County Highway vol 3, no 5
Delivered to Stack subscribers in Apr 2026

by Steve Watson in May 2026

Name
Ryan Baesemann

Job title
Managing Editor

What is County Highway?
County Highway is a magazine about America in the form of a 19th-century local newspaper. It features reports on the political and spiritual crises that are gripping our country and their deeper cultural and historical sources; regular columns about agriculture, civil liberties, animals, herbal medicine, and living off the grid, mentally and physically; essays about literature and art; plus an entire section devoted to music — as we Americans are a uniquely musical people.

What makes it different to the rest?
The name County Highway is inspired by what we believe is the perfect-sized place for the enhancement of life and art. A county is a chunk of earth big enough to allow for a variety of human types, but small enough to get to know a decent number of your neighbors, where they come from, what they’re proud of, what they fear, what they smoke, what they drink, and what they love. Counties are also the right-sized places for telling stories. Mark Twain had Calaveras County, which is a real place in California. William Faulkner had Yoknapatawpha County, a made-up place in Mississippi. Edmund Wilson had Hecate County, a seductive place in Connecticut. Philip Roth had Essex County, New Jersey. The county where our newspaper is located is somewhere between all those places, real and imaginary. It’s the scale of the place that’s important to us, and also the idea of traveling from one to another with an eye towards finding new answers to the founding American questions of who we are, and why we are here.

Who makes County Highway?
County Highway was founded by David Samuels and Walter Kirn during the summer of 2023. Donald Rosenfeld serves as our publisher, and Matthew Fishbane curates our art direction. David and I lead editorial, with Valen Lambert, Noah Rawlings, Gus O’Connor, and Lucy Ellis assisting operations. Ben Law is our layout designer.

Who reads it?
A major portion of our readers are literary folks who once lived in the major cities but have since fled to more rural areas, where most other periodicals fail to cover to their new realities. These readers still crave relevant long-form reportage and literary essays, however; which is where we come in, as The New Yorker of sorts, but for everywhere other than New York City. Another chunk of our readers have always lived rurally and have never subscribed to a magazine before, until County Highway. As a whole, our readership is unique because it resembles the political and cultural landscape of the United States itself. Roughly half of our readers lean liberally, with a quarter being conservatives and the remaining quarter being a mix of libertarians and independents. People come to our pages to read about the world without an editorial slant being foisted upon them, in the hope that our differences need not be as divisive as others would have us believe. We believe that wherever there’s a stop sign, there’s a story. Simple as that.

Why do you work in magazines?
I work in magazines because I’m a storyteller and a community builder. I thrive when acting in service of community — which is what a magazine is, essentially — and I know how to spot and shape a good story.

Aside from the magazine, what else do you do?
Aside from managing County Highway, I run an organic vineyard, lead a Burning Man camp, steward a collective farm and art center along the central coast of California, and I’m an avid surfer.

What would you change about County Highway if you could?
There’s nothing I’d change about County Highway. I’ve had a seat at the decision-making table since the beginning, beside David Samuels, our ringleader, who has trusted me as his deputy from the very outset. David’s brilliance and prescience has led our early successes, and he and I are in close cahoots on just about everything as it relates to our newspaper. I have directly edited every feature we’ve published, and I have been consulted on every design choice we’ve made. I like to think I have one of the best jobs in print media. But if I had to change something, I’d hire a sports columnist. Which I’m in the process of doing right now.

Where do you see County Highway in five years?
In five years, I hope to see County Highway continue its trajectory as the fastest growing print periodical in the United States, while also expanding our distribution to more international markets. We’ve recently launched a new book imprint called Panamerica, where we publish all of the stories that are too long to fit in the paper. So by 2030, I’d be pleased if we had earned 30,000+ subscribers to the newspaper, printed a few best-selling books, and continued to reward our existing staff while bringing on a few more contributors to full-time employment. With how things have been going, that’s all seemingly possible. We just gotta keep our noses to the grindstone.