IntellectualCapital.com is a bipartisan "e-zine" (on-line electronic magazine) about public policy, available at http://www.IntellectualCapital.com

Editor: Pete S. du Pont, governor of Delaware from 1977 to 1985, Republican presidential candidate in 1988.

Publisher: Chicago-based multimedia firm A2S2 Digital Projects. The company provides public-policy content for the Microsoft Network.

 Debut date: June 19, 1996

Target audience: politicians, lobbyists, people with an interest in public policy and politics, including scholars, journalists, and students. Or, as du Pont puts it, the "C-SPAN-Lehrer NewsHour-New Republic-National Review" crowd.

 Cost: free; the magazine hopes to attract advertisers in the future.

Mission: to provide a forum for the ideas and opinions of leading public-policy figures.

 Content: July 11 issue focuses on "The Tax Cut Debate," with pro and con views: "Reaganomics All Over Again? Let's Hope So" says Stephen Moore, Director of Fiscal Studies at the Cato Institute, while Robert J. Shapiro, a former adviser to the Clinton campaign, answers "No" to "Would a Tax Cut Spur Growth?" Also: pieces on raising the minimum wage and the Russian election.

Wonks in Cyberspace

IntellectualCapital.com (IC) is attempting to lure policy wonks to the Internet, while bringing policy debate to a larger audience. The e-zine's logo, an image of Rodin's Thinker superimposed over a CD-ROM disc, seems appropriate, combining high-tech with high-brow. The intellectual capital in question belongs to the likes of Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to Jimmy Carter, the Family Research Council's Gary Bauer, and the ACLU's Nadine Strossen, among others.

 Making policy debate user-friendly requires some short cuts, including limiting articles to 500 words. "The attention span is shorter on the Internet," says du Pont. "Everything has to be engaging up front. If readers aren't interested in the first paragraph or two, they move on."

 But can this forum's 500-words-or-less policy analyses ever be as influential -- let alone as "intellectual" -- as the dry journals? "To go into issues, 500 words is often not enough," says Washington Monthly editor-in-chief Charles Peters. "An article on reforming the American health-care system would take 5,000 words, let alone 500."

 Recent subjects in IC have included saving America's cities, the economics of tax cuts, and medical savings accounts. Pro and con editorials paint policy proposals in broad strokes. Commentators also write monthly columns on topics ranging from chemical weapons to sportsmanship on the basketball court. Other features include links to relevant news articles on the Web. Microsoft Network subscribers get a bonus, a live on-line discussion with writers and editors every Thursday night.

 So far, House and Senate staffers have been IC's heaviest users, with Hill addresses and usernames dominating the site's "hit" list. But in its first week the site attracted visitors from forty-eight countries and 120 universities.

Web junkies and policy wonks can make unpredictable neighbors, as seen in some recent wandering on-line chats hosted by IC editors, but a bit of chaos may be a small price to pay, since reaching this brave new wired audience is what compelled the editors to publish on the Web in the first place. "The problem with public-policy journals is no one reads them," says regular contributor Laura Ingraham. "It's the same 200 academics reading the same things and debating each other."

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