What's the point of buying a brand name if you're going to destroy everything that makes the brand unique? Not only did you have to pay a premium to buy the brand, now you've lost almost all the loyal consumers and will have to rebuild a new brand identity and entice new consumers to come on board or lure back the old somehow. It would be much cheaper and simpler to just start your own brand.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/05/new-republic-resignations_n_6275810.html
QuoteNew Republic Exodus: Dozens Of Editors Resign Over Management Changes
Posted: 12/05/2014 10:34 am EST Updated: 1 hour ago
Michael Calderone
NEW YORK -- Dozens of staff members and contributing editors at The New Republic resigned en masse Friday morning, less than 24 hours after top editors Franklin Foer and Leon Wieseltier quit over a dispute with management over the magazine's direction.
New Republic owner Chris Hughes and newly installed CEO Guy Vidra announced Thursday they were repositioning the 100-year-old magazine to become a "vertically integrated digital media company." They hired Gabriel Snyder, who previously ran Gawker and The Wire, and was most recently at Bloomberg Media, to be its new editor-in-chief.
There has been tension at the magazine since Vidra's arrival over differing visions for the publication. Staffers saw management as overly focused on Web traffic at the expense of its legacy of narrative journalism and criticism.
The New Republic now seems unlikely to continue that legacy in any recognizable sense, since the majority of its longtime writers and editors have left, taking the magazine's institutional memory with them.
Friday's departures include: Jonathan Cohn (Senior Editor), Henri Cole (Poetry Editor), Isaac Chotiner (Senior Editor), David Hajdu (Music Critic), Jennifer Homans (Dance Critic), Sarah Williams Goldhagen (Architecture Critic), Julia Ioffe (Senior Editor), John Judis (Senior Editor), Hillary Kelly (Digital Media Editor), Adam Kirsch (Senior Editor), Alec MacGillis (Senior Editor), Evgeny Morozov* (Senior Editor), Rachel Morris (Executive Editor), Jed Perl (Art Critic), Jeffrey Rosen (Legal Affairs Editor), Noam Scheiber (Senior Editor), Judith Shulevitz (Senior Editor), Greg Veis (Executive Editor) and Jason Zengerle (Senior Editor).
And many of the magazine's contributing editors, some for whom the position is largely honorary, have resigned, too: Anne Applebaum, David A. Bell, Christopher Benfey, Paul Berman, Jonathan Chait, William Deresiewicz, Justin Driver, Ezekiel J. Emanuel, T.A. Frank, Ruth Franklin, Nathan Glazer, Jack Goldsmith, Anthony Grafton, David Grann, David Greenberg, Robert Kagan, Lawrence Kaplan, Michael Kazin, Enrique Krauze, Damon Linker, Ryan Lizza, John McWhorter, Abbas Milani, Steven Pinker, David Rieff, Sacha Z. Scoblic, Timothy Snyder, Ronald Steel, Cass Sunstein, Alan Taylor, Helen Vendler, Michael Walzer, Geoffrey Wheatcroft and Sean Wilentz.
"I am saddened by the loss of such great talent, many of whom have played an important role in making The New Republic so successful in the past," Hughes said in a statement. "It has been a privilege to work with them, and I wish them only the best. This is a time of transition, but I am excited to work with our team -- both new and old alike -- as we pave a new way forward. The singular importance of The New Republic as an institution can and will be preserved, because it's bigger than any one of us."
Staffers viewed Vidra, a former Yahoo executive, as uninterested in the legacy of the magazine that he was talking about disrupting. And they recalled Hughes, who made hundreds of millions of dollars as a Facebook co-founder, suggesting in a late October meeting that the magazine be more like a tech start-up than a journalistic outlet like The New Yorker.
The competing visions were apparent on stage a few weeks later at the magazine's centennial gala. Foer and Wieseltier spoke of the magazine's traditions and the journalists who steered it through the past century, while Hughes and Vidra emphasized the need to experiment with the publication and increase page views.
Senior editor Jason Zengerle, who spent 14 years at the magazine in two separate stints and resigned Friday, told The Huffington Post that the dispute wasn't a case of "old media versus new media."
"We all recognized things needed to change, but not at the expense of destroying what was working so well," Zengerle said. He added that staffers were happy to write more for the Web, "but not if you were going to turn the print magazine into a vestigial limb."
Julia Ioffe, a senior editor who joined the magazine after Hughes' purchase in 2012 and who also resigned on Friday, pushed back in a Facebook post against the suggestion that staffers were unwilling to contribute online:
The narrative you're going to see Chris and Guy put out there is that I and the rest of my colleagues who quit today were dinosaurs, who think that the Internet is scary and that Buzzfeed is a slur. Don't believe them. The staff at TNR has always been faithful to the magazine's founding mission to experiment, and nowhere have I been so encouraged to do so. There was no opposition in the editorial ranks to expanding TNR's web presence, to innovating digitally. Many were even [on] board for going monthly. We're not afraid of change. We have always embraced it.
