Hughes, speaking from the video screen, sounded angry and emotional. Staffers in New York told me that he welled up as he spoke. He told colleagues later that he was unprepared for the scale of the resignations and depth of the protest, especially from people who he had spent the past two years cultivating. In the meeting, Hughes described the changes in the magazine’s frequency and editorship, but insisted that a radical transformation into a digital-media company with a greater emphasis on profits did not mean that The New Republic, which was co-founded by Walter Lippmann, would devolve into a click-bait factory. He explained that he had studied history and literature at Harvard. “It’s always been a surprise to the rest of the world that I care about tradition and about institutions,” he said, “because we live in a cultural moment which very much rewards the language of startups and Silicon Valley.”
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 around for one hundred fucking years,” and promising that it wasn’t dead.
Vidra and Hughes had another problem on their hands. The next issue of T.N.R. was scheduled to close the following Wednesday, and writers had begun to withdraw their articles. Vidra, two of the remaining editors at the magazine, and two members of the business staff gathered in the library. Former editors told me that, as far as they know, the magazine has never missed an issue in its history.
Hughes addressed the group by speakerphone. “How are we going to produce the issue?” he asked.
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