Inside the Collapse of the New Republic

There is something deeply tragicomic about Vidra&#x27;s role in this. I know nothing about the man, and it would be too easy to disparage him on this basis of this report; one should presume that he has management and organizational skills well suited to an executive position, and one should not forget that he seems to have been completely hamstrung by the owner&#x27;s ill-fated activism and engagement with the magazine, whatever his own faults might be.<p>That said, two items strike me. The first is that he comes across as stunningly <i>tone deaf</i> in this circumstance; unless I am reading pure calumny, it seems that he did not consider what a corrosive effect a jargon-heavy, non-committal communication style would have when dealing with people who were deeply, professionally engaged with the <i>meaning</i> of words. Nor does he seem to have understood that he was in a situation where he was starting with zero social credibility and would need to establish social credibility in order to do his job.<p>The second is that this was a situation in which he was facing the least fungible workers imaginable. All TNR had, besides the cheques for the current subscriptions, was the culture and society that had built up around it: most specifically that this particular small social network, consisting of these people, had as its central focus, source of wider status, and <i>raison d&#x27;etre</i> the writing down of words in exchange for money under the masthead of this particular little magazine. There are no factories, nor even inventories. There are no repositories of source code. There are no patents or significant intellectual property rights. The people he alienated were completely integral to the product he was undertaking to make profitable.

<i>The magazine has almost always lost money</i><p>Magazines like The New Republic are effectively public-facing think tanks, and were never meant to be enterprises. Print journalism as a whole is going in that direction. Billionaires like Carlos Slim and Jeff Bezos will prop up the big papers, and multi-millionaires like Chris Hughes will prop up the little papers.<p>Hughes (bizarrely) confused himself with a businessman, and confused TNR with a business. No. It&#x27;s always been a political mouthpiece. You&#x27;re <i>supposed</i> to lose money.

&gt; <i>Hughes insisted that deep reporting and ideas would still be important to the magazine. “That’s not enough,” he added. “We also have to do videos. We also have to do interactive graphics. We also have to be increasingly smarter—we’ve already made good progress, but even more—about how we use social media.” The session finished abruptly with Hughes banging on the table and declaring, “This institution has been around for one hundred fucking years,” and promising that it wasn’t dead.</i><p>Ugh...as someone who worked as a developer in the news industry...I don&#x27;t believe that fancy interactive graphics and video have a chance to save a text-based company. What is necessary for journalism companies to survive is not only good content, but <i>good process</i>...and if you have a staff accustomed to producing text pieces, you will not have the pipeline necessary to do the &quot;cool&quot; web stuff...And even if you did, those things would not save you, even when done competently.<p>Case in point: The New York Times produces visuals and interactives at a level that is the state-of-the-art; not just in the journalism industry, but in any industry. But there hasn&#x27;t been much evidence that their groundbreaking work has made a significant impact in declining revenues.<p>As evidence, I point out that NYT&#x27;s current strategy is to bet much more heavily on video, massively increasing its video production (and presumably, video-ad-producing) department. However, according to this Columbia University survey (<a href="http://videonow.towcenter.org/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;videonow.towcenter.org&#x2F;</a>), not a single newspaper organization has yet made a profit off of video, and video has been part of news websites for almost a decade.<p>This is not to dismiss the talent at the Times...it&#x27;s very possible, for example, that their web interactive group can produce dividends...but that will be because of a focus on developer process and digital strategy...not simply because they produced a few highly popular features.<p>That said, I&#x27;m not suggesting that if New Republic stuck to what they do now, that they&#x27;d make a profit. But as they say, jumping from the frying pan into the fryer is not really a survival strategy.