David Hajdu, a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism and the magazine's staff music critic for 12 years, said in an email to The Huffington Post that he doesn't begrudge Hughes' ambition and thinks "the mission to pioneer new approaches to journalism for the era of device delivery is not only legitimate, it's IMPORTANT."
"The problem here, and it's an act of cultural violence, is in killing The New Republic so that a new, different kind of digital venture can live," he continued. "Hughes could have and should have started a new digital company, if that's what he wanted to do, and he could have called it anything -- Chrisfeed, whatever. The 'brand' of the New Republic will be no help."
Several former New Republic editors and writers wrote in a statement provided to The Huffington Post that the magazine they worked for is a "public trust" whose "legacy has now been trashed, the trust violated."
As former editors and writers for The New Republic, we write to express our dismay and sorrow at its destruction in all but name.
From its founding in 1914, The New Republic has been the flagship and forum of American liberalism. Its reporting and commentary on politics, society, and arts and letters have nurtured a broad liberal spirit in our national life.
The magazine's present owner and managers claim they are giving it new relevance while remaining true to its century-old mission. Instead, they seem determined to strip it of the intellectual, literary, and political commitments that have been its essence and meaning. Their pronouncements suggest that they hold those commitments in contempt.
The New Republic cannot be merely a "brand." It has never been and cannot be a "media company" that markets "content." Its essays, criticism, reportage, and poetry are not "product." It is not, or not primarily, a business. It is a voice, even a cause. It has lasted through numerous transformations of the "media landscape"—transformations that, far from rendering its work obsolete, have made that work ever more valuable.
The New Republic is a kind of public trust. That is something all its previous owners and publishers understood and respected. The legacy has now been trashed, the trust violated.
It is a sad irony that at this perilous moment, with a reactionary variant of conservatism in the ascendancy, liberalism's central journal should be scuttled with flagrant and frivolous abandon. The promise of American life has been dealt a lamentable blow.
Peter Beinart (Editor)
Sidney Blumenthal (Senior editor)
Jonathan Chait (Senior editor)
David Grann (Senior editor)
David Greenberg (Acting editor)
Hendrik Hertzberg (Editor)
Ann Hulbert (Senior editor)
Robert Kuttner (Economics editor)
Robert B. Reich (Contributing editor)
Katherine Marsh (Managing editor)
Jeffrey Rosen (Legal editor)
Peter Scoblic (Executive editor)
Evan Smith (Deputy editor)
Joan Stapleton Tooley (Publisher)
Paul Starr (Contributing editor)
Ronald Steel (Contributing editor)
Andrew Sullivan (Editor)
Margaret Talbot (Deputy editor)
Dorothy Wickenden (Executive editor)
Sean Wilentz (Contributing editor)
Quote from: jimmy olsen on December 05, 2014, 09:19:18 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/05/new-republic-resignations_n_6275810.html
QuoteThe New Republic cannot be merely a "brand." It has never been and cannot be a "media company" that markets "content." Its essays, criticism, reportage, and poetry are not "product." It is not, or not primarily, a business. It is a voice, even a cause. It has lasted through numerous transformations of the "media landscape"—transformations that, far from rendering its work obsolete, have made that work ever more valuable.
The New Republic is a kind of public trust. That is something all its previous owners and publishers understood and respected. The legacy has now been trashed, the trust violated.
:bleeding: Oh for God's sake :bleeding:
Edit: And, incidentally, all the links I've seen on my Twitter timeline from American journalists have been about this or Rolling Stone. The NYT didn't really lead or cover the Rolling Stone story. Now because they've got it wrong, it's moved from being a story of rape and institutional indifference to one about the media it's suddenly a leading story.
I love the American press and there's some great writers but God as a group they're nauseatingly self-obsessed/involved. 'A kind of public trust', for Christ's sake :bleeding:
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 05, 2014, 10:33:19 PM
:bleeding: Oh for God's sake :bleeding:
What? You don't think journalists at political magazines should believe in what they do?
I'm almost totally non-receptive to the same argument forwarded about "art" (of course it's product), but journalism is maybe a little different.
That said, it's not like the media were ever better. That's a myth perpetrated by satires like Network and Nightcrawler. Papers used to start fucking wars, man. I mean, they were cool wars, but still.
Quote from: Jacob on December 05, 2014, 10:35:14 PM
What? You don't think journalists at political magazines should believe in what they do?
Well they're ex-journalists who moved onto better paid less noble pastures (and there's nothing wrong with that, the Economist is run by 20 year olds because they're cheap).
I've no issue with journalists believing that, though I think they're probably a bit silly if they do, but it's a bit much to ask the rest of us to believe it too. That whole letter sounds like the sort of special pleading that a flagship of liberal thought would dismiss from any other group - and in fact one the New Republic loved dismissing when it came from, say, African-Americans.
