The New Republic (often abbreviated as TNR) is an American magazine focused on domestic politics, news, culture, and the arts. It publishes 10 print magazines per year and a daily online platform. The New York Times described the magazine as partially founded in Teddy Roosevelt's living room and known for its "intellectual rigor and left-leaning political views".

History

1914–1974: Early years

Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in humanitarian and moral passion and one based in an ethos of scientific analysis".

The New Republic was founded by Herbert Croly, Walter Lippmann, and Walter Weyl. They gained the financial backing of heiress Dorothy Payne Whitney and her husband, Willard Straight, who eventually became the majority owner. The magazine's first issue was published on November 7, 1914. The magazine's politics were liberal and progressive, and as such concerned with coping with the great changes brought about by middle-class reform efforts designed to remedy perceived weaknesses in America's changing economy and society. The magazine is widely considered important in changing the character of liberalism in the direction of governmental interventionism, both foreign and domestic. The most important of the perceived changes was the emergence of the U.S. as a great power on the international scene. In 1917, TNR urged America's entry into World War I on the side of the Allies.

Even before the U.S. entered the war, the Russian Revolution had started in March 1917.<!-- Surely what we want to know is the positions the magazine took in response, before Stalin took over? --> During the interwar years, the magazine was generally positive in its assessment of the Soviet Union (founded in 1922) and of Joseph Stalin. TNR changed its position after the Cold War began in 1947, and in 1948, its leftist editor, the former Vice President of the United States Henry A. Wallace, departed to run for president on the Progressive ticket. After Wallace, the magazine moved toward positions more typical of mainstream American liberalism. Throughout the 1950s, the publication was critical both of Soviet foreign policy and of domestic anticommunism, particularly McCarthyism. During the 1960s, the magazine opposed the Vietnam War, but also often criticized the New Left.

Until the late 1960s, the magazine had a certain "cachet as the voice of re-invigorated liberalism", in the opinion of the commentator Eric Alterman, who has criticized the magazine's politics from the left. That cachet, Alterman wrote, "was perhaps best illustrated when the dashing, young President Kennedy had been photographed boarding Air Force One holding a copy". from Gilbert A. Harrison.

A final ingredient that led to the magazine's increased stature in the 1980s was its "back of the book" or literary, cultural and arts pages, which were edited by Leon Wieseltier. Peretz discovered Wieseltier, then working at Harvard's Society of Fellows, and put him in charge of the section. Wieseltier reinvented the section along the lines of The New York Review of Books and allowed his critics, many of them academics, to write longer, critical essays instead of simple book reviews. Alterman calls the selection of Wieseltier "probably... Peretz's single most significant positive achievement" in running the magazine. Despite changes of other editors, Wieseltier remained as cultural editor. Under him the section was "simultaneously erudite and zestful," according to Alterman." The magazine also published a very critical article by Elizabeth McCaughey about the Clinton administration's 1993 health care plan. Alterman described the article as "dishonest, misinformed," and "the single most influential article published in the magazine during the entire Clinton presidency. Sullivan also published a number of pieces by Camille Paglia. The events were later dramatized in the feature film Shattered Glass, adapted from a 1998 report by H.G. Bissinger. Peretz has written that Lane ultimately "put the ship back on its course," for which Peretz said he was "immensely grateful."

Peter Beinart, a third editor who took over when he was 28 years old, The blog was removed from the website and Siegel was suspended from writing for the print magazine. He resumed writing for TNR in April 2007.

Political and foreign policy stances under Peretz

The New Republic gradually became much less left-wing under Peretz, which culminated in the editorship of the conservative Andrew Sullivan. The magazine was associated with the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and "New Democrats", such as Bill Clinton and Joseph Lieberman, who received the magazine's endorsement in the 2004 Democratic primary.

In the 21st century, the magazine gradually shifted left but was still more moderate and hawkish than conventional liberal periodicals. Policies supported by both The New Republic and the DLC in the 1990s were increased funding for the Earned Income Tax Credit program, the reform of the federal welfare system, and supply-side economics, especially the idea of reducing higher marginal income tax rates, which in the later Peretz years received heavy criticism from senior editor Jonathan Chait.

