Monday, December 8, 2014

New Republic owners address resignations

"Last week, about a dozen members of the editorial staff of the New Republic walked out in protest over new leadership. By their account, this was a clash of cultures : Silicon Valley versus tradition, and everyone must choose a side. I believe this dangerously oversimplifies a debate many journalistic institutions are having today. They were colleagues whom I personally liked and respected, so I was sad to see them go and regret much of how it happened. But the New Republic is too important an institution to accept their departures as its end...."

"If you really care about an institution and want to make it strong for the ages, you don’t walk out. You roll up your sleeves, you redouble your commitment to those ideals in a changing world, and you fight. This 100-year-old story is worth fighting for."

First and last paragraphs of a Washington Post OpEd Link 

12 comments:

Michael Haz said...

What a bunch of idiots.

The old employees think they should be able to dictate what the new owners do. The new owners had no Plan B, so when a few employees quit, there was no backup in place to put out the next edition of the rag.

Who cares, really? TNR was a very marginal magazine to begin with. Fishwrapper.

Did they not see what happened to Time and Life? Hello?

Michael Haz said...

This, by the way, is a much better magazine than TNR could aver hope to be.

ricpic said...

I think that TNR's problem is that the Left is no longer intellectually curious, in any way. The old Left was filled with those who had a genuine interest in art and literature and TNR supplied first rate book reviews and art criticism as well as the usual leftist pap. There was a genuine, if small, market for that among the old lefties. The new crew are, to be blunt, Stalinist thugs and nothing else, so why read TNR?

TTBurnett said...

I agree with ricpic. Modern liberalism has become stupid. But, frankly, so has everything else. Also, the liberalism of TNR was not Marxist, but that is a whole, long, other argument. TNR had become a fishwrapper to everyone: The trendy Left dismissed it for reasons below, and the Right wouldn't buy it, because it wasn't Ayn Randish.

Anyway, this is what I wrote about this on Facebook. It's a long way of saying that things change. It's a cop-out, I know, but that's because I'm addressing mixed company and letting them know I'm a harmless old fogey:

Here's Chris Hughes' rebuttal to the critics and disgruntled ex-staff of The New Republic. Digital technology dropped an atomic bomb on publishing just as it did on music. Whether what's emerging from the ruins are radioactive mutants or not may depend on what you remember from Before. But we live in the After, so get used to it.

I'm reading that TNR was a sausage-factory and snoozfest, because its editors and writers were mostly male and white. They also were warmongers, etc. According to this analysis, TNR was irrelevant because it didn't address the totally important issues of race and gender. That was actually one of its charms. It was the last-gasp journal of post-Vietnam, JFK liberalism. But modern political and social thinking have moved in quite different directions. As someone who grew from childhood at the time and regrets the unfulfilled promise of the JFK era, I am sorry to see this last symbol of those times crumble before the digital shockwave. But I'm sure something shiny and bright will be erected in its place, until, in the inevitable course of time, it, too, will be part of a Before.

Aridog said...

Franklin Foer is gone....good riddance. He was in charge during the Scott Beauchamp & Elspeth Reeve controversy vis a vis false reporting and innuendo.

I stopped paying any attention to them in 2008 or so. Nonsense illuminates nothing.

TTBurnett said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
TTBurnett said...

Another good piece on The New Republic. It was by no means liberal in the ordinary sense. It tended to promote old, Cold War-style interventionism, for example. Martin Peretz also definitely enjoyed sticking his thumb in the eye of modern, liberal Democrats.

But I enjoyed TNR precisely because it was odd, cranky, and so often wrong. It was great mental exercise to counter. High-level rancorous resignations also seem to have been a recurring tempest in this 100-year-old teapot. Again, that was part of its charm. It was an old-fashioned journal that, ignoring the precise nature of its content, would have been quite at home in the 18th century.

There's a lot of very good writing out there now in digital venues such as Quartz, Medium, and, of course, Politico. I hope the new TNR can keep up.

XRay said...

I subscribed to TNR for almost thirty years starting in the early 70's. As noted above the reviews of various sorts were always top notch and usually not too political, with, of course, first rate writing. And, back then, when I was a democrat, even the political writing gave the appearance of sanity, sorta Scoop Jackson style.

Then along came Andy Sullivan and I could see the handwriting on the wall, lasted about a further year and stopped my subscription. Haven't cared about the magazine since.

TTBurnett said...

Yep, I'm with XRay.

Michael Haz said...

While a high school and university student, I subscribed to Ramparts, a magazine whose editorial staff seemed to re-enact the turmoil of the times at every staff meeting.

A brief history of the publication at wiki reminds me that Brit Hume was at one time my favorite lefty writer. He's now my favorite righty commentator.

Go figure.

Lydia said...

Andrew Sullivan actually wasn't the total jerk he is today during his time as editor of TNR. He took quite a bit of flack, for example, for devoting one issue to a discussion/debate of Charles Murray's The Bell Curve. I think staff even threatened to resign over it.

XRay said...

TT, that was good commentary at your link. Perhaps, and in contrast to Heilbrunn, as I was young then (younger than I am now anyway), I found TNR rather acceptable in most of its editorializing, perhaps unknowingly or unconsciously because of Peretz and Wieseltier, as termed by Heilbrunn at least, neocon leanings. I say unknowingly... as at the time I didn't feel that Peretz was coming from a neocon perspective.

Yes, Lydia, I had read elsewhere about Sullivan's defense, or willingness to debate the merits of The Bell Curve. I don't remember that at the time as likely I had stopped reading TNR by then. For me it was more a case of Sullivan, though touting himself a conservative, never seemed one.