Edit: And, frankly, amid all that institutional self-congratulation they did forget that there should be a product. What's the last TNR essay you can think of that everyone's reading or linking to? I can't think of one. I can think of pieces in the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, the LRB that are like that. Maybe the product's not been good enough lately.
Ah I see. Yeah, I'm not particularly familiar with the magazine. Fair enough.
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 05, 2014, 10:58:40 PM
Edit: And, frankly, amid all that institutional self-congratulation they did forget that there should be a product.
This bit is a little hilarious coming from a lawyer. :P
QuoteCEO Guy
A bit too informal title IMHO.
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 05, 2014, 10:33:19 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on December 05, 2014, 09:19:18 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/05/new-republic-resignations_n_6275810.html
QuoteThe New Republic cannot be merely a "brand." It has never been and cannot be a "media company" that markets "content." Its essays, criticism, reportage, and poetry are not "product." It is not, or not primarily, a business. It is a voice, even a cause. It has lasted through numerous transformations of the "media landscape"—transformations that, far from rendering its work obsolete, have made that work ever more valuable.
The New Republic is a kind of public trust. That is something all its previous owners and publishers understood and respected. The legacy has now been trashed, the trust violated.
:bleeding: Oh for God's sake :bleeding:
Edit: And, incidentally, all the links I've seen on my Twitter timeline from American journalists have been about this or Rolling Stone. The NYT didn't really lead or cover the Rolling Stone story. Now because they've got it wrong, it's moved from being a story of rape and institutional indifference to one about the media it's suddenly a leading story.
I love the American press and there's some great writers but God as a group they're nauseatingly self-obsessed/involved. 'A kind of public trust', for Christ's sake :bleeding:
I thought you were all about melodrama and style?
Quote from: Ideologue on December 06, 2014, 01:17:14 AM
This bit is a little hilarious coming from a lawyer. :P
Stop being butthurt and do something about it.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on December 06, 2014, 01:50:44 AMI thought you were all about melodrama and style?
Style, yes who isn't. There ain't much style in whining.
I don't know where people have got the idea I like melodrama :o
QuoteThis bit is a little hilarious coming from a lawyer. :P
True enough.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 06, 2014, 02:29:41 AM
Quote from: Ideologue on December 06, 2014, 01:17:14 AM
This bit is a little hilarious coming from a lawyer. :P
Stop being butthurt and do something about it.
This isn't about that. Save it for when it is. You won't have to wait long. :P
Lawyering is the most self-important profession on the face of the planet, except maybe doctors. It is almost without a doubt the profession with the largest gulf between its opinion of its own importance and the importance of its average practicioner.
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 06, 2014, 02:30:29 AM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on December 06, 2014, 01:50:44 AMI thought you were all about melodrama and style?
Style, yes who isn't. There ain't much style in whining.
I don't know where people have got the idea I like melodrama :o
I think you're the one who told me to watch Douglas Sirk movies. :hmm:
You lie!
:faints:
Languish should be renamed "Lawyers and Friends".
Quote from: Ideologue on December 06, 2014, 02:43:51 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 06, 2014, 02:29:41 AM
Quote from: Ideologue on December 06, 2014, 01:17:14 AM
This bit is a little hilarious coming from a lawyer. :P
Stop being butthurt and do something about it.
This isn't about that. Save it for when it is. You won't have to wait long. :P
Lawyering is the most self-important profession on the face of the planet, except maybe doctors. It is almost without a doubt the profession with the largest gulf between its opinion of its own importance and the importance of its average practicioner.
I think doctors are, as a rule, more ethical on average though. Lawyers and journalists are scum of the earth.
I dunno. Doctors are always eating their patients or stealing their faces to graft onto their disfigured daughters.
I mean, doctors at least try to do good by preventing death, disease and/or pain (I mean if they are not corrupt etc). The very adversarial nature of most lawyering means that at least one side must be wrong, objectively speaking, and is trying to prevent the side that is right from succeeding fully.
Sure the system as a whole works (or at least is better than any alternative) but it says something about lawyers on an individual level. It's like people who choose to be prison guards, proctologists or butchers - the job is necessary but that doesn't mean those who do it are not fucked up.
Quote from: Martinus on December 06, 2014, 03:15:53 AM
Lawyers and journalists are scum of the earth.
As a copywriter, I resent that and demand to be included. I write for money with no ethical standards. :mad:
Quote from: Norgy on December 06, 2014, 05:27:57 AM
Quote from: Martinus on December 06, 2014, 03:15:53 AM
Lawyers and journalists are scum of the earth.
