New Republic staffers resign en masse

[brooklynite]

Source: Politico

The majority of The New Republic's masthead resigned en masse on Friday following the owner's decision to force out the editorial leadership, move the magazine to New York, and rebrand the venerable, century-old publication as a "digital media company."

Nine of the magazine's twelve senior editors submitted letters of resignation to owner Chris Hughes and chief executive Guy Vidra, as did two executive editors, the digital media editor, the legislative affairs editor, and two arts editors. At least twenty of the magazine's contributing editors also requested that their names be removed from the magazine's masthead.

The mass departure came one day after a shakeup that saw the resignation of top editor Franklin Foer and veteran literary editor Leon Wieseltier, both of whom resigned due to differences of vision with Hughes, a 31-year-old Facebook co-founder who bought the magazine in 2012. Foer announced his resignation on Thursday after discovering that Hughes had already hired his replacement, Gabriel Snyder, a Bloomberg Media editor who formerly ran The Atlantic Wire blog.

Late Thursday night, several of the top editors gathered at Foer's house in Washington to hold what was described by one source as a funeral for the magazine. Wieseltier, who served for 31 years as the magazine's literary editor, entered the room and introduced himself as "the former" literary editor of The New Republic.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/12/new-republic-staffers-resign-en-masse-199595.html

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Admirable that they would stand together like that, but I'm not sure TNR was likely to survive following the existing publishing model.

[yeoman6987]

1. Oh well

Never read the magazine. They will find workers in New York I am sure.

[Mass]

3. Very insightful piece on TNR's event by Jonathan Chait, who was until today a contributor.

Do we really need another HuffPost or Buzzfeed. Sadly, it is another example of a decent newspaper (I dislike their editorial line but their research and writing was good) becoming a pale copy of a not so good paper.

Read Chait's piece here

But the conflict between Hughes and most of the staff of The New Republic is not about technology. Foer and the staff, with the exception of Wieseltier, are comfortable with modernity. They are joyous bloggers, and willingly submitted to the introduction of cringe-worthy Upworthy headlines to their stories and other compromises one must make with commercial needs.

The problem, rather, is that Hughes and Vidra are afflicted with the belief that they can copy the formula that transformed the Huffington Post and BuzzFeed into economic successes, which is probably wrong, and that this formula can be applied to The New Republic, which is certainly wrong

...Hughes and Vidra have provided no reason at all for anybody to believe they have a plausible plan to modernize The New Republic. If they did, Frank Foer would still be editor. My only hope now is that one day this vital American institution can be rebuilt.

[alp227]

11. exactly. Is there ANY quality online, non clickbait, non paywalled news site?

Online executives think that there must be 10 mindless click-click-click suckers for every thoughtful reader.

[Quackers]

28. One of my local news channels

Started charging $79 a year in order to comment and access certain news stories. www.wcpo.com

[MBS]

25. this was a thoughtful piece.

Thanks for the link!
And I agree that this is a really unfortunate symptom of our messed up media world, and I really doubt that the plans for the new "brand" are going to be successful.
Like you, I did not share their editorial POV vis a vis politics, but that did not diminish the value of their fact-based research and their cultural/literary commentaries.

[PoliticAverse]

2. They just celebrated their 100th anniversary too...

[TwilightGardener]

4. I'm sure their 147 neocon/Dem-hawk readers will be heartbroken.

[RufusTFirefly]

5. +1 And, from his grave, Henry Wallace is relieved

Wallace would've been appalled by the modern New Republic.

[TeamPooka]

6. Silicon Valley idiots with money will ruin the world. nt

[Bernardo de La Paz]

7. Would you rather put your bet on neocon idiots with money? There are more of those. nt

[TeamPooka]

8. Turns out with that much money, they are the same. nt

[MBS]

26. " " " " " " "

Even more specifically, in their libertarianism tendencies, social obliviousness and (above all) narcissism and sense of entitlement ,many dot-com billionaires really are almost indistinguishable from the moneyed right wing. Yes, there are exceptions (a few have at least been champions of environmental causes), but, overall, I grieve for what's happened (sky-high housing prices, those creepy Google buses) to the SF Bay Area.

[TeamPooka]

31. Yes. Souless money and aquisition has ruined the Bay Area. nt

[MBS]

33. Exactly right, unfortunately.

[snooper2]

9. At least you'll be able to watch it happen

through Google Glass LOL

[TeamPooka]

10. LOL

[Ykcutnek]

12. And nothing of value was lost. nt

[elleng]

13. I unsubscribed years ago,

around the mid-1970s. Yes, I'm that old. TNR is older. Here's a history of TNR:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Republic

[candelista]

16. They have marched steadily to the right ever since.

[elleng]

18. Yes, and it's interesting to me that I noticed it and took action

so long ago, in my 'yout!' Not really youth, after law school, but still pretty young.

[regnaD kciN]

21. Exactly…they turned "third wave" years before Al From and the DLC…

The amount of time they spent during the early Reagan years excoriating "out-of-touch" liberals and lionizing St. Ronnie was revolting. And, under Martin Peretz's leadership, they served as a reliable mouthpiece for Likudnik ideologues more so than for anything that could be called progressive, to the point that The Nation's Alexander Cockburn had a regular item titled "More Swill from Marty."

