Facebook Founder Presents Vision For The New Republic, Many Resign In Protest

SkiTee94 writes: Chris Hughes, one of the original founders of Facebook, is in damage control mode to save his recently acquired, century-old publication The New Republic. In response to Hughes' vision to turn the highly respected, and most would say old school, publication into a "digital media company," about a dozen senior editors and writers simply quit (out of a 54-person staff). One of the editors who quit said, "The narrative that they are putting out there is that it is the 21st century and we have to innovate and adapt. ... We don’t know what their vision is. It is Silicon Valley mumbo jumbo buzzwords that don’t mean anything." Is Hughes a visionary cleaning out dead wood or a clueless tech star leaving destruction in his wake?

Comments

I love it!

[Anonymous Coward]

"....It is Silicon Valley mumbo jumbo buzzwords that don’t mean anything."

That made my day!

The Latter.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard Hughes speak. He enjoys pushing new things simply because they're new, not because they'll actually improve the product.

Sad to see this happen to TNR.

Is Hughes clearing dead wood?

[Chas]

I'd say that Hughes didn't do a damn thing.

You had a bunch of journalists who didn't identify with the pablum the new owner was puking. So, to send a CLEAR message, they quit.

An unusually direct show of integrity in today's era of spineless, jellyfish-like hack wannabes.

Re:Who cares...

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have a single left wing outlet in the US. Even the most left leaning is way into the political right everywhere else on the planet. You've got so used to extreme right as central, you cannot see you're a fascist state.

Re: yea no

[JSHenry]

No, this magazine actually is a public trust. It has never turned a profit in 100 years. But it has provided a forum for some of the best writers we've ever had. I hate to break it to you: lots of terrific art, theater, music , literature, science , sport, journalism , and for that matter, personal relationships, are not for-profit activities. And now this FB dweeb has decided to fire the Editor without telling him, kill the print edition, and become another HuffPo or Daily Mirror Online or TMZ or ... any number of other shallow "digital media" your generation is saturated with. It is just part of the general demise of good writing and the rise of "info porn" that the Internet has brought us -- along w Instant Billionaires like Bezo and Hughes and Zuckerberg.

Re:Hard to say

[Attila Dimedici]

From other sources we learn that the staff resigned over the fact that he fired the top editor for the magazine by announcing his replacement on Gawker. This action followed bringing in a new CEO who acted in ways they interpreted as having no respect for the traditions of the organization (there is, by the way, a difference between deciding that traditions need to be changed and disrespecting those traditions).

Re:Its own editors said so

[ConfusedVorlon]

Elsewhere you'll see they honestly and clearly state their intention to promote left-wing liberalism. They aren't pretending to be objective, balanced, or factual.

Holding a set of beliefs doesn't disqualify you from being objective, balanced or factual.

Everyone has beliefs - some subscribe to a classifiable set of beliefs. This journal is a collection of people who share some beliefs around liberalism - and they declare it.

Of course this means that they'll tend to see things through the prism of their beliefs - but everyone does this. At least in this case, they're honest and upfront about their beliefs, so you can take those into account.

They're going to pick stories of interest to liberals, and they're going to give liberal insights into events - but that doesn't mean they can't be reasonably objective, balanced of factual.

I say 'reasonably' because nobody can be completely objective, balanced or factual. Everyone is influenced by their preconceptions, experience, and by their imperfect knowledge.

Re:Who cares...

[dgatwood]

The U.S. considers those who espouse totalitarianism to be outside of the main stream.

Nothing to do with totalitarianism. Outside of a few social issues, the U.S. has almost no liberal politicians, and the U.S. also has essentially no fiscally conservative politicians. Instead, both parties are fiscally liberal, with the Republicans being the most fiscally liberal (spend money and don't worry about raising taxes to pay for it). Both parties are socially fairly conservative, with very few progressives or socialists even on the Democrat side of the aisle. The only real differences between the two parties are that:

1. They're backed by different groups of corporations, so the policies they create favor different corporations.
2. The Republicans tend to be backed more by the wealthy, so they tend to lower taxes on the wealthy while borrowing from Social Security that mostly benefits the poor and middle class, whereas the Democrats tend to be backed by more of the upper middle class, so they do the opposite.
3. The Republicans have a significantly higher percentage of people whose view of reality is so distorted that it can only be described as a mental illness.
4. They differ in their views on when people should be killed by others; Democrats are pro-choice and anti-death penalty; the Republicans are anti-choice and pro-death penalty.
5. The Republicans tend to have more people who think deregulation will magically improve things, despite the fact that those regulations were invariably put in to curb actual abuses, which invariably start happening again the moment the regulations are overturned. See also #3.
6. The Democrats tend to create social programs, then forget to check up on them to see if they're actually working as intended, and just assume that they are. The Republicans also tend to not check up on them, but complain that they're not working as intended, even if they are.

In short, the differences are mostly a lot of empty rhetoric, full of sound and fury....

Re:Boomers

[dgatwood]

I am willing to bet that the ages of those who resigned were all over 55. That some of the adaptations were things like rewarding skill not seniority. That new hires might actually be paid as much as someone with 20+ years.

One big problem with focusing solely on skill is that there will always be someone younger, who has more energy. The older you get, the more crucial job security and stability become. So policies that don't take into account seniority tend to attract that younger crowd. Unfortunately, young people are fickle. When you're in your early twenties, most folks are willing to drop a job and pick up a new one like it's a hat. It is difficult to maintain a consistent voice and a consistent style when the people keep changing, and worse, lots of institutional knowledge simply disappears when that happens.

The only way to be successful in the long term is to keep a decent percentage of your senior people around. If you don't do this, your organization is screwed. Unfortunately, the self destruction usually doesn't happen immediately; it is a slow rot that progressively degrades the quality of the final product, resulting in a gradual decline of sales. As a result, the people who promote such shortsighted thinking rarely get the blame that they deserve.

Ah, but then it's all about metrics!

[bussdriver]

Performance pay--- how do you measure performance? It is NOT a simple problem and no matter what you come up with humans are naturally talented at adaptation, they will survive and many will thrive by gaming your system. Seniority is the least hackable metric of all and so simple everybody knows it's inherent flaws - but EVERY metric is going to be flawed.

Online performance is largely measured by CLICKS. The result is the trashy click bait we have today. An earth shattering investigative report which might take a year of a senior journalist's time (a REAL journalist) puts them at the bottom of the scale while some twit pushing rumors/gossip who can't spell has tons of clicked of trash gets to the top (and has the nerve to call what they do journalism.)