Correction:
The original version of this article incorrectly said that Chris Hughes and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg became college roommates through random assignment their freshman year. In fact, the two met as freshmen and decided to room together the next year. Also, the article said then-New Republic editor Richard Just made a “cold call” to Hughes to interest him in buying the magazine. In fact, Just solicited Hughes after being introduced by a friend.
Sean Eldridge, left, and Chris Hughes. | Bloomberg - Sean Eldridge, president of Hudson River Ventures, left, and Chris Hughes, editor-in-chief and publisher of The New Republic and a founder of Facebook, stand for a photograph during the Paris Review Spring Revel gala in New York.
Adds MacGillis, “What I find impressive is that he’s so rooted for someone who is as young and absurdly fortunate as he is. He doesn’t seem to read some grand entrepreneurial narrative into his success.”
Despite the generally warm reception for Hughes, his tenure has thus far produced one unsettling development, at least within the magazine’s corridors. Staffers were shocked in May when Hughes fired Just as editor and replaced him with Franklin Foer, who had been TNR’s editor from 2006 to 2010.
A year later, Facebook has tightened its focus on becoming a mobile, profitable company.
Acquisition rumors fly — the popular bogging site would fit with the Web giant’s mobile focus.
IBM demonstrated some new, proposed health-care related features of its Watson supercomputer to lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Just, 32, was probably more surprised than anyone. Under his watch, TNR was a finalist for a National Magazine Award for general excellence in the “thought leader” category, a signal achievement, given the publication’s ragtag financial state. He’d also recruited Hughes to buy the publication. Indeed, when the sale was announced in March, Just confidently told the New York Times that Hughes “has assured me that I’m going to continue to run the editorial side of the magazine.”
Instead, Hughes replaced him with the man Just had succeeded as editor just 18 months earlier. (Just, now at the Daily Beast, declined to comment, as did Foer.)
Timothy Noah, a senior editor, calls Just’s firing “weird” in light of his role in bringing Hughes in. “I was very dismayed to see Richard fired,” says Noah, “and I was very happy to see Frank hired. The net result was perfect neutrality.”
Another writer, who asked not to be identified, called the change “totally jarring.” He notes “there was some sense that things were not going well between Chris and Richard. There was head-butting over covers. Chris was taking more interest in the day-to-day [editing] than Richard was comfortable with. I think Richard was very surprised that he’s no longer at the helm.”
Another staff member analyzed the firing this way: “I think Chris felt like Richard wasn’t thinking big enough or aggressive enough about the future of the magazine. . . . It didn’t help that their personalities didn’t mesh.”
The comment suggests the extent of Hughes’s involvement in his new enterprise. Hughes has been a hands-on presence. Staffers say he attends about half of the magazine’s editorial meetings, commuting from his estate in Garrison, N.Y., or his loft in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood.
Eric Alterman, a media critic at the Nation magazine, already sees some signs of change. In May, TNR published a sensitive and deeply reported feature on Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, entitled “The Visionary.” Such a piece, Alterman says, would have been unthinkable under Peretz, who was relentlessly anti-Palestinian. “The general tone of the magazine has been changed by the absence of Marty Peretz,” Alterman says.
Yet it’s still unclear where Hughes intends to steer the magazine.
“My sense about Chris is that he’s more interested in influence than power,” says Wieseltier. “He’s concerned about the vulgarization of political discourse. He’s interested in the arts and culture. He’s a man with values and with means. But I don’t think he wants to take over the world.”
Noah puts it a little differently: “He’s said all the right things, but I don’t know what the plan is. It’s probably evolving as we speak. I’m delighted we have some money behind us. . . . I’m delighted that his politics appear to be similar to my own. But I’d be lying if I said I knew what the grand plan is.”
The Post Most: LifestyleMost-viewed stories,videos, and galleries in the past two hours
Loading...
Comments