Inside the Collapse of the New Republic

Ugh...as someone who worked as a developer in the news industry...I don't believe that fancy interactive graphics and video have a chance to save a text-based company. What is necessary for journalism companies to survive is not only good content, but good process...and if you have a staff accustomed to producing text pieces, you will not have the pipeline necessary to do the "cool" web stuff...And even if you did, those things would not save you, even when done competently.

Case in point: The New York Times produces visuals and interactives at a level that is the state-of-the-art; not just in the journalism industry, but in any industry. But there hasn't been much evidence that their groundbreaking work has made a significant impact in declining revenues.

As evidence, I point out that NYT's current strategy is to bet much more heavily on video, massively increasing its video production (and presumably, video-ad-producing) department. However, according to this Columbia University survey (http://videonow.towcenter.org/), not a single newspaper organization has yet made a profit off of video, and video has been part of news websites for almost a decade.

This is not to dismiss the talent at the Times...it's very possible, for example, that their web interactive group can produce dividends...but that will be because of a focus on developer process and digital strategy...not simply because they produced a few highly popular features.

That said, I'm not suggesting that if New Republic stuck to what they do now, that they'd make a profit. But as they say, jumping from the frying pan into the fryer is not really a survival strategy.

He funded his husband's congressional campaign against a republican in the New York Hudson Valley and was defeated handily, even after spending a ridiculous amount of cash. Hell, even the local NPR guy thought it was a not-so-great effort.

>Several months earlier, Noam Scheiber, a senior editor at the magazine, had started to report a story about Andreessen Horowitz, a major Silicon Valley venture-capital firm. It was slated to be a feature in T.N.R.’s hundredth-anniversary issue. But Hughes told Foer that he was scheduled to meet with Andreessen Horowitz about investing in another venture. Scheiber was reassigned to work on a profile of Valerie Jarrett. (Hughes denies that he gave orders to delay or cancel the Andreessen story.)

>“Chris seemed pretty pissed about Leon’s ‘Colbert’ appearance,” a staffer who is still at the magazine told me. “Editorial people were talking about how great Leon was, and Chris was angry that the first thing Leon said was what’s wrong with American culture is ‘too much digital.’ ”

>Hughes responded to the note six minutes later: “I think those are valid issues, although Apple has acted squarely within the law,” he wrote.