Detox The New Republic

[Valin]

National Review:

Now that the magazine is failing, it has the chance to return to its roots: inquiry and civil debate.

Amity Shlaes

December 16, 2014

 

The New Republic is failing because it doesn’t tweet enough.

The New Republic is failing because it doesn’t spend to report big stories.

The New Republic is failing because it doesn’t cover business.

The New Republic is failing because its young owner doesn’t venerate his superstar staff.

 

These are some of the explanations commentators have been giving for the recent upheaval at The New Republic, the century-old opinion magazine. After many staffers walked out recently, publisher Chris Hughes shuttered the magazine, announcing that TNR would start publishing again come February.

 

Before Mr. Hughes reopens, he might like to consider another explanation for the trouble. The New Republic is failing in its original assignment: inquiry.

 

(Snip)

 

The New Republic’s shift can’t be seen in isolation. Over the course of the decades, the American Left and the center Left have become more hostile, as has the Right. Magazines, websites, and newspapers now resemble fortresses more than dinner tables. Authors lob their flamers over the parapets, then duck. But the general transformation makes it all the more necessary for publications, print or online, to create space for genuine discussion. The new New Republic can succeed without turning itself into a modern version of Bloomberg’s Businessweek. It need not waste money on fancy trips overseas — the original mandate was “thinking,” not reporting.

 

Tweets need ideas, not the other way around. Some of the staff who walked out will go, but some will come back. And Mr. Hughes’s debacle is Mr. Hughes’s luck. For now he has an opportunity to revive the Experiment.