
The New Republic Is for Sale Again - pavornyoh
http://www.vox.com/2016/1/12/10756786/tnr-meltdown-tnrmageddon
======
chasing
Seems like Hughes had the resources and opportunity to make the New Republic
into a publication which could produce important journalism without being
threatened by the increasing commodification of content. His purchase of the
magazine could have truly been a significant statement: Good journalism is
important, even if it's no longer profitable. He would have been lauded. The
world would be a better place.

Instead.

He appears to have treated it like a tech start-up and, thus, seems like a guy
who bought his way into a business he knew little about thinking he could turn
a profit in a shitty market. And failed. And destroyed a beloved organization
in the process. And injured his own reputation. All over a few tens of
millions of dollars -- which is a lot to you and I, but is very little to him.

Sigh.

I'd say that I hope another wealthy benefactor could step in and do with the
New Republic what Hughes should've done in the first place, but I worry that
the New Republic is too damaged by now -- that it can't be what it was before.
Which is a loss.

~~~
humanrebar
The New Republic was definitely beloved in the sense that some people loved
it.

It's not unanimous that The New Republic is a unique jewel in the universe of
political commentary publications.

Your points about needing to know good journalism before you can revolutionize
a publication is well taken, though.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Republic#Controversies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Republic#Controversies)

~~~
wyclif
Yes, TNR is no longer a special snowflake. Much of the shine has come off, and
their brand equity has taken an enormous hit. I hear Buzzfeed is hiring
"writers", so TNR staffers shouldn't feel too despondent.

~~~
rtpg
Broken record, maybe, but Buzzfeed does produce what you might qualify as
"real" content. My favorite is their look at the passage of the AUMF

[http://www.buzzfeed.com/gregorydjohnsen/60-words-and-a-
war-w...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/gregorydjohnsen/60-words-and-a-war-without-
end-the-untold-story-of-the-most#.rj8Jwbwk8n)

------
mturmon
Josh Marshall's take is worth reading:

[http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/chainsaw-
chris](http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/chainsaw-chris)

Sample:

"As someone who has had to run a media operation at at least break-even levels
for many years, I don't buy the idea that The New Republic had to run at a
loss forever. But a lot of this is a matter of executive/owner priorities.
It's been owned and run by people who had the luxury of sustaining some annual
loss. The key is that The New Republic, as anything like what it's been for a
century, was never going to be a profit-making operation, certainly not a
vertically integrated media cineplex or whatever they were trying to make it."

~~~
jobu
While I get that sometimes journalism is more about a noble cause than profit,
it seems like losing money is a source of pride for the people at The New
Republic:

 _“The New Republic has been a money-losing proposition for 100 years,” said
Jacob Weisberg, who once worked for the magazine, and is now the chairman of
the Slate Group. “The idea that anyone is going to turn it into a business
now, when it has never been harder, is implausible.”_

Also this:

 _Mr. Chait [a contributing editor] said that, to him, The New Republic was
fundamentally not a business proposition. “A business is something that is
trying to make money,” he said._

Did Chris Hughes do his homework to understand the culture before he bought
it?

------
nsns

        "At a meeting not long after he joined in 2014, 
         Mr. Vidra, using a profanity, told the magazine’s staff
         that he wanted to break stuff..."
    

Well, I guess hie did.

------
dhjdnsn
Classic case of someone who was brought along on a ride (by Zuckerberg) and
now wants to prove he could have done it himself (he can't). As opposed to
Dustin Moskovitz, who proved that he can.

~~~
6stringmerc
See also: Jerry Jones & Jimmy Johnson.

------
wyclif
At this point, Hughes has damaged TNR's brand equity irreparably. And the fact
of that matter is that their current stable of young writers aren't as
talented and don't rise to the high standards that they used to inculcate
under, say, Leon Wieseltier. Many of them would be better off writing
listicles for Buzzfeed.

There's not a whole lot of differentiation between the transcript of a Reggie
Watts TED talk and a young TNR staffer's latest hot take.

------
jmsdnns
Would love if anyone could help me understand what value is left at TNR. It
seems a lot of people left and that sales were around 2000 issues a month.

Not sure how to think about this.

~~~
smt88
Its brand might have a non-negative value. Lots of brands have fallen into
hard times and then reinvented themselves. Years later, people would look at
the dip as an anomaly.

Buying TNR at a low price could certainly be cheaper than starting entirely
from scratch.

~~~
ghaff
Maybe. But a (valuable) brand is associated with a variety of specific
characteristics/values/"promise"/etc. If you want to do something with the
brand that is consistent with those, great. But, if it's not consistent, the
associations that people bring to the brand can actually be a negative.

~~~
drumdance
With a publication like the New Republic, it all comes down to the editor.
They've had some great, often controversial, editors over the years. If the
buyer can bring or find someone like that, they have a good chance. Otherwise
it will just be another aimless click-baity web site.

~~~
gozur88
I'm not convinced a wealthy buyer couldn't put together something like HuffPo
and get a wider audience for less money.

~~~
drumdance
Maybe, but even with HuffPo you have a really strong editor/publisher in
Ariana Huffington. You may not like her but there's no question she's been a
force in making them relevant.

------
dankohn1
I love this explainer on TNRmageddon and especially this note:

[http://www.vox.com/2016/1/12/10756786/tnr-meltdown-
tnrmagedd...](http://www.vox.com/2016/1/12/10756786/tnr-meltdown-tnrmageddon)
"A note on conflicts of interest

The world of Washington, DC-based magazines and websites is incredibly
incestuous, so I have no way of writing about this without stepping all over
too many conflicts of interest to count.

But some noteworthy ones include the fact that I applied for a job with the
Peter Beinart–era TNR and didn't get it after a disastrous job interview. I
was recruited for jobs in both the first and second Foer eras. I used to work
closely with Richard Just (who was editor between Foer stints) before he
worked at TNR. I dated a TNR staffer for a while, was roommates with Spencer
Ackerman at the time Foer fired him from TNR, and am very close friends with a
current staffer at TNR. I also lived in the same dorm with Hughes for a year
in college.

All of which is to say that while my coverage of this can hardly be objective,
it's also pretty well-informed."

~~~
dang
Wow, that article is like a magnum opus on this. Since it's so much more
informative, we changed the URL to that from
[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/12/business/media/chris-
hughe...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/12/business/media/chris-hughes-
selling-the-new-republic.html).

~~~
gyardley
It's also so much more biased and cranky, to the point where I would've kept
the original. C'mon, did Marty Peretz shoot the author's dog?

~~~
dang
I didn't read the whole thing, but it didn't sound cranky to me. Biased, sure,
but not tendentious, and with lots more information than the NYT piece.

If people feel strongly about this we'll happily change it back though.

