Just after he bought the magazine in 2012, the Facebook founder saw the first issue under his ownership included the cover headline: “Attack of the Crybabies: Why Hedge Fund Honchos Turned Against Obama.”
Ryan Lizza writes that “Hughes stopped the press run and the headline was changed to simply read, ‘Why Hedge Fund Honchos Turned Against Obama.’ ”
Later, during a discussion about Apple’s tax strategy, in which a writer argued that what it was doing was “illegal,” Hughes, 31, objected.
“Apple has acted squarely within the law,” he wrote. “The law itself is f–ked up . . . Companies have an obligation to their shareholders to maximize shareholder value, including through strategic tax planning.”
The New Yorker article describes the slow staff revolt under Hughes, who was originally seen as a white knight for the money-losing, 100-year-old magazine.
Hughes, who roomed with Mark Zuckerberg in college and made an estimated $600 million from Facebook, spent money for staff to travel abroad and wrote his own editorials.
But things started to go south when Hughes’ husband, Sean Eldridge, was running for Congress this year in the Hudson Valley. He was widely seen as a carpetbagger, spending $5 million to run in one district, then reversing course and dropping $2 million in another district. He spent $6.3 million running, three times his opponent’s expenditures, and lost the race by 30 points.
“We all liked him; he seemed to like us,” former senior editor Julia Ioffe told The New Yorker. “Everything was going great. Then, in the summer, something snapped.”
Hughes was increasingly concerned with the bottom line at New Republic, and insisted the magazine became more digital-focused.
In October, Hughes hired Guy Vidra of Yahoo! as CEO. Together, Vidra and Hughes began talking to editors and writers in the vague tech-lingo of getting more clicks and pushing innovation.
“Sorry to say, we’ve got to break s–t and embrace being uncomfortable sometimes,” The New Yorker quoted Vidra as telling baffled staff.
With Hughes and Vidra aiming for a digital revolution, top editorial staff, particularly editor Franklin Foer, sensed they were headed for the ax, while Hughes continued to deny any intentions to fire Foer.
That turned out to be a big fib in order to save face while the magazine prepared for its glitzy 100th-anniversary bash.
“Chris was waiting for the gala to end,” a former staffer told The New Yorker. “It reminds me of ‘The Godfather: Part II’: ‘I don’t want anything to happen to him while my mother is alive.’ ”
Foer learned that former Gawker editor Gabriel Snyder would replace him as editor, and two-thirds of the New Republic’s editors and writers walked out.
Despite a serious loss of staff, Hughes and Vidra are moving ahead with plans to reduce the print product from 20 issues to 10 a year and uproot The New New Republic — a “vertically integrated digital-media company” — from Washington, DC, to New York.
Outcry among liberals, believing that Hughes and Eldridge have betrayed the cause, is fierce. A headline last week in The Daily Beast said: “America’s Worst Gay Power Couple.”
No comments: