New Republic implodes following announcement
I am afraid Hughes doesn't understand the game here. TNR is a liberal publication. So that it can keep its bonifides in order, it must LOSE money not earn those obscene profits.
From TFA:
And in this case, Hughes just made TNR one of the least cool places on the Left side of the media. The walkout not only leaves TNR without much of a staff to produce content, it does real brand damage that one or two departures would be unable to accomplish. Hughes, however, hasn’t caught up with that reality, as departing senior editor Julia Ioffe reports:
Around half of the people who produce and manage content for TNR have walked out, and they’re not just well positioned, but “incredibly well positioned”? This sounds a bit like a Baghdad Bob moment, unless Hughes really wants to go full digital immediately. At least he won’t have to worry about expanding TNR’s office space again for a while.
Most of the commentary on this collapse has come from the interested parties on the Left, for good reason, as it impacts them much more than it does conservatives on line. However, TNR under Peretz at least was a good read for those who wanted to get a sense of where the reasonable minds across the aisle were wandering. They still produce good content, or at least they did until yesterday; the writers I follow at TNR were those departing today. If Hughes wants to make TNR a monolithically ideological site, I suspect that value will never re-emerge, and any new writers they hire will be much less interesting — even on the Left.
Ah well. There's always Sabrina Rubin Erdely who is, as I understand it, available for hire right now...
Posted by: badanov 2014-12-06 |