To me the most interesting parts were the ones where stories were buried on Hughes direction:<p>&gt;Several months earlier, Noam Scheiber, a senior editor at the magazine, had started to report a story about Andreessen Horowitz, a major Silicon Valley venture-capital firm. It was slated to be a feature in T.N.R.’s hundredth-anniversary issue. But Hughes told Foer that he was scheduled to meet with Andreessen Horowitz about investing in another venture. Scheiber was reassigned to work on a profile of Valerie Jarrett. (Hughes denies that he gave orders to delay or cancel the Andreessen story.)<p>&gt;“Chris seemed pretty pissed about Leon’s ‘Colbert’ appearance,” a staffer who is still at the magazine told me. “Editorial people were talking about how great Leon was, and Chris was angry that the first thing Leon said was what’s wrong with American culture is ‘too much digital.’ ”<p>&gt;Hughes responded to the note six minutes later: “I think those are valid issues, although Apple has acted squarely within the law,” he wrote.

The article is a reminder that groups of people make decisions like primates, even the most intellectual people. The criticisms are purely subjective (slashes mine):<p>- &quot;To some staffers, &#x2F;it felt as if&#x2F; Hughes had sent Vidra to scare them into writing more, buzzier Web items&quot;<p>- &quot;Vidra made his first appearance...It was &#x2F;just terrifying rhetoric&#x2F; about change without any substance to back it up.&quot;<p>However the author couldn&#x27;t come up with any specific examples where Hughes or Vidra are unreasonable people:<p>- Hughes removed &quot;Attack of the Crybabies:&quot; from an article title &quot;Why Hedge Fund Honchos Turned Against Obama” (Hughes was going for &#x2F;less&#x2F; &quot;buzzy&quot;).<p>- Foer wanted to make Amazon’s suspension of advertising public, but Hughes insisted that he not. (Again, Hughes is the one avoiding &quot;buzziness&quot;)<p>- Hughes asks questions like, &quot;Has anyone, including this article, said what they did was illegal?&quot; (a reasonable question about objectivity)<p>- “The only compliment [Hughes] or [Vidra] ever said about a piece was that it ‘did well,’ or it ‘travelled well,’ ”<p>Just about the only useful takeaway from this article is: don&#x27;t try to manage a politically sensitive situation by video conference.

This is a fascinating look at someone royally fucking something up. Great read. Although, I&#x27;m not sure it was an unavoidable tragedy. The magazine has always lost money and to survive it must have rich patrons. It ran out of them and the only one left wanted to make it something it wasn&#x27;t. If this hadn&#x27;t happened it would have a slow death of starved cash flow. I&#x27;m not sure if that&#x27;s better or worse.

I think I&#x27;m exactly the audience that TNR wants. I&#x27;m well-educated, make a good living, largely agree with them politically, enjoy long-form journalism, and am familiar with the brand and its history. Yet I don&#x27;t think I would ever subscribe to TNR. I just see a magazine as something that&#x27;s going to pile up in my house. I can read more than enough great content online for free. If I was going to subscribe to a magazine, I think that The New Yorker is a lot more interesting than The New Republic. If I was going to subscribe to two magazines, I might pick the Atlantic or another competitor over TNR. The media has largely portrayed this as Hughes carelessly destroying a renowned and vital institution. Hughes has certainly made some mistakes, but I wonder whether Foer and Wiesetlier were just letting the magazine gradually slide into irrelevance and inevitable death anyway. This is a magazine whose readership has dropped by half since 2000.<p>If Hughes doesn&#x27;t want to subsidize a money-losing institution with a declining and aging readership, then isn&#x27;t it his prerogative as an owner to shake things up? He may have gone about it the wrong way, but ultimately wouldn&#x27;t the public be better off with a TNR that has an ability to support itself and thrive in the future?

This struck me as odd management technique:<p><i>Hughes tried to contain the damage. As rumors of a second wave of departures circulated, Hughes and Snyder offered several members of the remaining editorial staff one- to two-thousand-dollar bonuses, and in an op-ed for the Washington Post Hughes tried to explain his vision for the magazine. </i><p>There are people to whom a two thousand dollar bonus would mean a lot and there are people considering quitting a professional job as a as a matter of principle or out of pique.<p>Only $2000?

