Ben Wyskida is Director of Publicity for The Nation Magazine. Before leading publicity and syndication at The Nation, Ben directed Communications at Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and Design for Social Impact. Ben's writing has appeared in/on Mother Jones, Yes Magazine, Alternet and PinkoMag.com, as well as Huffington Post.

Blog Entries by Ben Wyskida

Exclusive: The First Excerpt from "Going Rogue"

22 Comments | Posted September 28, 2009 | 11:06 PM (EST)


Editors Note: Below is the exclusive first excerpt from Sarah Palin's forthcoming autobiography, Going Rogue. This post first appeared at PinkoMag.com, where it was translated from Sarah Palin's original english by Stirling McLaughlin.


Chapter One: “I Am Therefor Such As”

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The Nation's Special Issue "Food for All"

1 Comments | Posted September 4, 2009 | 01:18 PM (EST)


So much coverage of food politics tends towards elitism, or at least luxury: what we can and should be buying. Mine certainly does - I've been blogging lately about my Whole Foods boycott, and before that I think I wrote something about organic cheese. But there is a much broader...

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EXCLUSIVE: Rejected Town Hall Rally Posters

14 Comments | Posted August 25, 2009 | 12:30 PM (EST)


Lobbyist and special interest groups have spent a fortune packing health care town halls with paid stooges and Republican Party operatives. But manufacturing a grassroots movement isn't easy. Like any high-dollar ad campaign, some of the creative just isn't up to snuff. In a Pinko/HuffPo exclusive, a disgruntled advertising intern has leaked us...
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Five Things You Can Do About Healthcare, In Ascending Order of Difficulty and Commitment

27 Comments | Posted August 18, 2009 | 06:16 PM (EST)


(Note: A version of this post originally appeared at PinkoMag.com.)

Health care reform is in trouble. Rachel Maddow handed the Obama administration its ass last night, while the New York Times - in the single most depressing thing I've read all month - reported that the...

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SLIDESHOW: Your Healthcare Townhall Meeting Shopping List.

2 Comments | Posted August 15, 2009 | 12:37 AM (EST)


(Note: A version of this first appeared at PinkoMag.com, which you should visit if you enjoy this slideshow.)

The debate over health care is heating up. If you plan to attend a town hall meeting in your district to tell your Representatives what you think, we want you to...

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Why I'm Done with Whole Foods

136 Comments | Posted August 14, 2009 | 04:23 PM (EST)


(Note: A version of this post originally appeared at PinkoMag.com.

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey has struck a nerve with his op-ed for the Wall Street Journal trashing President Obama's healthcare proposals. In his op-ed, Mackey writes that "the last thing our country needs ... is a massive...

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The Case Against Mayor Mike

6 Comments | Posted August 8, 2009 | 12:20 PM (EST)


Note: This post first appeared at PinkoMag.com.

Lets play a little game. I'm going to tell you why I'm not voting for Michael Bloomberg for Mayor, and if you disagree than you can tell me in the comments why I should. Ready? Good.

For starters, I'm someone who...

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What I Learned on Summer Vacation (About Geothermal Power)

1 Comments | Posted July 28, 2009 | 11:13 AM (EST)


I was in Iceland last week, and in addition to (a) spending a weekend in the most unbelievably beautiful place in the world and (b) eating some delicious marinated whale steaks, I came across the best thing ever -- this house under construction in downtown Reyjkavik with...

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Is Sarah Palin Our Richard Nixon?

43 Comments | Posted July 27, 2009 | 02:28 PM (EST)


Sarah Palin quit on Sunday, exiting "stage far right" as Talking Points Memo put it. Point Guard Sarah couldn't finish the third quarter -- she quit with 17 months, or nearly a third of her term, remaining. In Saturday's New York Times, Alaskan political legend William Iggiagruk Hensley noted...

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Ill Communication: President Obama's Misguided Health Care Strategy

16 Comments | Posted July 26, 2009 | 01:03 AM (EST)


In 1998 I ran communications for one of the most stunning political victories of the '90s: Jordan Roberts' upset win as the first-ever woman Senator from the State of Confusion. The campaign was a simulation, part of an intensive five day campaign boot camp, but even though Roberts was fake...

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Shearer's Strange Broadside

Posted December 25, 2008 | 12:07 PM (EST)


We couldn't let Harry Shearer's post Tuesday, ("New Orleans Faces The Nation") pass without a reply. Shearer's strange broadside took The Nation magazine (and by extension the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute) to task for our publication of Katrina's Hidden Race War, an 18-month investigation that...

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Swinging Red Relatives Blue: Claire's Closing Argument

Posted November 2, 2008 | 06:42 PM (EST)


Claire has been an exceptionally good sport these past three weeks, opening up her in-box (whoa) to Pinko for a look at her efforts to swing her fence-sitting, potentially McCain-voting relatives. We got word last week that her grandmother was voting Obama(!), but Claire was still reticent about...

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Red Relative Blues: Swinging Matthew's Cousin

Posted October 30, 2008 | 04:59 PM (EST)


Years ago I tried to "swing" my handsome friend Matthew, who I had a substantial crush on. He wasn't willing to go my way, but my heart fluttered just a bit when he said to me earlier this month "Ben! We have to swing my cousin. He's in Ohio." Woof!...

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Red Grandma Blues: Readers Respond (with Great Ideas!)

Posted October 23, 2008 | 04:45 PM (EST)


On Tuesday we told you about Claire, who is trying to swing her 94-year-old Grandmother from a red Reagan Republican to a born-again blue voter. We asked you for your advice on how to "swing" fence-sitting friends and family around the country. Both at Pinko Magazine and here at...

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Red Grandma Blues: A Conversion Diary

Posted October 20, 2008 | 09:47 PM (EST)


Every time there was a debate, MSNBC and CNN did that thing. They took some undecided voters, put them in a room on an awkward sofa, strapped a sensor to their head, gave them some Cool Ranch Doritos, and then asked them questions. It's always exasperating, watching them parse words...

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Posted April 8, 2008 | 11:43 AM (EST)


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Time to Choose: The Case for the Eight

Posted November 8, 2007 | 05:18 PM (EST)


The following collection of articles is published online in partnership with The Nation and HuffPost's OffTheBus.

With the national media focused squarely on the superficial (polls, pile-ons, UFOs, cleavage, etc.), The Nation Magazine this week focused on the substantive: An affirmative look at each of the eight Democratic...

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