The New Republic's support for Israel, including the state's conservative right-wing or Likud Party stances, was a strong theme of the magazine from the beginning: "Support for Israel is deep down an expression of America's best view of itself." According to journalism professor Eric Alterman:

<blockquote>Nothing has been as consistent about the past 34 years of The New Republic as the magazine's devotion to Peretz's own understanding of what is good for Israel.... It is really not too much to say that almost all of Peretz's political beliefs are subordinate to his commitment to Israel's best interests, and these interests as Peretz defines them almost always involve more war.</blockquote>

2007–2012: Sale to CanWest, buyback and new format

Until February 2007, The New Republic was owned by Martin Peretz, New York financiers Roger Hertog and Michael Steinhardt, and Canadian media conglomerate CanWest. In late February 2007, Peretz sold his share of the magazine to CanWest, which announced that its subsidiary CanWest Media Works International had acquired a full interest in the publication. Peretz retained his position as editor-in-chief.

Starting on March 19, 2007, the magazine went to publishing twice a month, or 24 times a year. This replaced the old plan of publishing 44 issues a year. The magazine described its publication schedule as "biweekly," with specified "skipped publication dates." There were ten of these in 2010. Issues became bigger, contained more pages, and featured more visuals, new art and other "reader-friendly" content. The use of the Warnock typeface throughout was accented by woodcut-style illustrations. Although the subscription prices did not change, the newsstand price increased from $3.95 to $4.95. The website was also redesigned, and offered more daily content and new features.

In March 2009, Peretz and a group of investors, led by former Lazard executive Laurence Grafstein and including Michael Alter, bought the magazine back from CanWest, which was on the edge of bankruptcy. Frank Foer continued as editor and was responsible for the day-to-day management of the magazine, and Peretz remained editor-in-chief. Richard Just took over as editor of the magazine on December 8, 2010.

2012–2016: Chris Hughes ownership and editorial crisis

On March 9, 2012, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes was introduced as the New Republic<nowiki>'s</nowiki> majority owner and editor-in-chief. Under Hughes, the magazine became less focused on "The Beltway," with more cultural coverage and attention to visuals. It stopped running an editorial in every issue. Media observers noted a less uniformly pro-Israel tone in the magazine's coverage than its editorial stance during Peretz's ownership. On December 4, 2014, Gabriel Snyder, previously of Gawker and Bloomberg, replaced Franklin Foer as editor. The magazine was reduced from twenty issues per year to ten and the editorial offices moved from Penn Quarter, Washington D.C., to New York, where it was reinvented as a "vertically integrated digital-media company." The changes provoked a major crisis among the publication's editorial staff and contributing editors. The magazine's literary editor, Leon Wieseltier, resigned in protest. Subsequent days brought many more resignations, including those of executive editors Rachel Morris and Greg Veis; nine of the magazine's eleven active senior writers; legal-affairs editor Jeffrey Rosen; the digital-media editor; six culture writers and editors; and thirty-six out of thirty-eight contributing editors (including Paul Berman, Jonathan Chait, William Deresiewicz, Ruth Franklin, Anthony Grafton, Enrique Krauze, Ryan Lizza, Sacha Z. Scoblic, Helen Vendler, Sean Wilentz). In all, two-thirds of the names on the editorial masthead were gone. with a circulation of approximately 50,000. The company went back to publishing twenty issues a year, and editor Gabriel Snyder worked with staff to reshape it.

In the wake of the editorial crisis, Hughes indicated that he intended to stay with The New Republic over the long term, telling NPR of his desire to make sure the magazine could produce quality journalism "hopefully for decades to come." He published an open letter about his "commitment" to give the magazine "a new mandate for a new century." However, on January 11, 2016, Hughes put The New Republic up for sale. In another open letter, he said, "After investing a great deal of time, energy, and over $20 million, I have come to the conclusion that it is time for new leadership and vision at The New Republic." and named Eric Bates, the former executive editor of Rolling Stone, as editor. In September 2017, Bates was demoted from his leadership role to a masthead title of "editor at large." J.J. Gould, coming from The Atlantic, then served as editor for just over a year, before resigning in December 2018. In November 2017, Hamilton Fish V, the publisher since McCormack's acquisition of the magazine, resigned amid allegations of workplace misconduct. Kerrie Gillis was named publisher in February 2019, and Chris Lehmann, formerly the editor in chief of The Baffler, was named editor April 9, 2019. Within months his management style faced public criticism for his hiring process of an Inequality Editor, posted on June 28. Within weeks, another scandal erupted, with Lehmann facing even harsher criticism from the public and the media for his decision to publish a controversial op-ed by Dale Peck called "My Mayor Pete Problem." The op-ed was retracted, with Lehmann commenting in a separate statement: "The New Republic recognizes that this post crossed a line, and while it was largely intended as satire, it was inappropriate and invasive." In March 2021, it was announced that Lehmann would be departing his role as editor and would be replaced by Michael Tomasky.