As someone not in the business of tech or journalism I&#x27;m left to wonder why Hughes didn&#x27;t anticipate the editorial staff&#x27;s reaction to Foer&#x27;s firing.<p>Going out on a limb, is it possible that tech workers are more likely to go along with the whims of management, and journalists have more stake in their institutions? Or is it that due to the nature of their cultures tech workers have an intrinsic adaptability and journalists are stuck with inflexible traditions?

My reaction to all this on my blog, &quot;The New Republic as a product&quot;: <a href="http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2014/12/13/the-new-republic-as-a-product" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pixelmonkey.org&#x2F;2014&#x2F;12&#x2F;13&#x2F;the-new-republic-as-a-...</a><p>The resigning editors wrote: &quot;It is a sad irony that [...] liberalism’s central journal should be scuttled with flagrant and frivolous abandon. The promise of American life has been dealt a lamentable blow.&quot;<p>Is it a doubt of anyone here that, in the web era, &quot;liberalism&#x27;s central journal&quot; won&#x27;t be a journal and won&#x27;t be central? To remain relevant, TNR needs a growing and loyal digital audience. Because sooner or later, there won’t be any other kind for journalism and opinion.

The story reads like a great example of how a war-time leader will obliterate a team if he fails to integrate. Despite all the initial good karma between Hughes, Foer, and other editors, Hughes and the team clashed badly whenever Hughes&#x27; personal network risked damage due to TNR issues (e.g. the leak about Amazon pulling ads). The article seems to set SV culture at odds with TNR, but I think there&#x27;s a much more basic explanation for the tragedy here: Hughes failed to integrate himself. The very fact that Hughes felt it necessary to conceal the search for Foer&#x27;s replacement is a red flag that Hughes had no reason to ignore himself.<p>For a war-time leader to have a fighting chance, he&#x27;ll need to integrate himself and leverage the existing culture (and product). Regardless of how much spin this article may cast, there&#x27;s plenty of undeniable evidence that Hughes failed to integrate. Hughes brought this failure upon himself.

Hughes and is cronies seem like a bunch of disingenuous buffoons.

I expected a Star Wars-related news piece with that title.

&quot;The Siliconian came down like the wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in wireless gold, Crying Media Company Vertically Integrated! As all before them they willfully extirpated: The Back of the Book and the Front and the Middle, Until all that was left was digital piddle, And Thought and Word lay dead and cold.&quot;<p>This poem really is really depressing. I hope it&#x27;s not our future?<p>I&#x27;ll get down voted, or Hell flamed(I really hate this cliched way of speaking), but here goes; I&#x27;m all for progress, but I don&#x27;t want to dumb down journalism so it fit&#x27;s in a digital format. After reading that poem I started to think about the book A Brave New World, and odly enough I looked up how old someone needs to be if they want to be a US President--yea--I forgot.<p>One other thing has been on my mind after reading this article, and reading a lot if comments on HN over the years. I&#x27;ll paraphrase because I&#x27;m old and lazy, &#x27;Apple didn&#x27;t break the law. They were required to maximize shareholders profits. I don&#x27;t see a problem?&#x27; I&#x27;ve seen this line of thinking a lot. In my world, my father taught me, &quot;Just because it&#x27;s legal son--doesn&#x27;t make it right!&quot;<p>Maybe it&#x27;s just me, but being Editor of a magazine like the New Republic requires a very special person--a little age and wisdom(not out of a college text book) seems like it would go a long way? Along with a long apprentiship that many Journalists were once required to endure?<p>Don&#x27;t get me wrong, I value youth and believe a lot of entrenched men of authority should be put out to pasture, but when it to situations like what transpired at the New Republic--my butt twitches. I picture the new editor sending back stories with TLDR. Ugh-

You&#x27;d think neoliberals would welcome a little creative destruction.<p>I hope writers like Cohn, Beutler and Ioffe land on their feet, but I&#x27;m shedding no tears for TNR.

Crap. I was expecting a good writeup about how Palpatine screwed things up.