[1][2] It was a leading neoconservative journal on political economy and culture, aimed at a readership of journalists, scholars and policy makers.

[3] The magazine published prominent writers and scholars including Seymour Martin Lipset, James Q. Wilson, Peter Drucker, Charles Murray, James S. Coleman,[4] Anthony Downs, Aaron Wildavsky, Mancur Olson, Jr., Michael Novak, Samuel P. Huntington, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Martin Feldstein, Leon Kass, Irwin M. Stelzer, Daniel P. Moynihan, Nathan Glazer, Glenn C. Loury, Stephan Thernstrom, Abigail Thernstrom, Charles Krauthammer, Francis Fukuyama and David Brooks.

Bell, troubled by what he perceived to be an excessively conservative slant, withdrew in 1973, and was replaced as co-editor by the sociologist Nathan Glazer.

[5] The magazine's sub-editors were considered apprentices, and were seeded into high journalism, academia, and government staff posts.

[citation needed] In 1988, the journal moved its offices from New York City to Washington, D.C.[6] With foundation support flagging, Kristol aging, and no obvious successor, The Public Interest published its final issue in the spring of 2005.