Foer Returns to New Republic as Editor:
Two months after buying a majority stake in The New Republic, the technology entrepreneur Chris Hughes has lured one of its former stars, Franklin Foer, back to the magazine as its editor.
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The print magazine and Web site will be redesigned and the page count of the print edition will be expanded, Mr. Hughes said. He added that when he was researching whether to buy the New Republic, he had to read through old editions on microfilm in the archives at the New York Public Library.
Mr. Hughes’s goal is to guide The New Republic out of the category he called “little magazines” in Washington like The National Review and into a category that includes magazines he sees as more natural competitors, like The New Yorker, the Economist and New York Magazine.
I don’t add much value in a lot of areas, so I don’t say much. But this piece seems to make a major omission: the analogous model to what Chris Hughes is aiming to do with The New Republic is what David Bradley did with The Atlantic, down to the robust web strategy. The New Yorker, the Economist, and New York are all …