The Top 40 Hot Takes on "The New Republic," in Order from Worst to Best
I think I’m the only white guy in America who hasn’t written a piece about The New Republic yet.
— Jeffrey Goldberg (@JeffreyGoldberg) December 9, 2014
40. Benjamin Freed, Washingtonian. “B.J. Novak’s Character on “The Newsroom” Is a Lot Like New Republic Owner Chris Hughes”
39. Howard Kurtz, Fox News: “Hughes isn’t the only tech mogul to stumble as a media owner.”
38. Daniel Greenfield, Front Page: “Modern liberals like the idea of being intellectuals without the work of debating ideas.”
37. Joe Nocera, NY Times: “In the two years that Hughes has owned it, The New Republic regained its reputation for smart, lively, engaging journalism.”
36. Chris Hughes, Washington Post: “If we wanted to chase traffic with listicles and slide shows, we would have.”
35. Smitty, The Other McCain: “This is another suck-is-the-new-cool call from the manor house down to the the peasants working the fields.”
34. Dylan Byers, Politico: “Guy Vidra says he doesn’t want to change The New Republic.”
33. Robert Fulford, National Post: “Not to worry: Long-time readers are aware that the magazine frequently changes, often in startling ways.”
32. Paul Horwitz, PrawfsBlawg: “ “It was tragic to watch — like watching a patient get sicker and sicker every day. And now it is finally dead, alas.”
31. David Klinghoffer, Evolution News: “It’s the rare development in the news that you can feel almost entirely good about.”
30. Seth Stevenson, Slate: “TNR’s influence had long been on the wane. It will live on, it may modernize in helpful ways, and, one assumes, will continue to publish good work — though at what frequency and just how good remains to be seen.”
29. Lloyd Grove, Daily Beast: “It is not, or not primarily, a business. It is a voice, even a cause.”
28. Robert Kuttner, American Prospect: “It is incautious and even churlish to write premature eulogies.”
27. Ezra Klein, Vox: “TNR.com might flourish under Snyder. But it won’t be what The New Republic was. And that’s because the thing The New Republic was has already died.”
26. Michael Hiltzik, LA Times: “In brief, the magazine’s past isn’t quite as glorious as the departing staff makes out, and its future is unlikely to be saved by the draconian vision Hughes seems to offer.”
25. Dan Drezner, Washington Post: “Apparently, ‘disruption’ means acting in as douche-y a manner as possible toward existing employees.”
24. David Folkenflik, NPR: “The steward triggered chaos inside his newsroom last week by hiring a new editor before telling the old one he had been fired. My bad, Hughes says.”
23. Ross Douthat, NY Times: “The peril isn’t just that blithe dot-com philistines will tear down institutions that once sustained a liberal humanism.”
22. Jacob Heilbrunn, Politico: “Destroying the New Republic’s liberal pedigree? That happened a long time ago.”
21. Peter Beinert, The Atlantic: “On the major domestic-policy battles of recent years, TNR’s perspective was virtually identical to the one espoused by Ezra Klein, The New York Times, and MSNBC.”
20. Jonathan Mahler and Ravi Somaiya, NY Times: “In retrospect, last week’s meltdown at The New Republic should have been easy to predict.”
19. Jason Abbruzzese, Mashable: “At some point, you have to increase the number of articles to achieve financial solvency.”
18. Mark Hemingway, Federalist: “Looking at the journalistic wasteland before us, it seems obvious that we need more extended discussion of issues and policy, and less of the reactive, steaming-hot takes about whatever happened 45 minutes ago.”
17. Felix Salmon, Fusion: “A lot of my conversation with Hughes was centered on words like ‘viable’ and ‘sustainable’ and ‘if I fell under a bus tomorrow.’”
16. Megan McArdle, Bloomberg: “The New Republic was already on a long, slow march toward the abattoir.”
15. David Greenberg, Slate: “Internet journalism has made it easy to find opinions that confirm one’s own beliefs and flatter one’s prejudices.”
14. Will Baude, Washington Post: “There was something profound about intellectuals taking their own ideas — and their own mistakes — that seriously.”
13. Greg Grandin, The Nation: “I, for one, welcome the Gawkerization of The New Republic.”
12. Emily Bell, Guardian: “The irony of the New Republic’s retreating elite posting their displeasure on Facebook was heightened by Hughes publishing a defense of his plans for the magazine… through that most traditional of outlets: the Washington Post.”
11. Dave Weigel, Bloomberg: “What exactly the new New Republic was supposed to be, and who it was for in this new era, was often hard to figure.”
10. Philip Weiss, MondoWeiss: “Some day Max Fischer will write about how he sat there and said not a word when liberal Beltway types who knew no Arabs talked about the necessity of launching indiscriminate strikes on Palestinian neighborhoods.”
9. Jonathan Chait, NY Mag: “Hughes and Vidra have provided no reason at all for anybody to believe they have a plausible plan to modernize The New Republic.”
8. Daniel J. Flynn, Breitbart: “Liberals can stomach a traitor at the helm; a dolt, never.”
7. David Callahan, Inside Philanthropy: “Even as more rich people have come forward to give money for journalism with no expectation of a financial return, Hughes is taking a different path by seeking to make the New Republic financially sustainable — an idea that strikes many top journalists as outrageous.”
6. Jim Sleeper, Salon: “Like so many other young, market-molded Americans, they don’t understand how the perversion of public life by tsunamis of marketing, financing and technological innovation has decontextualized and overwhelmed thoughtful writing, reading and the habits of mind and heart that sustain republican deliberation and institutions.”
5. George Packer, New Yorker: “I highly doubt that Hughes wanted this debacle. He didn’t plan for a change at the top to expose the emptiness of his commitment to the hard work of journalism.”
4. Leah Finnegan: “It’s clear that the new leadership of the magazine — with all their greasy Facebook money — is dead set on ruining a (historically racist) publication no one ever read in the first place, and was on the slow road to Irrelevance City.”
3. Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic: “The family rows at TNR’s virtual funeral look like the ‘Whites Only’ section of a Jim Crow-era movie-house.”
2. James Kirchick, Daily Beast: “Chris Hughes and Sean Eldridge have always been entitled brats. And now the media has finally noticed.”
1. Dana Milbank, Washington Post: “The moist-eyed Hughes would, in the coming months, prove himself to be neither an intellectual nor a partner but a dilettante and a fraud.”