When Facebook billionaire Chris Hughes, the owner of The New Republic, and TNRâs newly installed CEO, former Yahoo News executive Guy Vidra, visited the storied magazineâs Washington headquarters on Friday morning to meet with the staff, they were greeted by a skeleton crew of a few editorial interns and junior employees.
Hughesâs and Vidraâs decision to abruptly change the 100-year-old journal of politics, policy, art and culture into what Hughes calls a âdigital media companyâ and relocate to Manhattanâand 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 1980sâhas prompted a mass exodus by more than two dozen senior editors and writers. Among the brand-name TNR veterans who submitted their resignations Friday were senior editors John B. Judis, Julia Ioffe, Jeff Rosen, Jason Zengerle, Judith Shulevitz, and Alec MacGillis. At least a dozen contributing editors have also demanded to be removed from the masthead, and the list is expected to keep growing as the day goes on.
A letter of resignation to Chris Hughes was signed by 10 contributing editors, including Ryan Lizza, poet and literary critic Helen Vendler and Princeton history professor Sean Wilentz:
âDear Mr. Hughes,
âWe are contributing editors of The New Republic, and our commitment to the venerable principles of the magazine requires us now to resign. Please remove our names from the masthead.
âYours truly,
Paul Berman,Jonathan Chait,William Deresiewicz,Ruth Franklin,Anthony Grafton,Enrique Krauze,Ryan Lizza,Sacha Z. Scoblic,Helen Vendler,Sean Wilentz.â
Hughes, apparently taken by surprise, issued the following statement: "I am saddened by the loss of such great talent, many of whom have played an important role in making The New Republic so successful in the past. It has been a privilege to work with them, and I wish them only the best. This is a time of transition, but I am excited to work with our teamâboth new and old alikeâas we pave a new way forward. The singular importance of The New Republic as an institution can and will be preserved, because it's bigger than any one of us." Such warm expressions of devotion would come as news to Foer and Wieseltier.
âLeon said heâs never seen any editor be so disrespected and dicked aroundâIâm paraphrasingâas Frank has been treated for the last couple of months,â said senior editor Julia Ioffe, describing the meeting Thursday afternoon in the newsroom, at which Wieseltier and Foer announced that theyâd quit.
âIt was like the Red Wedding in Game of Thrones.â
âFrank told people that this would the best job heâd ever have, that he loved working at The New Republic,â Ioffe continued. âLeon said that we shouldnât be depressed and think this is all about clicks, that we should retain our lofty ideas about journalism and making an impact on the world through journalism, through writing and ideas, and not through âdigital media companies.â He saidâand this a quoteââThis is the best fucking thing Iâve ever done in my little life.ââ
Ioffeâwho had yet to pack up her office belongings Thursday evening but was among the TNR staffers not expected to return to the newsroom just above the Spy Museum in downtown Washingtonâsaid Foer and Wieseltier received a tearful standing ovation from the two dozen staffers present. âPeople have been crying all afternoon,â she added.
Lizza tweeted Friday morning:
Late Friday, a statement released from 19 former editors and writers at The New Republic read:
âAs former editors and writers for The New Republic, we write to express our dismay and sorrow at its destruction in all but name.
From its founding in 1914, The New Republic has been the flagship and forum of American liberalism. Its reporting and commentary on politics, society, and arts and letters have nurtured a broad liberal spirit in our national life.
The magazineâs present owner and managers claim they are giving it new relevance while remaining true to its century-old mission. Instead, they seem determined to strip it of the intellectual, literary, and political commitments that have been its essence and meaning. Their pronouncements suggest that they hold those commitments in contempt.
The New Republic cannot be merely a âbrand.â It has never been and cannot be a âmedia companyâ that markets âcontent.â Its essays, criticism, reportage, and poetry are not âproduct.â It is not, or not primarily, a business. It is a voice, even a cause. It has lasted through numerous transformations of the âmedia landscapeââtransformations that, far from rendering its work obsolete, have made that work ever more valuable.
The New Republic is a kind of public trust. That is something all its previous owners and publishers understood and respected. The legacy has now been trashed, the trust violated.
It is a sad irony that at this perilous moment, with a reactionary variant of conservatism in the ascendancy, liberalismâs central journal should be scuttled with flagrant and frivolous abandon. The promise of American life has been dealt a lamentable blow.â
For Foer, Wieseltier and others at the magazine, the brutal shakeup by Vidra, 40, who was hired in September, and his 30-year-old patron, Hughesâwho purchased TNR two-and-a-half years ago for an undisclosed sum from a consortium that included longtime owner Martin Peretzâdidnât come as a surprise. Tensions have been building since the summer. According to multiple sources, Hughes came to think of his writers and editors as âspoiled brats,â and especially disliked the flamboyant, feud-prone, white-maned Wieseltier, who was more than twice his age. Much of Hughesâs distaste was telegraphed in his body language; he strikes many TNR staffers as passive-aggressive and averse to confrontation.