Circulation

The New Republics average paid circulation for 2009 was 53,485 copies per issue.<!-- do we have access to any circulation figures for the print magazine during the 1950s through 2000? -->

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"

|+ The New Republic average monthly paid circulation

|-

! Year !! Avg. Paid Circ. !! % Change

|-

! 2000

| 101,651 ||

|-

! 2001

| 85,069 || −3.8

|-

! 2003

| 63,139 || −25.8

|-

! 2004

| 61,675 || −2.3

|-

! 2005

| 61,771 || +0.2

|-

! 2006

| 61,024 || −1.2

|-

! 2007

| 59,779 || −2.0

|-

! 2008

| 65,162 || +9.0

|-

! 2009

| NR || NR

|}

The New Republics last reported circulation numbers to media auditor BPA Worldwide were for the six months ending on June 30, 2009.

Online

According to Quantcast, the TNR website received roughly 120,000 visitors in April 2008, and 962,000 visitors in April 2012. By June 9, 2012, the TNR website's monthly page visits dropped to 421,000 in the U.S. and 521,000 globally. As of April 16, 2014, the TNR website's Quantcast webpage contains the following messages: "This publisher has not implemented Quantcast Measurement. Data is estimated and not verified by Quantcast...," and "We do not have enough information to provide a traffic estimate...," and "Traffic data unavailable until this site becomes quantified." Demographically, data show that visitors tend to be well educated (76% being college graduates, with 33% having a graduate degree), relatively affluent (55% having a household income of over $60,000 and 31% having a six figure income), white (83%), and more likely to be male (61%). Eighty two percent were at least 35 years old with 38% being over the age of 50.

Controversies

Michael Straight

New Republic editor Michael Whitney Straight (1948 to 1956) was later discovered to be a spy for the KGB, recruited into the same network as Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Kim Philby, and Anthony Blunt. Straight's espionage activities began at Cambridge during the 1930s; he later claimed that they ceased during World War II. Later, shortly before serving in the Kennedy administration, he revealed his past ties and turned in fellow spy Anthony Blunt. In return for his cooperation, his own involvement was kept secret and he continued to serve in various capacities for the U.S. government until he retired. Straight admitted his involvement in his memoirs; however, subsequent documents obtained from the former KGB after the fall of the Soviet Union indicated that he drastically understated the extent of his espionage activities.

Spencer Ackerman

In 2006, associate editor Spencer Ackerman was fired by editor Franklin Foer. Describing it as a "painful" decision, Foer attributed the firing to Ackerman's "insubordination": disparaging the magazine on his personal blog, saying that he would "skullfuck" a terrorist's corpse at an editorial meeting if that was required to "establish his anti-terrorist bona fides and sending Foer an e-mail where he said—in what according to Ackerman was intended to be a joke—he would "make a niche in your skull" with a baseball bat. Ackerman, by contrast, argued that the dismissal was due to "irreconcilable ideological differences." He believed that his leftward drift (a result of the Iraq War and the actions of the Bush administration) was not appreciated by the senior editorial staff. Within 24 hours of being fired by The New Republic, Ackerman was hired as a senior correspondent for the rival magazine The American Prospect.

Scott Thomas Beauchamp controversy

In July 2007, after The New Republic published an article by an American soldier in Iraq titled "Shock Troops", allegations of inadequate fact-checking were leveled against the magazine. Critics alleged that the piece contained inconsistent details indicative of fabrication. The identity of the anonymous soldier, Scott Thomas Beauchamp, was revealed. Beauchamp was married to Elspeth Reeve, one of the magazine's three fact-checkers. As a result of the controversy, The New Republic and the United States Army launched investigations, reaching different conclusions. In an article titled "The Fog of War", published on December 1, 2007, Franklin Foer wrote that the magazine could no longer stand behind the stories written by Beauchamp.

Pete Buttigieg article

On July 12, 2019, gay writer Dale Peck wrote an article for The New Republic critical of Pete Buttigieg, a 2020 Democratic Party presidential primary candidate. Peck repeatedly referred to Buttigieg as "Mary Pete", which he described as the "gay equivalent of Uncle Tom", saying, "Pete and I are just not the same kind of gay." He went on to describe the candidate as a "fifteen-year-old boy in a Chicago bus station wondering if it's a good idea to go home with a fifty-year-old man so that he'll finally understand what he is." The piece was harshly received by several media figures.

