Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Inside the Collapse of the New Republic

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 64 posts

Re: Inside the Collapse of the New Republic

#41

Post by kmfrk »

danso wrote: post #12

> Hughes insisted that deep reporting and ideas would still be important to the magazine. “That’s not enough,” he added. “We also have to do videos. We also have to do interactive graphics. We also have to be increasingly smarter—we’ve already made good progress, but even more—about how we use social media.” The session finished abruptly with Hughes banging on the table and declaring, “This institution has been aroun…

Even the New York Times have this weird discrepency between desktop and mobile articles, where the mobile articles just flat-out do not include some of the media and information of the full article.

Re: Inside the Collapse of the New Republic

#42

Post by marincounty »

"The Siliconian came down like the wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in wireless gold, Crying Media Company Vertically Integrated! As all before them they willfully extirpated: The Back of the Book and the Front and the Middle, Until all that was left was digital piddle, And Thought and Word lay dead and cold."

This poem really is really depressing. I hope it's not our future?

I'll get down voted, or Hell flamed(I really hate this cliched way of speaking), but here goes; I'm all for progress, but I don't want to dumb down journalism so it fit's in a digital format. After reading that poem I started to think about the book A Brave New World, and odly enough I looked up how old someone needs to be if they want to be a US President--yea--I forgot.

One other thing has been on my mind after reading this article, and reading a lot if comments on HN over the years. I'll paraphrase because I'm old and lazy, 'Apple didn't break the law. They were required to maximize shareholders profits. I don't see a problem?' I've seen this line of thinking a lot. In my world, my father taught me, "Just because it's legal son--doesn't make it right!"

Maybe it's just me, but being Editor of a magazine like the New Republic requires a very special person--a little age and wisdom(not out of a college text book) seems like it would go a long way? Along with a long apprentiship that many Journalists were once required to endure?

Don't get me wrong, I value youth and believe a lot of entrenched men of authority should be put out to pasture, but when it to situations like what transpired at the New Republic--my butt twitches. I picture the new editor sending back stories with TLDR. Ugh-

Re: Inside the Collapse of the New Republic

#43

Post by bhouston »

escape_goat wrote: post #25

There is something deeply tragicomic about Vidra's role in this. I know nothing about the man, and it would be too easy to disparage him on this basis of this report; one should presume that he has management and organizational skills well suited to an executive position, and one should not forget that he seems to have been completely hamstrung by the owner's ill-fated activism and engagement with the magazine, whate…

The TNR was never profitable though and likely could never be given its current structure.

But I wonder why buy and gut TNR if you could have just started a separate endeavor. TNR isn't that strong of a name - it is just a name is relatively small circles of elitists.

Re: Inside the Collapse of the New Republic

#44

Post by krrrh »

IndianAstronaut wrote: post #19
danso wrote: post #12

> Hughes insisted that deep reporting and ideas would still be important to the magazine. “That’s not enough,” he added. “We also have to do videos. We also have to do interactive graphics. We also have to be increasingly smarter—we’ve already made good progress, but even more—about how we use social media.” The session finished abruptly with Hughes banging on the table and declaring, “This institution has been aroun…

>But there hasn't been much evidence that their groundbreaking work has made a significant impact in declining revenues. Do people have the time or attention span to read anymore? For me I love the Economist, but I don't have the time to read it anymore. Thankfully they have an audio edition. I wonder if this might be the trick to get subscribers up.

The Economist audio edition is so well done and has been around for years. I'm surprised no other major publications have looked at it for inspiration. As a one time subscriber of the New Republic, an audio edition would have really had me thinking about subscribing again. I loved the long-form journalism, and it's better content than most podcasts I listen to while doing other things.

Re: Inside the Collapse of the New Republic

#45

Post by calinet6 »

pfortuny wrote: post #40
mynameishere wrote: post #17

The magazine has almost always lost money Magazines like The New Republic are effectively public-facing think tanks, and were never meant to be enterprises. Print journalism as a whole is going in that direction. Billionaires like Carlos Slim and Jeff Bezos will prop up the big papers, and multi-millionaires like Chris Hughes will prop up the little papers. Hughes (bizarrely) confused himself with a businessman, and…

Exactly: you are eager to lose money because you value the outcome in a different (non-monetary) way. Value is not necessarily convertible to dollars.

I think that's exactly it: the output is a complex web of societal effects, and thus does not translate easily into dollars. It is possible that money be extracted out of that output if you push it, but it comes at the expense of some part of that complexity that forever lies in a tug-of-war between authenticity and power.

Re: Inside the Collapse of the New Republic

#46

Post by calinet6 »

moonka wrote: post #16

To me the most interesting parts were the ones where stories were buried on Hughes direction: >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 abou…

Most interesting and most telling.

It seems that Hughes was acting decidedly immature and selfish, and that led to many consequences in such a delicate culture. He had no idea how to lead it, or he just clashed with it too much—and he broke it.

It is a story about the importance of understanding and respecting internal culture, above all. It can be incredibly powerful if directed in a positive direction, but absolutely destructive if it's shaken. A lesson for all of us.

Re: Inside the Collapse of the New Republic

#47

Post by wmij »

danso wrote: post #12

> Hughes insisted that deep reporting and ideas would still be important to the magazine. “That’s not enough,” he added. “We also have to do videos. We also have to do interactive graphics. We also have to be increasingly smarter—we’ve already made good progress, but even more—about how we use social media.” The session finished abruptly with Hughes banging on the table and declaring, “This institution has been aroun…

For me, auto starting a video in news item I want to read is an abandonment driver unless the link either had the word 'video' in the title or an icon that represented a video would be part of the story. 'Your video will begin momentarily...' - Oh no it won't.

I once added a reply to a news site to give my feedback on their use of videos and it was removed.

Re: Inside the Collapse of the New Republic

#49

Post by jschwartzi »

bhouston wrote: post #43
escape_goat wrote: post #25

There is something deeply tragicomic about Vidra's role in this. I know nothing about the man, and it would be too easy to disparage him on this basis of this report; one should presume that he has management and organizational skills well suited to an executive position, and one should not forget that he seems to have been completely hamstrung by the owner's ill-fated activism and engagement with the magazine, whate…

The TNR was never profitable though and likely could never be given its current structure. But I wonder why buy and gut TNR if you could have just started a separate endeavor. TNR isn't that strong of a name - it is just a name is relatively small circles of elitists.

The article makes it sound like it was originally bought when the buyer was feeling successful. As the buyer started to feel less successful due to other circumstances in their life, they started to feel less comfortable with the idea of owning a print magazine that was losing money. Thus the idea of reinventing it to be profitable.

Re: Inside the Collapse of the New Republic

#50

Post by Bahamut »

escape_goat wrote: post #25

There is something deeply tragicomic about Vidra's role in this. I know nothing about the man, and it would be too easy to disparage him on this basis of this report; one should presume that he has management and organizational skills well suited to an executive position, and one should not forget that he seems to have been completely hamstrung by the owner's ill-fated activism and engagement with the magazine, whate…

Sadly, I have seen this quite a bit already in my short time in the Valley - how do people get so caught up in the tech industry jargon that they forget how to interact with people? Even worse, this is what seems to be the heart of why management in general is so terrible in the area. True leaders are in short supply here.
Post reply on HN