The New Republic
The New Republic is a liberal American publisher focused on domestic politics, news, culture, and the arts, with ten magazines a year and a daily online platform. 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".[2]
For other uses, see New Republic (disambiguation).Editor-in-chief
Editorial magazine
10 per year
Michael Caruso
November 7, 1914
United States
Washington, D.C. (editorial), New York City (operations)
English
In 2014, two years after Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes purchased the magazine, he ousted its editor and attempted to remake its format, operations, and partisan stances, provoking the resignation of the majority of its editors and writers. In early 2016, citing the need for new vision and leadership,[3][4] Hughes sold the magazine to Win McCormack,[5] under whom the publication has returned to a more progressive stance. A weekly or near-weekly for most of its history, the magazine currently publishes ten issues per year. In 2021, Michael Tomasky was hired as editor.[6]
Controversies[edit]
Michael Straight[edit]
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.[51] 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 US 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.[52][53]
Ruth Shalit plagiarism[edit]
In 1995, writer Ruth Shalit was fired for repeated incidents of plagiarism and an excess of factual errors in her articles.[54]
Stephen Glass scandal[edit]
In 1998, features writer Stephen Glass was revealed in a Forbes Digital investigation to have fabricated a story called "Hack Heaven". A TNR investigation found that most of Glass's stories had used or been based on fabricated information. The story of Glass's fall and TNR editor Chuck Lane's handling of the scandal was dramatized in the 2003 film Shattered Glass, based on a 1998 article in Vanity Fair.[55]
Lee Siegel[edit]
In 2006, long-time contributor, critic, and senior editor Lee Siegel, who had maintained a blog on the TNR site dedicated primarily to art and culture, was revealed by an investigation to have collaborated in posting comments to his own blog under an alias aggressively praising Siegel, attacking his critics and claiming not to be Lee Siegel when challenged by an anonymous detractor on his blog.[56][57] The blog was removed from the website and Siegel was suspended from writing for the print magazine.[58] He resumed writing for TNR in April 2007. Siegel was also controversial for his coinage "blogofascists" which he applied to "the entire political blogosphere", though with an emphasis on leftwing or center-left bloggers such as Daily Kos and Atrios.[59]
Spencer Ackerman[edit]
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,[60] 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 as a result of the Iraq War and the actions of the Bush administration was not appreciated by the senior editorial staff.[61] Within 24 hours of being fired by The New Republic, Ackerman was hired as a senior correspondent for a rival magazine, The American Prospect.
