To Our Readers,
In autumn of 2019, a band of adventurers believed there was room for a lively alternative journal of NH culture, politics, opinion and history. We established the Granite State Observer. We envisioned an on line magazine supplemented by periodic hard copy editions. With our exquisite sense of timing, the GSO began amidst the 2019-20 NH primary season, and ran smack into a once-in-a-hundred-years pandemic which closed far better established enterprises than our own. We produced two well received hard copy editions, just prior to the 2020 November and primary elections. We churned out book reviews, editorials, interviews, humor and historical pieces, and examined Granite State politics and culture. No less than The Economist (we are sure inadvertently) borrowed one of our concepts for a magazine cover. Our early warnings about serious anti-democratic impulses in the MAGA movement proved prescient. Then we offended the other side with a sympathetic look at Biker Culture, and the alienated traditionalist Granite State working class. We helped Granite State progressives sort out whether to reach for Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, and we gave William Weld’s doomed primary challenge to Donald Trump more extensive and sympathetic treatment than he received in his home state.
This was indeed an adventure for us. Our publisher had substantial journalism and public affairs experience, but was a refugee from the manual typewriter age, and he mostly edited the site from his smart phone, on breaks from graveyard shift job he had “retired” to. We were headquartered in an old beauty salon, with no running water. After the pandemic pauses, the publisher had to recover from a heart attack. This past spring, one of our co-founders passed away. Louis Amico was the source of many of the foundational ideas for this project. We’ll take it from here, Comic Book Guy.