As a copywriter, I resent that and demand to be included. I write for money with no ethical standards. :mad:
Pfff. You're like the marketing sore on the ass of the journalistic world. You're so in. :P
:w00t:
When do I get my Illuminati membership upgraded? :unsure:
Oh but lawyers and journalists are like coprophahi bacteria - disgusting scum but necessary.
Copywriters, telemarketers and PR experts are a different type of beast. One that should be put down with extreme prejudice, so their souls can burn in tar with other swindlers and grafters in Malebolge. :P
:hug:
That's all I needed to hear.
That's murder she wrote.
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 05, 2014, 10:33:19 PM
I love the American press and there's some great writers but God as a group they're nauseatingly self-obsessed/involved. 'A kind of public trust', for Christ's sake :bleeding:
Somebody has to man the walls. If an industry doesn't police itself for integrity, then it becomes FOX News.
QuoteThe mass departure came one day after a shakeup that saw the resignation of top editor Franklin Foer and veteran literary editor Leon Wieseltier, both of whom resigned due to differences of vision with Hughes, a 31-year-old Facebook co-founder who bought the magazine in 2012.
:bleeding:
You can say what you want about TNR and the state of political commentary and long-form journalism today, but that's nothing compared to the state of media today when a bunch of snot-nosed, Zuckerberg-hoodied Millennial Adderal-addled assclown Assburgers running around with more intraweb money than they know what to do with can take over media. Barf. Fucking kids. THE ARTICLES ARE TOO BIG READING HURTS
QuoteThose who resigned are senior editors Jonathan Cohn, Isaac Chotiner, Julia Ioffe, John Judis, Adam Kirsch, Alec MacGillis, Noam Scheiber, Judith Shulevitz and Jason Zengerle; executive editors Rachel Morris and Greg Veis; digital media editor Hillary Kelly (who resigned from her honeymoon in Africa); legal affairs editor Jeffrey Rosen; and poetry editor Henri Cole and dance editor Jennifer Homans. Contributing editors Anne Applebaum, Paul Berman, Christopher Benfey, Jonathan Chait, William Deresiewicz, Justin Driver, TA Frank, Ruth Franklin, Jack Goldsmith, Anthony Grafton, David Grann, David Greenberg, Robert Kagan, Enrique Krauze, Damon Linker, Ryan Lizza, John McWhorter, Sacha Z. Scoblic, Cass Sunstein, Alan Taylor, Helen Vendler and Sean Wilentz.
Many of those who resigned on Friday believe that Hughes and Vidra now intend to turn TNR into a click-focused digital media company, at the expense of the magazine's strong editorial traditions and venerable brand, according to sources who attended the gathering at Foer's house.
"The narrative you're going to see Chris and Guy put out there is that I and the rest of my colleagues who quit today were dinosaurs, who think that the Internet is scary and that Buzzfeed is a slur. Don't believe them," Julia Ioffe, one of the resigning senior editors, wrote in a Facebook post. "The staff at TNR has always been faithful to the magazine's founding mission to experiment, and nowhere have I been so encouraged to do so. There was no opposition in the editorial ranks to expanding TNR's web presence, to innovating digitally. Many were even board for going monthly. We're not afraid of change. We have always embraced it."
"As for the health of long-form journalism, well, the pieces that often did the best online were the deeply reported, carefully edited and fact-checked, and beautifully written," Ioffe wrote. "Those were the pieces that got the most clicks."
NEEDS MOAR CLICKS
I thought that Buzzfeed was a slur.
Also, it's important to remember that lawyer don't really do anything important. They create the demand themselves, and if we were to execute the lot of them, something better could be created.
Now if only everybody at Gawker could drop dead.
Quote from: Neil on December 06, 2014, 08:08:21 PM
I thought that Buzzfeed was a slur.
It's all monkey shitfights at the zoo now that the Zuckerbergtards are building media business models on clicks per minute.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on December 06, 2014, 07:12:49 PM
You can say what you want about TNR and the state of political commentary and long-form journalism today
I think the people have already said enough with their wallets.
Quote from: garbon on December 06, 2014, 08:25:07 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on December 06, 2014, 07:12:49 PM
You can say what you want about TNR and the state of political commentary and long-form journalism today
I think the people have already said enough with their wallets.
More money than attention span? That's not new.
Quote from: garbon on December 06, 2014, 08:25:07 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on December 06, 2014, 07:12:49 PM
You can say what you want about TNR and the state of political commentary and long-form journalism today
I think the people have already said enough with their wallets.
Except now, they're not even voting with their wallets. The money is coming in from the gullible fools who advertise on the internet.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on December 06, 2014, 08:27:48 PM
Quote from: garbon on December 06, 2014, 08:25:07 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on December 06, 2014, 07:12:49 PM
You can say what you want about TNR and the state of political commentary and long-form journalism today
I think the people have already said enough with their wallets.
More money than attention span? That's not new.
I'm not sure what's so great about having a long attention span. So you can read Tim-length articles that no one in their right mind finds relevant?