So, mourn the damage wrought by "Facebook billionaires," but at least recognize that, at TNR, the rot had set in decades before.

[elleng]

23. I see no relation, TNR's liberal/progressive point of view 'expired' years ago,

FB is a new phenomenon with no promises of liberal or progressivism.

[elleng]

14. Anyone remember I.F. Stone's Weekly?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I._F._Stone

[RufusTFirefly]

19. Don't remember it, but know of it.

I read a biography of Stone recently. And, of course, Stone was inspired by another one of my heroes, George Seldes, a man who managed to piss off both Lenin and Mussolini. Now that's what I call good reporting!

[Skittles]

15. a pox on all you people who made Facebook folk rich

seriously

[candelista]

17. +1

[elleng]

22. And how would this relate to the devolution of The New Republic?

[Skittles]

24. maybe I read it wrong, and a rich Facebook asshole didn't buy it

[elleng]

20. This from Robert Reich:

STATEMENT BY FORMER NEW REPUBLIC EDITORS AND WRITERS
As former editors and writers for The New Republic, we write to express our dismay and sorrow at its destruction in all but name.
From its founding in 1914, The New Republic has been the flagship and forum of American liberalism. Its reporting and commentary on politics, society, and arts and letters have nurtured a broad liberal spirit in our national life.
The magazine’s present owner and managers claim they are giving it new relevance while remaining true to its century-old mission. Instead, they seem determined to strip it of the intellectual, literary, and political commitments that have been its essence and meaning. Their pronouncements suggest that they hold those commitments in contempt.
The New Republic cannot be merely a “brand.” It has never been and cannot be a “media company” that markets “content.” Its essays, criticism, reportage, and poetry are not “product.” It is not, or not primarily, a business. It is a voice, even a cause. It has lasted through numerous transformations of the “media landscape”—transformations that, far from rendering its work obsolete, have made that work ever more valuable.
The New Republic is a kind of public trust. That is something all its previous owners and publishers understood and respected. The legacy has now been trashed, the trust violated.
It is a sad irony that at this perilous moment, with a reactionary variant of conservatism in the ascendancy, liberalism’s central journal should be scuttled with flagrant and frivolous abandon. The promise of American life has been dealt a lamentable blow.
Peter Beinart (Editor)
Sidney Blumenthal (Senior editor)
Jonathan Chait (Senior editor)
David Grann (Senior editor)
David Greenberg (Acting editor)
Hendrik Hertzberg (Editor)
Ann Hulbert (Senior editor)
Robert Kuttner (Economics editor)
Robert B. Reich (Contributing editor)
Jeffrey Rosen (Legal editor)
Peter Scoblic (Executive editor)
Evan Smith (Deputy editor)
Joan Stapleton Tooley (Publisher)
Paul Starr (Contributing editor)
Ronald Steel (Contributing editor)
Andrew Sullivan (Editor)
Margaret Talbot (Deputy editor)
Dorothy Wickenden (Executive editor)
Sean Wilentz (Contributing editor)

https://www.facebook.com/RBReich?fref=nf

[MBS]

27. Charles Pierce on TNR

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Lingering_Death_Of_The_New_Republic

Tout les Twittersphere went izonkospheric when it was announced that Chris Hughes, the Silicon Valley bozillionnaire who bought The New Republic in order to let his dog play with it out in the backyard, had a parting of the ways with his editor, and his literary editor, because Hughes apparently plans to move TNR, as it is adorably referred to by its many acolytes, to New York and turn it into a clickbait machine with upcoming features like "The Ten Hottest Secretaries Of Agriculture." . . . .As someone who once worked for a paper that folded beneath him, I feel for the people at the magazine who are going to lose their jobs behind this move. And, as someone who suddenly lost the publication at which he learned all his chops, I feel for Jonathan Chait. But, institutionally, the slow destruction of TNR by its new and witless owner doesn't come up for me to the slow and deliberate destruction of its credibility as a legitimate liberal voice during the ownership of the execrable Marty Peretz.

John Cole has helpfully provided a brief list of the atrocities committed by the magazine under Peretz's leadership . .. The New Republic became the index patient for a lot of terrible stuff that happened to progressivism over the past 30 years.

.. . . .

So, no, contra Chait, and even though the magazine unquestionably has regained a lot of its lost quality, especially in its actual reporting, I think the notion that The New Republic is "an essential foundation of American progressive thought" is a ship that sailed a long time ago. Everybody I know who wrote for him thought Frank Foer was a terrific editor, and I'm sure he'll land somewhere, as will the enormously gifted writers he seems to have nurtured, if they choose not to play in Hughes's sandbox. (There cannot be a 2016 presidential campaign without Alec MacGillis. I simply won't allow it.) I am as sure of that as I am that Chris Hughes is going to make a complete hash of the magazine he bought as a chew toy. At least this form of malpractice will be less likely to kill people in distant lands. I guess there's that.

[peacebird]

29. Brutal. Ouch. I dropped my subscription back in the early 80's....

[ucrdem]

30. Peretz didn't wreck it but he wrecked its reputation.

Never really recovered I guess. Too bad.