Helen Pluckrose Joins Erich Prince to Tell Areo’s Story

“…Areo is bipartisan; it doesn’t take a side. I personally find that I agree with about 25% of the pieces I put out. The other 75%, I think they’re good, but I’m not convinced by their arguments ultimately.”

Helen Pluckrose is the editor of Areo Magazine, a web-based magazine founded in 2016 by Malhar Mali. Ms. Pluckrose attracted considerable media attention in 2018 for her role in the so-called “Sokal Squared” academic hoax, in which she and two other authors submitted fake papers to academic journals, some of which were published. This interview with Merion West and Erich Prince, however, focuses on her work at Areo and its commitment to publishing thoughtful, evidence-based pieces by authors from various spots on the political spectrum. Ms. Pluckrose also discusses some of the challenges and considerations of running a magazine in the digital age.

To get started, Helen, I was reading an interview with your magazine’s founder, Malhar Mali, and he described founding the magazine on November 22, 2016 and being extremely frustrated by what was going on in the media landscape with HuffPost on one end and Breitbart on the other. He talked about wanting to create a publication that cut through that partisanship in the media. I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about how that mission has stayed in place since you’ve taken over as editor.

I intended fully to carry on what Malhar Mali was doing because he wanted to be very much a bipartisan publication. He wanted some conservative ideas, some leftist ideas, but he just really wanted good arguments with evidence that were well-written. So I had tried to carry on that when he couldn’t keep up [his work with] Areo any longer. I took it over because I couldn’t bear for that to die, so I hope I have stayed true to that and I think he thinks I have. He’s still around.

I was very interested to read how young he was when he founded the magazine.