E.J. Dionne, Jr. — noted columnist, author, and public intellectual — will be joining Democracy: A Journal of Ideas as the Chair of the Editorial Committee. Awarded Best New Publication of 2007 by the Independent Press Awards, Democracy has established itself as a source of cutting-edge progressive thinking, and its ideas and writers are poised to shape the Obama era.

“From its very first issue, Democracy made clear it saw itself as the welcoming home for a smart, thoughtful and wide-open debate over the ideas that will shape the next progressive era,” Dionne said. “With imagination and vigor, the magazine has more than kept faith with its promise. It has been open to voices across the center-left — and often beyond. The proposals and arguments that grace its pages are consistently forward-looking and innovative but also highly relevant to our moment. It has been essential reading for me, and it’s a great honor to join Ken Baer, Andrei Cherny, and the members of Democracy‘s Editorial Committee in an enterprise dedicated to clear thinking about reform and renewal.”

“E.J. is one of the most influential progressive voices in America today,” said Kenneth Baer, co-editor of Democracy. “His joining Democracy is a huge vote of confidence in our journal’s importance at this critical moment in American history.”

As Chair of Democracy‘s Editorial Committee, Dionne will provide editorial guidance and help the editors search out and shape the ambitious progressive ideas that have become the journal’s hallmark.

“With progressives ascendant, it’s now incumbent upon us to provide big, bold ideas about how to tackle the huge challenges facing our country,” said Andrei Cherny, co-editor of Democracy.

Dionne’s decision to join the editorial committee is the next big step in Democracy‘s quick growth. Founded in 2005 and launched in 2006 by Kenneth Baer and Andrei Cherny, two thirty-something veterans of the Clinton-Gore White House who had spent their careers straddling the worlds of politics and ideas, Democracy was created to fill an important but then-empty niche: to be the progressive analogue of conservative journals such as Commentary, the Public Interest, and the National Interest. These journals had been the source of the right’s big ideas over three decades and an engine of their political revival after the 1960s. Today, Democracy has nearly 20,000 readers — online and in print — in every state and over 150 countries around the world, and has generated ideas that have made their way into the center of policymaking.

Dionne will start his duties as Chair of the Editorial Committee immediately. Other members of Democracy‘s Editorial Committee include Les Gelb, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Isabel Sawhill, William Galston, Christopher Edley, Robert Reich, Sean Wilentz, Louis Caldera, Theda Skocpol, Elaine Kamarck, and Susan Rice.