No Thread on the Meltdown of TNR

Throw a party celebrating 100 years, and then change everything.

Folks are leaving, and even demanding to be taken off of the masthead:

It's no longer a magazine. Doesn't look good for its future as a digital media company.

 

Facebook Prince Purges The New Republic: Inside the Destruction of a 100-Year-Old Magazine
Facebook billionaire Chris Hughes and his lieutenant from Yahoo gut one of journalism's great publications, setting off waves of resignations and tears.

When Facebook billionaire Chris Hughes, the owner of The New Republic, and TNR’s newly installed CEO, former Yahoo News executive Guy Vidra, visit the storied magazine’s Washington headquarters on Friday morning to meet with the staff, they are likely to be greeted by a skeleton crew of a few editorial interns and junior employees.

Hughes’s and Vidra’s decision to abruptly change the 100-year-old journal of politics, policy, art and culture into what Hughes calls a “digital media company” and relocate to Manhattan--and in the process get rid of top editor Franklin Foer, who has run the magazine on and off since 2006, and literary editor Leon Wieseltier, a major figure at TNR since the early 1980s--has prompted what is expected to be a mass exodus by most if not all of the senior editors and writers.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/05/the-new-republic-implodes.html

 

Nearly the entire staff has resigned in the last couple of hours.

Owner Chris Hughes releases this statement:

 

Looks like this one's all you, bud.

 

I give the guy credit. It's really the name that matters in the end. The New Republic
has been synonymous with conservative thought for a 100 years. No reason why
they can't bring a new group of writers in to carry out the same mission.

 

Someone will be here soon.

 

Chris Hughes sounds like a bit of a douchebag based on the NY Times story but TNR had lost its way in recent years, anyway, so I can't really say I give a fuck.

 

Good friends with one of the writers who bailed. Sad day. As someone put it on Twitter, if you wanted The Atlantic Wire, why not just buy The Atlantic Wire? Rosin's piece on Stephen Glass will likely be the last TNR piece I'll ever read.

 

Sure there's a thread on it, right here: http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/101517/

 

In what universe have they been "synonymous with conservative thought"? You can't honestly have read much of the magazine if you think that.

Second, the new bosses have no pretense of carrying out the same mission. That, for many people, is the problem.

 

Who cares? I started a blog two weeks ago and I'm willing to work for nothing. This is going to be great!

Seriously, though, the New Republic has been bleeding cash for years (if not decades?) If you're a rich guy, you buy it so you can influence politics and/or get into the right parties. Trying to do anything else is a waste of time.

 

It must be nice to have the type of safety net that allows you to quit a job just because a new editor came along...