Introducing
New Lines is an American magazine for the best ideas and writing from around the world. We specialize in long-form essays and reportage that aim to make the past relevant and the present grounded in history.
We began as a global affairs magazine focused primarily on the Middle East because we felt that this region, for so long the center of U.S. foreign policy, needed far more coverage from those who have lived and worked there. Many of our staff cut their teeth covering revolutions, wars and terrorism across different countries in the Middle East — often from the perspective of someone born and raised in places on which they were reporting.
Over time, we expanded our remit. Continued upheaval at home and abroad has convinced us of the necessity of journalism and storytelling produced by people fluent in the language and culture, with experience and deep knowledge of the context about the place they’re writing about — whether that is a front line in Ukraine, a city in China’s Xinjiang region, a province in Syria or a town in the United States.
Too often, traditional media have treated the world not just as a foreign story but as something inherently foreign – complex and incomprehensible. And this was because of a fundamental lack of knowledge about the places on which they were reporting. Here in the U.S., even domestic coverage of places outside major American cities can fall into this trap. At New Lines, we understand that no story is truly foreign in today’s interconnected world and that each needs an approach that is both globally minded and grounded in local perspective. This premise guided development of our remarkable journalistic and scholarly acumen as reflected through new daily essays, and our ongoing expansion beyond the Middle East, building our community and gaining loyalty from audiences from South Asia and Western Europe to Africa and North America.
We are driven by extraordinary storytelling, sharp ideas, original scholarship and the curiosity to look beyond the daily news and headlines. We push our writers to extend their focus far outside the world’s main political and economic capitals or its most attention-grabbing conflicts of the moment. This has been key to our formula for providing readers with a fuller understanding of the world. We focus on the human element in every story, no matter where it comes from, and strive to tell it as authentically as possible.
Our mission is embodied in the New Lines name: to be the local magazine for today’s interconnected world, always aiming to shift and move the lines beyond an often-stale narrative.
Welcome to New Lines, a local magazine for the world.