Dancing on the grave of the New Republic would be more fun if I hadn't already done it when the little shit bought the thing two years ago.
TL;DR;DGAF.
Quote from: Neil on December 06, 2014, 08:39:03 PM
Quote from: garbon on December 06, 2014, 08:25:07 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on December 06, 2014, 07:12:49 PM
You can say what you want about TNR and the state of political commentary and long-form journalism today
I think the people have already said enough with their wallets.
Except now, they're not even voting with their wallets. The money is coming in from the gullible fools who advertise on the internet.
It may not have found itself in that situation if people had been interested in purchasing/subscribing.
The price of information has already been set, and that price is nothing.
Neil is wise.
Quote from: Neil on December 06, 2014, 09:25:34 PM
The price of information has already been set, and that price is nothing.
Overly broad. There is a lot of information that can command quite a premium.
Quote from: garbon on December 06, 2014, 08:43:23 PM
It may not have found itself in that situation if people had been interested in purchasing/subscribing.
Yep. I think we're starting to see media brands that are making money out of the internet with different approaches. The Atlantic's turning a profit, so's the Economist and the Times - in each case I think because the content's good enough. The precious martyr approach doesn't work.
On the other hand it is sad to see any magazine brought low with a letter like this:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B4CieynCMAArQRM.pngp)
Though I'm going to describe myself as a straddle generation legal professional :lol:
Oh and I liked Dan Drezner's piece on this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/05/is-there-a-peter-principle-for-investors/
QuoteIs there a Peter Principle for investors?
By Daniel W. Drezner December 5
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at Tufts University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
A decade ago, when I was just a wee blogger, the New Republic asked me to write a monthly online column for them. At the time, TNR's imprimatur functioned like a bat signal to other mainstream media outlets, opening up other nonscholarly writing opportunities for me. And for this, I've always had a soft spot for that magazine. Indeed, after leaving Foreign Policy earlier this year, I came very close to blogging for TNR instead of creating Spoiler Alerts here.
So I share the sadness that a lot of reporters and opinion writers are feeling with the bloodletting that happened Thursday at the New Republic:
Quote- n Thursday, [TNR's] editor, Franklin Foer, and the veteran literary editor, Leon Wieseltier, abruptly resigned in the face of a disagreement over the magazine's direction. Mr. Foer was replaced by Gabriel Snyder, a former editor of The Atlantic Wire. The magazine will reduce its publication schedule to 10 issues a year, from 20, [TNR chief executive Guy] Vidra said in a memo, and would be reimagined "as a vertically integrated digital media company."
I've got some training in economics, and I'm fascinated to know what Vidra thinks he means by "vertically integrated digital media company." Because, using the standard textbook definition of that term, it means that TNR will be going into the silicon mining business and tablet-building business.
Vidra's general vision of what TNR will look like going forward does read like someone went to a TED talk in Palo Alto and mined every business cliche possible, as Dylan Byers (who broke the story) explains in Politico:
QuoteVidra's vision for TNR was radically different than that of Foer and Wieseltier. In meetings with staff, he spoke of the magazine as though it were a Silicon Valley startup, sources said. He talked about "disruption" and said he wanted to "break shit." He referred to himself as a "wartime CEO." At one point, he proposed giving every employee shares in the company, suggesting that he had plans to make it public.
Apparently, "disruption" means acting in as douche-y a manner as possible toward existing employees, as Lloyd Grove explains over at the Daily Beast:
QuoteAccording to informed sources, [TNR owner Chris] Hughes and Vidra didn't bother to inform Foer that he was out of a job. Instead, the editor was placed in the humiliating position of having to phone Hughes to get confirmation after Gawker.com posted an item at 2:35 p.m. reporting the rumor that Bloomberg Media editor Gabriel Snyder, himself a onetime Gawker editor, had been hired as Foer's replacement. Yes, it's true, Hughes sheepishly admitted, notwithstanding that he and Vidra had given Foer repeated assurances that his job was safe.
There are already a whole mess of eulogies for the TNR-that-was, but what's striking to me is that this is hardly the first clash this year between a billionaire titan and the new business venture that he's running. Think of the culture clashes over at First Look Media, or even the Wall Streeters' dubious management plan for reviving the Philadelphia 76ers.
These clashes go beyond the for-profit realm.Peter Thiel keeps yammering about how there's gonna be a revolution in higher education, but I'm not really seeing it. Similarly, in my Ideas Industry conferences, I've heard a lot of nonprofit sector folk complaining that Silicon Valley investors want to revolutionize their field without really understanding it.
The pattern in each of these cases is that a fabulously wealthy and successful investor enters a new and not-terribly-successful sector and tries to apply the lessons learned from the investor's past successes to this new area. Except that there's not a ton of evidence that those lessons are truly generalizable. One almost wonders if there is an extension of the Peter Principle for investors.
