The Weekly Standard went out of business on Friday—killed by representatives of right-wing Colorado billionaire Philip Anschutz, who purchased the respected 23-year-old conservative magazine from its original owner, Rupert Murdoch, in 2009 for a reported $1 million. “We are done,” Stephen F. Hayes, the Standard’s editor-in-chief, told his staff of nearly 40 Friday morning, after a brief meeting with executives of Anschutz’s Clarity Media Group in Washington, D.C. The death notice was widely expected, and Hayes and the magazine’s founding editors, including Never Trump conservative pundit Bill Kristol, had spent months attempting to organize a consortium of buyers to save the publication. But Clarity chief executive Ryan McKibben wouldn’t permit a sale, and had kept his plans in a shroud of secrecy; he didn’t inform Hayes that a meeting had actually been scheduled until early Friday morning, according to sources.
–Lloyd Grove
