pressing questions of young people in the U.S. No one in the world has more experience and connections among gen z writers than the New Critic editors. We match our authors to their subjects, and we extract from them their most thorough and ambitious work. Our writers represent the future of journalism and criticism in America, and our ambition is to be a new kind of New Yorker for gen z. Our essays are free, and we’re invested in using Substack’s newsletter/social media infrastructure to distribute our work, meeting our readers where they are: on the internet. While other young creatives migrate to audio-visual and shortform content, we continue to publish longform writing to supply the kind of serious reporting and rigorous thinking our generation demands.

Exemplary New Critic Essays

• Owen Yingling’s “The Great Zombification” on AI use in universities

• Rufus Knuppel’s “p(doom)” on prediction markets as ideology and worldview

• Josie Barboriak’s “Good Reading, Good Thinking, Good Writing” on charismatic criticism 

• Zayd Vlach’s “End Times” on Matthew Gasda’s playwriting workshop

What Are You Funding?

These essays only scratch the surface of the New Critic’s potential. Unfunded, we are able to send writers on assignment only if they cover their own travel expenses. The New Critic Longform Reporting Fund allows us to commission the best writers we know, send them out into the world, and edit their work for perfect clarity and thoroughness.

We’ve worked with Austin Chen to fund a batch of intensive longform reporting projects related to EA and AI safety, including:

1. The schism at frontier labs over open weight models and regulation

2. The charitable windfall of the Anthropic IPO for the EA community

3. An intellectual history of the tech blogosphere and its readership

Half of Austin’s grant goes to his thematic interests (EA/AI safety), and half will go toward supporting the general operations of the magazine.

$5,000 fully funds the commission, travel, lodging, and editorial overhead required to produce one essay with intensive reporting. If you’re interested in supporting a specific project or batch of projects that need funding (e.g. a batch of essays on internet anthropology or a profile of Luigi Mangione), contact us to see our list of potential assignments. These essays only need a sponsor to propel them into existence, and we’re happy to credit funders in our posts.

Our email is editors@thenewcritic.com.