INSTITUTE INDEX: Celebrating Southern Exposure at 50

Year in which the Institute for Southern Studies (ISS), a research and journalism nonprofit founded by civil rights movement veterans, launched Southern Exposure magazine to offer what the editors called "imaginative strategies for social change": 1973

Number of years previously ISS had been formed as a spinoff of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank: 3

Amount of money ISS had in its earliest days, according to co-founder Sue Thrasher: "very little"

Year in which early ISS staffer Bob Hall penned a memo outlining his vision for the publication that would become Southern Exposure, writing that it "would be a means for reaching new people, for developing an audience and constituency for our ideas and for the Institute": 1972

Paid sales per issue of Southern Exposure, though its reach far exceeded that number: 5,000

Pages in Southern Exposure’s inaugural issue, titled "The Military and the South," which included stories by civil rights leaders Julian Bond and Leah Wise, corporate power researcher Bob Hall, and Howard Romaine, founding co-editor of the legendary Atlanta underground newspaper The Great Speckled Bird: 100

Year in which Southern Exposure won the George Polk Award for regional reporting: 1978

Year in which it won the George Polk Award for magazine journalism: 2003

Year in which it won the National Magazine Award for its reporting on the poultry industry: 1990

Year in which the News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina, won a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its reporting on the hog industry, which drew on reporting by Southern Exposure: 1996

Number of Southern Exposure issues digitized to date, with the rest to come throughout the year: 30

Year in which Southern Exposure ceased publication, with ISS focusing its resources instead on Facing South online magazine: 2011

Date on which ISS, in collaboration with the North Carolina Collection and the Southern Historical Collection in the Wilson Special Collections Library and the Center for the Study of the American South, held a public celebration of Southern Exposure at UNC’s Wilson Library, with many of the founders and early staff members present: 3/11/2023

(Click on figure to go to source.)