How the Washington Monthly Mentors the Next Generation of Leaders

In 2012, a diminutive, whip-smart, newly minted college graduate named Lina Kahn was trying to find a home for the serious policy journalism she aspired to produce. Impressed by her research on the airline industry, I proposed that we co-write a piece for the Washington Monthly. In it, we showed how airline deregulation, though still widely celebrated among policy wonks and the mainstream business media, had turned into a giant policy failure, leading to higher prices and degraded service, particularly across what had come to be known as “flyover” America.  

Soon, I was working with Lina again as editor as she went on to produce a series of key articles for the Monthly that challenged received “neo-liberal” ideas about how the U.S. political economy worked. For example, at a time when most people believed that America remained a beacon of entrepreneurialism, Lina collaborated with a colleague at the New America Foundation, Barry Lynn, to show that the per capita rate of business formation had been falling in the U.S. since the 1970s as giant corporations dominated more and more of the economy. Similarly, she produced stunning investigative reporting showing how nominally independent chicken farmers now operated at the mercy of giant meat-packing monopolies.  

Lina, of course, went on to do greater things. After graduating from Yale Law School and publishing a hugely influential law review article on Amazon’s monopoly power, she led a massive Congressional investigation into corporate concentration. From there, she served as chair at the Federal Trade Commission, where she has spearheaded a wholesale revolution in the U.S. competition policy for the last four years. At the Washington Monthly, we take pride in having had the chance to mentor Lina early in her career, as we have with many others who have gone on to make a big difference in journalism and government.  

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