The New Republic is dead, thanks to its owner, Chris Hughes

[Blue_Tires]

At a 40th-birthday party in July for Franklin Foer, editor of the New Republic, the magazine’s young owner, Chris Hughes, got all choked up as he pledged to the roomful of writers at Foer’s country home in Pennsylvania that the two would be “intellectual partners for decades.”

But the moist-eyed Hughes would, in the coming months, prove himself to be neither an intellectual nor a partner but a dilettante and a fraud.

When he bought the magazine in 2012 at the age of 28, the Facebook co-founder pledged to “double down” on “in-depth, rigorous reporting,” telling NPR that “the demand for long-form, quality journalism is strong in our country.”

But after just two years, Hughes decided that saving long-form journalism was just too hard. He declared that the 100-year-old journal of opinion would become a technology company, and he brought in a new CEO who literally proposed that writers team up with engineers to make “widgets” for TNR’s Web site.

Hughes ousted his intellectual partner Foer without even the courtesy of telling him; Foer found out when his replacement, a man who previously had been fired as editor of the gossip Web site Gawker, began announcing himself as the new editor and offering people jobs. Most of the staff quit in protest, and the Hughes management team suspended publication until February. They needn’t bother resuming at all. The New Republic is dead; Chris Hughes killed it.


This is personal for me. I left the Wall Street Journal to join TNR in the 1990s, taking a 50 percent pay cut and a 95 percent reduction in subscribers for the pleasure of joining what felt like a family. I met Hughes earlier this year, and I, too, was fooled by his talk about the resources he was pumping into the magazine. I told him in an e-mail that he was “doing the Lord’s work in rescuing this proud old brand” and called him a “21st-century Walter Lippmann.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-the-new-republic-is-dead-thanks-to-its-owner/2014/12/08/ae80da42-7ee0-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html

Cautionary tale for those who still believe Omidyar can shit gold nuggets...

[merrily]

1. Mixed feelings

Dana Millbank:


Milbank was criticized for a July 30, 2008 article[7] in which, in part by using snippets of quotations, he portrayed Barack Obama as being presumptuous.[8][9] .... Milbank stated that he has been dissatisfied since he was criticized by Olbermann's staff over making a positive comment about Charlie Black, a McCain senior advisor, and as a result had already been negotiating with CNN.[12]

Milbank and Chris Cillizza appeared in a series of humor videos called "Mouthpiece Theater" which appeared on the Washington Post's website. An outcry followed a video in which, during a discussion of the White House "Beer Summit", they chose new brands for a number of people, including "Mad Bitch Beer" for Hillary Clinton. Both men apologized for the video and the series was canceled.[13]

......

Political views

Milbank has stated that his "policy" on presidential general elections is to vote for the best candidate who is not on the ballot. He voted for John McCain in 2000, Chuck Hagel in 2004, and Michael Bloomberg in 2008. He has explained that his approach allows him to "go through the exercise of who would be a good president" while avoiding committing to one candidate or another in the race.[19]

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

It's fine for a journalist to criticize a politician honestly in an opinion piece. However, if he dishonestly chopped up quotes to portray Obama in a bad light, fuck him. And, for "Mad Bitch Beer," fuck him twice. I don't care if he apologized or not. For one thing, grow the fuck up. For another thing, don't be so damned sexist.

Finally, given Millbank's voting record, which must have come from his own mouth, it seems a little dishonest, maybe Trojan horse, for Millbank to be voting for a left leaning publication, even if it was oriented toward the DLC philosophy by the time he got there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Republic (Millbank worked for liberal Olberman, too.)

Maybe, he "shudda stood" with the WSJ, which seems much more aligned with his actual political leanings--and I don't believe he gave up so much in pay just because he thought Hughes "was doing the Lord's work," either.

As for the New Republic, I am certainly very sorry so many lost jobs.

[QC]

2. Marty Peretz killed TNR back in the 90's

when he hired a right wing former GAP model to run it.

Time to bury it.

[Midnight Writer]

3. Exactly right OC

I subscribed for decades, and it suddenly turned into a right-wing propaganda vehicle. I let my sub lapse and didn't read it again for years.

When I saw it was being revamped, I tried it again for a year, but any change proved superficial. I enjoy material that challenges my beliefs in a logical manner, but there is no reason to pay for crap that you get free on talk radio and entertainment TV.

[QC]

4. I was a subscriber too and got fed up and let it lapse

when TNR became The New Republican.

[yurbud]

5. most publications should consider going co-op, non-profit

there is something kind of obscene about letting publications be a plaything of the rich and the content and direction up to the whims of one or a few.