It's a good thing Chris Hughes likes to break things, because he's irreparably broken The New Republic.
The people who read TNR (myself included) do so specifically because it's been a bastion of traditional journalism, and moreover we read it for specific writers & contributing editors, and since they've all resigned now, TNR is dead.
Outside of a very small sliver of the population nobody's ever even heard of the The New Republic — it's not a brand name that Hughes can gut and remodel. The New Republic is not a brand that anyone cares about; we cared about the content, the writers and the editors.
I can see no way for TNR to carry on as a viable operation. As a TNR reader for more than 30 years, it makes me rather sad.
Not being a regular reader, I was a bit startled go there for the firsttime in a while and find a website that looks like Buzzfeed. I hope the existing editorial team or some more thoughtful soul can pony up enough capital to launch The Even Newer Republic or something along those lines.
That quote from Guy Vidra about how he can't bring himself to read past 500 words of any article should haunt him for the remainder of his career.
The friction escalated with the arrival of Vidra, who is said to have complained to Foer that the magazine was boring and that he couldn’t bring himself to read past the first 500 words of an article.
The more likely meaning here is that Vidra couldn't read more than 500 words of a boring TNR article.
Thanks for the correction - I typed that in a hurry and you're quite right that he was making a comment about the journalism at TNR rather than articles in general. All the same, I don't think it speaks well of him to make such a comment to a staff that specializes in long-form journalism.
This is a good clarification. The other issue is that Vidra's previous employer was Yahoo (Head of Yahoo News). This may have limited his ability to read beyond 500 words, too, who knows.
That is especially scary. Several years back, I could get decent news from yahoo, and they had a balanced group of opinion writers....., then poof! After reading this article I am guessing Vidra might have orchestrated that change too.
I wouldn't worry about it; I'm sure they'll pivot, build mobile-first something that people want, scale like a startup, and then be validated by the market when they profitably exit.
Ahh yes... mobile first... because Mobile Is The Future(tm) this week. Last week Cloud Was The Future(tm). Tomorrow it'll be Internet of Things and mobile will be old and busted and nobody will ever pitch a mobile startup again.
too slanted to be journalism, its like reading the opinion page of any local newspaper. So if that is the last bastion of journalism then journalism died a long time ago.
The people who read TNR (myself included) do so specifically because it's been a bastion of traditional journalism, and moreover we read it for specific writers & contributing editors, and since they've all resigned now, TNR is dead.
Outside of a very small sliver of the population nobody's ever even heard of the The New Republic — it's not a brand name that Hughes can gut and remodel. The New Republic is not a brand that anyone cares about; we cared about the content, the writers and the editors.
I can see no way for TNR to carry on as a viable operation. As a TNR reader for more than 30 years, it makes me rather sad.
This is all so stupid and sad.