To be clear, I'm actually a big fan of the "creative destruction" that should come with a properly functioning capitalist economy. Usually, however, that creative destruction emanates from real technological innovations. What's going on at TNR sounds more like a successful investor moving into less successful areas of endeavor... and finding that disruption for its own sake is not necessarily a formula for success.
The irony of all of this is that while TNR was never good at producing a profit, it really excelled as an incubator for journalists and writers. As Ezra Klein points out, there are a lot of TNR-like entities out there now, so perhaps this isn't that huge of a blow. Still, the way that Hughes has botched his handling of this TNR shakeup suggests that maybe billionaire investors should pause once or twice before thinking that they know how to revolutionize every sector of the economy.
Quote from: garbon on December 06, 2014, 09:33:56 PM
Quote from: Neil on December 06, 2014, 09:25:34 PM
The price of information has already been set, and that price is nothing.
Overly broad. There is a lot of information that can command quite a premium.
I think Neil meant media content, as opposed to the kind of stuff we work with. Now quit selling your company's secrets.
Just joking.
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 06, 2014, 09:44:42 PM
The precious martyr approach doesn't work.
Save the English superiority complex.
QuoteFrom the get-go, The New Republic struggled to make a mark on Washington and Hughes struggled to generate ad revenue. By 2014, Hughes was thinking of ways to restructure the magazine for digital growth, even at the expense of its legacy. In September, he hired Vidra, the former general manager of Yahoo News, to serve as TNR's first-ever chief executive.
Vidra's vision for TNR was radically different than that of Foer and Wieseltier. In meetings with staff, he spoke of the magazine as though it were a Silicon Valley startup, sources said. He talked about "disruption" and said he wanted to "break shit." He referred to himself as a "wartime CEO." At one point, he proposed giving every employee shares in the company, suggesting that he had plans to make it public.
:bleeding:
Don't root for the internet start-up millionaire
nouveau riche. It's unbecoming of an Englishman, even a straddle generation legal professional.
I'm not rooting for them :o
I think it's less the case of rooting for one side than finding both sides equally detestable. :P
Dana Milbank dishes some inside dirt.
QuoteOpinions
The New Republic is dead, thanks to its owner
By Dana Milbank Opinion writer December 8 at 10:38 AM
Washington Post
At a 40th birthday party in July for Franklin Foer, editor of the New Republic, the magazine's young owner, Chris Hughes, got all choked up as he pledged to the roomful of writers at Foer's country home in Pennsylvania that the two would be "intellectual partners for decades."
But 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.
When he bought the magazine in 2012 at the age of 28, the Facebook co-founder pledged to "double down" on "in-depth, rigorous reporting," telling NPR that "the demand for long-form quality journalism is strong in our country."
But after just two years, Hughes decided that saving long-form journalism was just too hard. He declared that the 100-year-old journal of opinion would become a technology company, and he brought in a new CEO who literally proposed that writers team up with engineers to make "widgets" for TNR's website.
Hughes ousted his intellectual partner Foer without even the courtesy of telling him; Foer found out when his replacement, a man who previously had been fired as editor of the gossip website Gawker, began announcing himself as the new editor and offering people jobs. Most of the entire staff quit in protest, and the Hughes management team suspended publication until February. They needn't bother resuming at all. The New Republic is dead; Chris Hughes killed it.
This is personal for me. I left the Wall Street Journal to join TNR in the 1990s, taking a 50 percent pay cut and a 95 percent reduction in subscribers for the pleasure of joining what felt like a family. I met Hughes earlier this year and, I, too, was fooled by his talk about the resources he was pumping into the magazine. I told him in an email that he was "doing the Lord's work in rescuing this proud old brand" and called him a "21st-century Walter Lippmann."
But Hughes is no Lippmann; he's a callow man who accidentally became rich – to the tune of some $700 million – because he had the luck of being Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's roommate at Harvard. Hughes seemed intent on proving he could be a success in his own right, but it hasn't happened. He created a "cause-oriented social network," Jumo, in 2010, but when it didn't take off, he was done with it in 2011. He turned out to be no more devoted to TNR.
He began with a flourish, rehiring Foer, a well-liked former editor, for the top job. He spent lavishly, opening and staffing a New York office and moving the Washington office to glitzy new quarters with big windows overlooking the National Portrait Gallery. He hired an interior decorator to advise him on office decor, and he picked out the paint colors himself. Hughes built a library for Leon Wieseltier, then TNR's legendary literary editor, and insisted that it be painted the same color as the bedroom in one of Hughes's three homes.
He said all the right things, telling the New York Times that he would "recruit a lineup of all-stars" and put the magazine in a league with the New Yorker. He was still on message last year, telling Pando that "we are not the next big trend in Silicon Valley." And Foer got good results for Hughes: a succession of high-impact stories, and online readership that was on course to double to 6 million this year from 3 million in 2013.
