[ColinCera]

It's a good thing Chris Hughes likes to break things, because he's irreparably broken The New Republic.

The people who read TNR (myself included) do so specifically because it's been a bastion of traditional journalism, and moreover we read it for specific writers & contributing editors, and since they've all resigned now, TNR is dead.

Outside of a very small sliver of the population nobody's ever even heard of the The New Republic — it's not a brand name that Hughes can gut and remodel. The New Republic is not a brand that anyone cares about; we cared about the content, the writers and the editors.

I can see no way for TNR to carry on as a viable operation. As a TNR reader for more than 30 years, it makes me rather sad.

This is all so stupid and sad.

[anigbrowl]

Not being a regular reader, I was a bit startled go there for the firsttime in a while and find a website that looks like Buzzfeed. I hope the existing editorial team or some more thoughtful soul can pony up enough capital to launch The Even Newer Republic or something along those lines.

That quote from Guy Vidra about how he can't bring himself to read past 500 words of any article should haunt him for the remainder of his career.

[tptacek]

I think you've misquoted Vidra:

The friction escalated with the arrival of Vidra, who is said to have complained to Foer that the magazine was boring and that he couldn’t bring himself to read past the first 500 words of an article.

The more likely meaning here is that Vidra couldn't read more than 500 words of a boring TNR article.

[dreamweapon]

That quote from Guy Vidra about how he can't bring himself to read past 500 words of any article should haunt him for the remainder of his career.

Yup. So priceless. And so typical SV.

[thaumaturgy]

I wouldn't worry about it; I'm sure they'll pivot, build mobile-first something that people want, scale like a startup, and then be validated by the market when they profitably exit.

[tlrobinson]

Vidra spoke in what one witness described as “Silicon Valley jargon,” and, using a tech cliché, declared: “We’re going to break shit”

Indeed.

[panarky]

It's a shame that TNR has been gutted, but the good news is that all those talented writers and editors are still just as talented.

Maybe there's a place for them at Pierre Omidyar's First Look Media.

[Shivetya]

too slanted to be journalism, its like reading the opinion page of any local newspaper. So if that is the last bastion of journalism then journalism died a long time ago.