The New Republic

• 1. Introduction

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  The New Republic published its first issue on the 7th of November, 1914, the same year the First World War broke out in Europe. Its founders gathered in Teddy Roosevelt's living room, according to The New York Times, and set out to build something unusual: a magazine that balanced humanitarian passion with the rigor of scientific analysis. Over the century that followed, it would be photographed under the arm of President Kennedy, praised by conservatives as the most important political journal in the country, and nearly destroyed by a mass exodus of its own writers. It would publish a spy without knowing it, fire a reporter for fabricating stories, and retract an op-ed that called a presidential candidate by a homophobic slur. The questions worth asking about The New Republic are not just what it believed, but how a single publication could hold so many contradictions at once, and what those contradictions reveal about American liberalism itself.

• 2. The Founding Vision

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  Herbert Croly, Walter Lippmann, and Walter Weyl launched The New Republic with money provided by heiress Dorothy Payne Whitney and her husband Willard Straight, who eventually became the majority owner. The magazine's politics were liberal and progressive from the outset, focused on the upheavals in America's economy and society brought about by middle-class reform efforts. Scholars have credited it with shifting liberalism as a whole toward greater governmental interventionism, both at home and abroad.

  In 1917, the editors urged American entry into World War I on the side of the Allies. The Russian Revolution had already begun in March of that year, and during the interwar period the magazine was broadly favorable toward the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin. That position reversed once the Cold War began in 1947. The following year, the magazine's leftist editor, former Vice President Henry A. Wallace, left to run for president on the Progressive Party ticket. His departure pushed the magazine toward a more mainstream American liberalism.

• 3. The Peretz Era Begins

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  Martin Peretz, a lecturer at Harvard University, purchased The New Republic in March 1974 for $380,000. He bought it from Gilbert A. Harrison, a veteran editor who expected to continue running the publication for another three years. That arrangement did not last. By 1975, Peretz had grown frustrated when his own articles were rejected for publication while he was covering the magazine's financial losses. He fired Harrison, and much of the staff followed, including Walter Pincus, Stanley Karnow, and Doris Grumbach. They were replaced largely by recent Harvard graduates who, the source notes, lacked journalistic experience.

  Peretz's views shaped the magazine's trajectory for decades. His commitment to Israel was described by journalism professor Eric Alterman as the single most consistent theme of the Peretz years: almost all of his political beliefs, Alterman wrote, were subordinate to his understanding of what was good for Israel. Peretz supported the Likud Party's stances and once articulated that position in stark terms: 'Support for Israel is deep down an expression of America's best view of itself.'

• 4. A Must-Read at the Reagan White House

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  Michael Kinsley became editor in 1979 at age 28, while still attending law school. He alternated in the role twice with the more left-leaning Hendrik Hertzberg, whose tenures ran from 1981 to 1985 and again from 1989 to 1991. Together they presided over a period when the magazine was widely considered a must-read across the political spectrum.

  Twenty copies of each issue were sent by messenger to the Reagan White House every Thursday afternoon. Norman Podhoretz called it 'indispensable.' George Will described it as 'currently the nation's most interesting and most important political journal.' Alterman wrote that the magazine 'unarguably set the terms of debate for insider political elites during the Reagan era.' A piece in Vanity Fair called it 'the smartest, most impudent weekly in the country.'

  Much of that influence flowed from two sources. Kinsley's wit and critical sensibility were credited with enlivening the publication's voice. And Leon Wieseltier, whom Peretz discovered working at Harvard's Society of Fellows, transformed the magazine's back pages. Wieseltier reinvented the literary and arts section along the lines of The New York Review of Books, commissioning longer critical essays from academics rather than short book notices. Alterman called Wieseltier's appointment probably Peretz's single most significant positive achievement in running the magazine.

• 5. Scandal and Controversy

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  Andrew Sullivan became editor in 1991 and invited Charles Murray to contribute a 10,000-word article excerpted from his coauthored book The Bell Curve. The piece contended that African Americans score differently from white Americans on standardized tests of cognitive ability. The magazine published it in a special issue alongside many responses and critiques. The episode generated enormous controversy that followed the magazine for years.

  A quieter scandal involved Michael Whitney Straight, who had served as editor from 1948 to 1956. He was later discovered to have been 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 in the 1930s. Shortly before serving in the Kennedy administration, he revealed his past ties and identified fellow spy Anthony Blunt. Documents obtained from the former KGB after the fall of the Soviet Union indicated that Straight had drastically understated the extent of his activities.

  The most damaging editorial scandal involved Stephen Glass, a reporter hired initially as a fact-checker during Sullivan's tenure. Glass was later found to have fabricated quotes, anecdotes, and facts in numerous articles. His successor as editor, Chuck Lane, uncovered the fraud through investigation. The events were dramatized in the feature film Shattered Glass, adapted from a 1998 report by H.G. Bissinger. Peretz wrote that Lane had 'put the ship back on its course,' for which Peretz said he was 'immensely grateful.' Lane then resigned after learning that Peretz intended to replace him.

• 6. The Chris Hughes Crisis

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  On the 9th of March, 2012, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes became the magazine's majority owner and editor-in-chief. He reduced the print run from twenty issues per year to ten, moved the editorial offices from Penn Quarter in Washington D.C. to New York, and declared the publication would be reinvented as a 'vertically integrated digital-media company.' On the 4th of December, 2014, literary editor Leon Wieseltier resigned in protest.

  What followed was a cascade. Executive editors Rachel Morris and Greg Veis resigned. Nine of the magazine's eleven active senior writers left. Legal-affairs editor Jeffrey Rosen resigned. The digital-media editor, six culture writers and editors, and thirty-six out of thirty-eight contributing editors walked out. Among those contributing editors were Paul Berman, Jonathan Chait, William Deresiewicz, Ruth Franklin, Anthony Grafton, Enrique Krauze, Ryan Lizza, Sacha Z. Scoblic, Helen Vendler, and Sean Wilentz. In all, two-thirds of the names on the editorial masthead were gone. The December 2014 edition had to be suspended.

  Hughes wrote an open letter pledging long-term commitment and his desire to produce quality journalism 'hopefully for decades to come.' Then, on the 11th of January, 2016, he put the magazine up for sale. A second open letter stated: '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.'

• 7. Circulation and Readership

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  The New Republic reached an average paid circulation of roughly 100,000 copies in 2000. By 2009, that figure had fallen to 53,485. At the time of the 2014 editorial crisis, the print run was around 50,000 copies.

  The magazine's online audience told a different story in its early years. According to Quantcast data, the TNR website drew roughly 120,000 visitors in April 2008. By April 2012 that number had grown to 962,000. The audience profile was distinctive: data showed that 76% of visitors were college graduates, with 33% holding a graduate degree. Fifty-five percent had household incomes above $60,000, and 83% were white. Sixty-one percent were male, and 82% were at least 35 years old.

  Win McCormack bought the magazine from Hughes in February 2016 and appointed Eric Bates, former executive editor of Rolling Stone, as editor. A series of leadership changes followed over the next several years, including the appointment of Chris Lehmann, formerly the editor in chief of The Baffler, on the 9th of April, 2019. In March 2021, Michael Tomasky was announced as Lehmann's replacement.