In a world where nationalist and ethnic strife is on the rise, Northern Ireland's Fortnight shows how even a small publication can keep sanity on a life-support system by providing a space for dialogue. The twenty-five-year-old magazine's influence goes beyond its circulation of 3,000.

Unlike Northern Ireland's three traditionally partisan dailies, Fortnight has always brought together people who otherwise refuse to share a forum or television studio. Simply by putting them on the same pages, the magazine has forced politicians and others who usually act as propagandists for their own constituencies "to be less rhetorical and more persuasive, because they are writing for a diverse audience," as the British political scientist Bernard Crick puts it. The magazine also allows politicians to present views that their immediate constituencies might consider heretical, giving others a chance to see new thinking.

In 1992, then editor Robin Wilson called for an all-encompassing public debate on possible ways forward for Northern Ireland, ignoring the many tired voices who claimed there was no point. The magazine subsequently facilitated the formation of Initiative '92, an independent citizen's group whose motto was: "No one asked you . . . until now." Initiative '92, in turn, led to the international Opsahl Commission (named for its Norwegian chairman), which for months conducted public hearings throughout Northern Ireland. Most other media coverage of this was weak. Fortnight covered it heavily, showing that there was more to political life in Northern Ireland than entrenched political parties and paramilitary groups. In April, Wilson, who edited Fortnight for eight years, left the magazine to establish Democratic Dialogue, a think tank that's trying to follow up on the Opsahl Commission's model of public dialogue. The current editor is John O'Farrell.

"When I wrote my editorials," says Wilson, "I always tried to work from the assumption that I was trying to persuade the reasonable person who had no political beliefs and would judge everything I said on its merit and nothing else." Such an approach was considered heretical by some, particularly in the early years. Fortnight's office was bombed; some blame the IRA, others the British secret service. A printer refused his services, and Irish customs impounded ready-for-print copy.

The hot summer of 1995 -- with more violent unrest than in almost a decade -- is evidence of the need for Fortnight's gift of solace for those in the political middle. Despite recent progress and despite the sense of celebration surrounding President Clinton's November visit to Belfast, the political process is, after all, dominated by Nationalists and Unionists obsessed primarily not with reconciliation but with their respective wishes that Northern Ireland become part of the Irish Republic or remain within the United Kingdom. While moderates and extremists within each camp have come together, Wilson argues, the two camps remain quite a distance apart. So Fortnight's editorial foundation -- that politics and policies be judged primarily on whether they advance or jeopardize the chance for peace and reconciliation -- remains a challenge to the political norm.

 "What we have now is peace without reconciliation," Wilson says. "But I would say if we ever get to the point of a political settlement, that Fortnight would have laid a great amount of groundwork for it. If there is no settlement, then Fortnight tried."

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