Too many magazines are like microwave cheeseburgers: quick, convenient and bland. Yet one quirky exception has been eminently successful at putting spice in the American reading diet: the Utne Reader, an alternative Reader's Digest stuffed with provocative articles gleaned mostly from the country's left- < leaning and fringe press. Founded six years ago, the Minneapolis-based bimonthly has become a handbook for baby boomers, new agers and whole earthers, as well as the odd eclectic middle-of-the-roader. Says television essayist Bill Moyers, an inveterate reader: "I wish I had invented it. It's sort of like an underground railroad of ideas."
And on something...