Hughes is no idiot (he reads Balzac in French), but as a businessman he turned out to be a lost boy. When he took over in 2012, he fired the magazine's business staff, hiring instead a Harvard friend with no media experience. He had no interest in the work needed to woo advertisers. He redesigned the website himself; it looked good but didn't work well. He tried to eliminate landline phones, seeing no reason why reporters might need them. And his spending spree caused annual losses to swell from $1 million when he bought the struggling magazine (he was its fifth owner in a decade) to $5 million.
While his mistakes are excusable, his childish impatience is not. After David Bradley bought the Atlantic in 1999 he made plenty of mistakes – but he kept the long view and ultimately made that grand old institution a leader in digital innovation. By contrast, Hughes became bored with journalism, occupying himself with the latest phones and the prospect of creating new apps; his visits to Washington headquarters became infrequent. He announced a "New Republic Fund" to invest in "early-stage technology companies."
The final blow: bringing in former Yahoo News general manager Guy Vidra (who once worked on the business staff of the Post) to be CEO, a man dedicated to "re-imagining TNR as a vertically integrated digital media company." And Hughes became bitter. On Oct. 31, the New York Times published an article about his husband, Sean Eldridge, who was running for Congress in upstate New York "with a thin resume and a thick wallet." Eldridge and Hughes bought a house in the district in 2013 for $2 million, though it was just an hour from the $5 million home they already owned.
The same day the article appeared, Hughes lashed out in a group email to staff because senior editor (and former Post reporter) Alec MacGillis had dared to propose writing a piece about Apple avoiding taxes just after Apple's Tim Cook had come out of the closet. Hughes shot back that "Apple has acted squarely within the law" and that MacGillis's argument would be "tone deaf." MacGillis quickly backed off, but Hughes did not, writing twice more to defend Apple's tax strategy and to call Cook "incredibly heroic" for coming out.
After Hughes's husband lost by 30 points in what should have been a close race in a swing district, it became an open secret that Hughes was done with the New Republic. At a lavish 100th-anniversary gala for the magazine at the Mellon Auditorium Nov. 19, Hughes did the seating chart himself – and he put most of the magazine staff at tables in the back. He told junior staffers they could not bring guests to the event, and he reacted furiously when one politely asked if she could bring her fiancé who had given the magazine pro bono advice on social media strategy.
Two weeks later, Foer, after learning of his firing second-hand, called Hughes, who claimed, absurdly, that it was "Guy's decision." In a Hughes op-ed published by the Post Sunday night, after the staff walkout and withdrawal of articles by outside contributors forced him to suspend publication, Hughes said that the New Republic should "become a sustainable business and not position ourselves to rely on the largesse of an unpredictable few."
An unpredictable few? The magazine relied on an unpredictable one – him – and he failed it.
R.I.P., TNR. You deserved better than Chris Hughes.
Maybe there is a reason there are so few gay CEOs. :hmm:
Quote from: Martinus on December 08, 2014, 03:46:58 PM
Maybe there is a reason there are so few gay CEOs. :hmm:
Because they play to type?
Quote from: CountDeMoney on December 08, 2014, 03:54:01 PM
Quote from: Martinus on December 08, 2014, 03:46:58 PM
Maybe there is a reason there are so few gay CEOs. :hmm:
Because they play to type?
Well, erratic drama-queen-ish behaviour is not perhaps what a well run company needs. I haven't met a lot of CEOs like that. I met a lot of gays like that, though. :P
Quote from: Ideologue on December 06, 2014, 02:44:25 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 06, 2014, 02:30:29 AM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on December 06, 2014, 01:50:44 AMI thought you were all about melodrama and style?
Style, yes who isn't. There ain't much style in whining.
I don't know where people have got the idea I like melodrama :o
I think you're the one who told me to watch Douglas Sirk movies. :hmm:
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 06, 2014, 02:49:44 AM
You lie!
:faints:
Indeed, I've always been the big Sirk backer, get your gay Englishmen straight for the Lord's sake. Now will you help me get this stricken Beau Brummel back onto his feet if it isn't too much effort for such a delicate Piedmontese petty-bourgeois. :glare: :administers smelling salts to Sheilbh: :pope:
Quote from: Martinus on December 08, 2014, 03:58:57 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on December 08, 2014, 03:54:01 PM
Quote from: Martinus on December 08, 2014, 03:46:58 PM
Maybe there is a reason there are so few gay CEOs. :hmm:
Because they play to type?
Well, erratic drama-queen-ish behaviour is not perhaps what a well run company needs. I haven't met a lot of CEOs like that. I met a lot of gays like that, though. :P
I don't think we should tar and feather all gays because of your set.
I enjoyed Ta-Nehisi Coates' piece on the eulogies of TNR:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/the-new-republic-an-appreciation/383561/
Is Ta-Nehisi a sci fi alien race?