Editors

Before Wallace's appointment in 1946, the masthead listed no single editor in charge, but gave an editorial board of four to eight members. Walter Lippmann, Edmund Wilson, and Robert Morss Lovett, among others, served on this board at various times. The names given above are the first editor listed in each issue, always the senior editor of the team.

Notable contributors

1910s–1940s

  • Eugene Szekeres Bagger, author and essayist
  • Ralph Bates, English writer and political activist
  • John Dewey, essayist and philosopher
  • W. E. B. Du Bois, writer, professor and sociologist
  • Otis Ferguson, film critic
  • John T. Flynn, essayist and New Deal critic
  • Learned Hand, Judge
  • John Maynard Keynes, economist
  • Clara Littledale, writer on home and family life
  • George Henry Soule Jr., labor economist
  • Agnes de Lima, lead writer on education
  • Thomas Mann, "Letter to Alexey Tolstoy (sent to Russia through Russian War Relief Inc.)" (1943)
  • George Orwell, author and essayist
  • M. E. Ravage, journalist, essayist, biographer
  • Virginia Woolf, author and essayist
  • Edmund Wilson, assistant book reviewer

1943–1983

  • John Beecher, contributing writer
  • Richard Strout, correspondent, The Christian Science Monitor, "TRB From Washington"
  • Stark Young, drama critic, scholar, novelist, painter, contributing writer.

1950s–1970s

  • Stanley Kauffmann, film critic (1958–2013)
  • Reinhold Niebuhr, theologian
  • John F. Osborne, contributing writer and editor
  • L. Fletcher Prouty, former Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff
  • Roger Rosenblatt
  • Philip Roth, author
  • Judd L. Teller, author, editor, poet
  • Philip Terzian, author/editor

1980s–1990s

  • Fred Barnes
  • Eric Breindel
  • Matt Groening, illustrator and The Simpsons creator
  • Jacob Hacker, political scientist
  • Johann Hari, British writer
  • David Hazony, Israeli writer
  • Jeet Heer, Canadian writer
  • Julia Ioffe (born 1982), Russian-born American journalist
  • John Judis, essayist
  • Tony Judt, historian
  • Jo Livingstone, culture staff writer
  • Suki Kim, contributing editor
  • Adam Kirsch, poet and critic
  • Alvaro Vargas Llosa, writer
  • John McWhorter, linguist and political commentator
  • Dana Milbank, senior editor
  • Sherwin B. Nuland, medical doctor and author
  • Michael Oren, historian and author
  • Camille Paglia, essayist
  • Alex Pareene, former editor-in-chief of Gawker
  • Dale Peck, literary reviewer
  • George Pelecanos, author
  • Caryl Phillips, writer
  • Steven Pinker, cognitive linguist and Harvard professor
  • David Plotz, editor of Slate
  • Richard Rorty, philosopher
  • Richard Posner, federal judge
  • Hanna Rosin, senior editor
  • Noam Scheiber, senior editor
  • Amartya Sen, economist
  • Alex Shephard, news editor
  • Lee Siegel, cultural critic
  • Zadie Smith, writer
  • Joseph Stiglitz, economist
  • Richard Taruskin, musicologist
  • Helen Vendler, literary critic
  • Michael Walzer, philosopher, essayist, author
  • Alan Wolfe, political scientist/ sociologist
  • Gordon S. Wood, historian
  • James Wood, English literary critic
  • Robert Wright, journalist; former TNR senior editor and columnist

References

Citations

Primary sources

  • Groff Conklin, ed. New Republic Anthology: 1914–1935, 1936.
  • Cowley, Malcolm (1978). And I Worked at the Writer's Trade.
  • Wickenden, Dorothy (1994). The New Republic Reader. .

Secondary sources

  • Mott, Frank L. A History of American Magazines. Vol. 3. Harvard University Press, 1960.
  • Seideman, David. The New Republic: A Voice of Modern Liberalism, 1986
  • Steel, Ronald. Walter Lippmann and the American Century, 1980
  • The New Republic (2016–current) – NewRepublic.com

::full issues from the complete run are available to paid subscribers<!-- https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=newrepublic -->

  • The New Republic (1914-1989) at the Internet Archive
  • The New Republic (1914–1929) at The Online Books Page
  • The New Republic Magazine Archive – EBSCO Information Services