Facebook Prince Purges The New Republic: Inside the Destruction of a 100-Year-Old Magazine
New York Mag's Daily Intelligencer also has the early reports.Facebook billionaire Chris Hughes and his lieutenant from Yahoo gut one of journalism's great publications, setting off waves of resignations and tears.When Facebook billionaire Chris Hughes, the owner of The New Republic, and TNR’s newly installed CEO, former Yahoo News executive Guy Vidra, visit the storied magazine’s Washington headquarters on Friday morning to meet with the staff, they are likely to be greeted by a skeleton crew of a few editorial interns and junior employees.
Hughes’s and Vidra’s decision to abruptly change the 100-year-old journal of politics, policy, art and culture into what Hughes calls a “digital media company” and relocate to Manhattan--and 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 1980s--has prompted what is expected to be a mass exodus by most if not all of the senior editors and writers.
“Leon said he’s never seen any editor be so disrespected and dicked around--I’m paraphrasing--as Frank has been treated for the last couple of months,” said senior editor Julia Ioffe, describing the meeting Thursday afternoon in the newsroom, at which Wieseltier and Foer announced that they’d quit....MORE