The friction escalated with the arrival of Vidra, who is said to have complained to Foer that the magazine was boring and that he couldnât bring himself to read past the first 500 words of an article. According to witnesses, Vidra did little to hide his disrespect for TNRâs tradition of long-form storytelling and rigorous, if occasionally dense, intellectual and political analysisâto say nothing of his lack of interest in the magazineâs distinguished historyâat an all-hands meeting in early October.
Presiding at the head of a long conference table, Vidra didnât acknowledge Foer, who was seated beside him; he didnât look at him; he didnât mention him. Instead, as he started to speak, Vidra confided that he liked to stand up and move around the room as he communicated his thoughts, as though he were Steve Jobs unveiling the latest technological marvel. Oddly, he stood up, but he didnât move.
Vidra spoke in what one witness described as âSilicon Valley jargon,â and, using a tech clichĂ©, declared: âWeâre going to break shitââa vow hardly calculated to ingratiate himself with TNRâs veteran belle-lettrists, who feared that he was threatening the magazineâs destruction. Only a few interns dared to ask questions, which Vidra repeatedly dodged. âThe senior people were too shocked to speak,â said a witness. âJaws were dropping to the floor.â Through it all, Chris Hughes nodded approvingly, an unnerving grin on his face.
To be sure, that meeting was a warning sign. But the manner in which the two technology mavens administered their coup de grĂące only two months later has left a bitter taste.
According to informed sources, Hughes and Vidra didnât bother to inform Foer that he was out of a job. Instead, the editor was placed in the humiliating position of having to phone Hughes to get confirmation after Gawker.com posted an item at 2:35 p.m. reporting the rumor that Bloomberg Media editor Gabriel Snyder, himself a onetime Gawker editor, had been hired as Foerâs replacement. Yes, itâs true, Hughes sheepishly admitted, notwithstanding that he and Vidra had given Foer repeated assurances that his job was safe. (Hughes and Vidra didnât respond to voicemail messages seeking comment.)
The irony is that the end of TNR as we know it comes less than three weeks after Hughesâwho had the good fortune to have been Facebook founder Mark Zuckerbergâs Harvard roommate, and helped Zuckerberg launch the social networking behemothâspent hundreds of thousands of dollars to stage a gala Washington dinner celebrating the magazineâs 100th anniversary. Among the 400 attendeesâwho supped on âribbons of beet-cured char,â âbeef tenderloin [with] truffled potato crepesâ and âapple pecan tart [with] warm bourbon-caramel sauceââwere keynote speaker Bill Clinton, Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. Wynton Marsalis entertained. Vidra also gave a speech, talking mostly about himself, according to one attendee, and, in a brief mention of TNRâs editor, mispronouncing Foer as âfoyerââa gaffe that provoked gasps and laughter.
Meanwhile, the peripatetic Snyderâwho also edited the Atlantic Wire and covered the film industry in Los Angeles for Varietyâhad been making no secret of his latest career move; he has been actively recruiting writers and editors for a new, restructured TNR based in Manhattanâs Union Square neighborhood. The new TNRâderisively called "another Buzzfeed" by a former stafferâwill exist mostly online and print only 10 issues a year compared with 24 currently.
âIt was cowardly, the way Chris and Guy went about this,â Ioffe said. âMedia reporters have been calling for months, asking, âIs Frank fired?,â and theyâve been lying to everybody, including Frank.â
It is far from clear whether the remaining, relatively inexperienced staff will be able to get out the next issue, which is scheduled to close on Wednesday. Two multi-thousand-word pieces slated for publicationâa profile of Jeb Bush by Alec MacGillis and a report on Vladmir Putinâs political arch enemy, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, by Russian expert Ioffeâwere still being edited when the axe fell. And even if the newbies manage to produce the issue, it will be accomplished in an atmosphere of outrage, recrimination and sorrow over the apparent deathâsome would say murderâof an American institution that was, for decades, a bulwark of liberal thought, cultural criticism and groundbreaking journalism.
âThe New Republic was always a small political magazine that was trying to change the world,â said senior editor John Judis, who was trying to figure out late Thursday night if he could continue to work for the magazine. âMy impression of what happened is Hughes and Vidra have decided to transform the magazine into a profit-making media center that is entirely different from what the magazine historically has been and what it has represented and entirely different from what The New Republic has been at its coreâand this has led to this cataclysm where Frank and Leon have both left. I liked the old New Republic. I thought it had a really important role to play in America and Iâm sorry if itâs no longer going to play that role.â
David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, began his magazine career writing for TNR. âItâs hard to look at the moves today and be anything but pessimistic,â he told The Daily Beast. âI just hate to see the values and ambitions of something great being undermined, and I fear thatâs what is going on.â