World is a high-quality Christian newsmagazine published from an Evangelical Protestant perspective. It’s not an obscure or unpolished publication by any means. Yet how often do you see it on newsstands and in libraries? True, bookstores and libraries can’t subscribe to every magazine out there, but if you’re like me, you find a dearth of magazines, religious and political, published from a conservative point of view. I remember visiting the magazine rack at the Borders in downtown Washington DC a few years ago, and finding a multiplicity — 15 or 20 — of arcane New Age and left-wing religious titles, but on First Things and Crisis from the orthodox side. You cannot tell me that there’s no market in Washington for First Things and Crisis (which is published there), but there is for The Vegetarian Zoroastrian Glue-Sniffer Review (OK, I made that up, but it’s not far off the mark).

Since then, I’ve paid attention to this on my travels, and I find the same thing in chain bookstores all over the country. Anyway, this is what happened when World’s Joel Belz went to his well-stocked local library, and asked the people in charge standards were used to decide which magazines belong on the shelves there.

I’d like to write about this phenomenon, both regarding libraries and bookstore magazine racks. Anybody have any experience like Belz’s? Write me at [email protected].