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 10, 2014, 01:05:16 PM
I enjoyed Ta-Nehisi Coates' piece on the eulogies of TNR:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/the-new-republic-an-appreciation/383561/
Seemed like he was holding back. I wish he would just come out and say what he really thinks.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on December 10, 2014, 04:44:36 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 10, 2014, 01:05:16 PM
I enjoyed Ta-Nehisi Coates' piece on the eulogies of TNR:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/the-new-republic-an-appreciation/383561/
Seemed like he was holding back. I wish he would just come out and say what he really thinks.
The man quoted Sheridan. Good enough for me. #scorchedvirginianotawarcrime
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on December 10, 2014, 04:44:36 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 10, 2014, 01:05:16 PM
I enjoyed Ta-Nehisi Coates' piece on the eulogies of TNR:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/the-new-republic-an-appreciation/383561/
Seemed like he was holding back. I wish he would just come out and say what he really thinks.
Unfortunately, he is the boy who cried "wolf!" At this point, I expect him to find racism in anything, so his finding it in The New Republic concerns me not at all.
Quote from: The Brain on December 10, 2014, 04:36:35 PM
Is Ta-Nehisi a sci fi alien race?
That made me giggle. Brain, do you know that you're a Languish treasure? That seems more backhanded than I intended. :P :hug:
Quote from: grumbler on December 10, 2014, 07:13:35 PM
Unfortunately, he is the boy who cried "wolf!" At this point, I expect him to find racism in anything, so his finding it in The New Republic concerns me not at all.
"Boy" :rolleyes:
Meanwhile...
QuoteLeon Wieseltier, the veteran New Republic literary editor who resigned last month, has joined The Atlantic as a contributing editor and critic, the company announced on Monday.
"For a generation of editors and writers, Leon has helped define standards for piercing criticism of culture and society," James Bennet, the Atlantic's president and editor-in-chief, said in a statement. "There is no writer better equipped — by dint of erudition, wit, and forcefulness — to fill the role of critic for The Atlantic."
Wieseltier, who spent three decades as TNR's literary editor, will write for the Atlantic's magazine and website. He will work with literary editor Ann Hulbert, his former colleague at The New Republic.
Both Wieseltier and TNR editor Frank Foer left the magazine in December amid disagreements with the magazine's ownership, which has announced plans to rebrand the century-old institution as a "digital media company." Their departure sparked the resignation of the majority of the magazine's masthead and fierce protest from Washington's political and media establishment.
Quote from: Ideologue on December 10, 2014, 07:15:58 PM
Quote from: The Brain on December 10, 2014, 04:36:35 PM
Is Ta-Nehisi a sci fi alien race?
That made me giggle. Brain, do you know that you're a Languish treasure? That seems more backhanded than I intended. :P :hug:
I missed this one earlier. Thank you! :hug:
Only children, women, and gays giggle. Try guffawing instead Ide. :)
Quote from: Martinus on December 06, 2014, 03:14:33 AM
Languish should be renamed "Lawyers and Friends".
I would never be friends with a lawyer! :mad:
Is Hughes the one that sued Zuckerberg?
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 05, 2015, 10:40:41 PM
I would never be friends with a lawyer! :mad:
Is Hughes the one that sued Zuckerberg?
Which time? Or are you thinking of the Winklevoss twins?
Quote from: DontSayBanana on January 06, 2015, 01:16:23 AM
Which time? Or are you thinking of the Winklevoss twins?
No, the friend who had his shares reduced and felt crowded out.
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 06, 2015, 01:36:35 AM
Quote from: DontSayBanana on January 06, 2015, 01:16:23 AM
Which time? Or are you thinking of the Winklevoss twins?
No, the friend who had his shares reduced and felt crowded out.
No, that's Saverin (played by Andrew Garfield). I just googled him and while he is credited in the IMDB, I don't remember him so his role was probably episodic.
Quote from: Caliga on January 05, 2015, 10:16:47 PM
Only children, women, and gays giggle. Try guffawing instead Ide. :)
He can also snigger. :contract:
Giggling is like sneezing, sometimes one just needs to get out and there's nothing you can do about it.
Quote from: The Brain on January 05, 2015, 12:46:53 PM
Quote from: Ideologue on December 10, 2014, 07:15:58 PM
Quote from: The Brain on December 10, 2014, 04:36:35 PM
Is Ta-Nehisi a sci fi alien race?
That made me giggle. Brain, do you know that you're a Languish treasure? That seems more backhanded than I intended. :P :hug:
I missed this one earlier. Thank you! :hug:
No prob. :)
Quote from: Caliga on January 05, 2015, 10:16:47 PM
Only children, women, and gays giggle. Try guffawing instead Ide. :)
I don't bow to your rigid gender roles.