Archives for 2014

Over the weekend, Chris Hughes got the Washington Post to publish his self-justifying op-ed about dumping a bunch of boring print scriveners on the way to engineering a vertically integrated media platform… excuse me, “Crafting A Sustainable New Republic“:

… I’ve never bought into the Silicon Valley outlook that technological progress is pre-ordained or good for everyone. I don’t share the unbridled, Panglossian optimism and casual disdain for established institutions and tradition of many technologists. New technologies and start-ups excite and animate me, but they don’t always make our lives or institutions better. That’s one of the many reasons why I bought the New Republic — to preserve and invest in an important institution in a time of great technological change. Its voice and values have been important for a century, and technology should be used not to transform it but to develop and amplify its influence…

Dana Milbank — who used to be paid to write for TNR, and is now paid to write for the Washington Post — is not happy with Chris Hughes. “TNR Is Dead, Thanks to Its Owner“:

… 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 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…

… 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…

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…

Speaking of click metrics, I had to hunt the WaPo site for Hughes’s op-ed, but Milbank’s post is at the top of the “Most Read Opinions” sidebar. Sometimes hiring a task-specific professional might be a smart business choice, I guess.
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