The longstanding conservative magazine The National Review is reportedly planning to become a non-profit organization.
“We’re a mission and a cause, not a profit-making business,” the magazine’s editor, Rich Lowry, told Politico on Tuesday.
Until now, the magazine had been a not-for-profit business since its founding in 1955.
In 2005, founder William F. Buckley told the New York Sun that, by that point, the National Review had lost $25 million over 50 years, around $500,000 a year.
“About the cost of one third of one torpedo,” Buckley quipped.
On Tuesday, Lowry boasted to Politico of the magazine’s 150,000 subscribers and said that non-profit status would allow the magazine to do more fundraising and, significantly, to allow donors to give tax-deductible contributions.
“Most similar publications–from Commentary on the right to Mother Jones on the Left–are non-profits, a reflection of the fact that publishing a serious opinion magazine has never been a profitable business, and never will be,” Lowry told the site.