Really depressing. thenewgreen and I visited their D.C. headquarters once. I immediately liked the vibe there. It felt like a mix between a magazine's office, and someone's private study. The people we met were low on the totem pole, but they were warm, intelligent, and engaging.
Well, that's a damn shame. Sounds like they're joining the race to the middle, awesome, yay, we don't have enough short form drivel out there. They're going to "break shit" -awesome. I will never forget that day that we went there. We had taken a couple of meetings prior to that and the first one did not go so well as I'm sure you recall. Then, the second meeting went fantastically. We went into the New Republic meeting thinking to ourselves, "we have nothing to lose here, this is gravy," and it could not have been a more enjoyable conversation. I agree with you that the office had a very chill vibe, it felt old, like it had been around for a long time. It wasn't trying to be edgy, hip etc., it was like an old leather chair in front of a fireplace, or a stack of old encyclopedias. It sounds like they want it to be all chrome, glass and LED lights. Bummer. That was one of the most fun days and nights I've had.
This excerpt from the statement issued by the former writers and editors of TNR really struck me: You see writing referred to as 'content' constantly nowadays. It makes it sound so hollow, so soulless. This whole thing is tragic.The New Republic cannot be merely a “brand.” It has never been and cannot be a “media company” that markets “content.” Its essays, criticism, reportage, and poetry are not “product.” It is not, or not primarily, a business. It is a voice, even a cause. It has lasted through numerous transformations of the “media landscape”—transformations that, far from rendering its work obsolete, have made that work ever more valuable.
So TNR's web traffic had been falling dramatically, when it was bought by one of the co-founders of Facebook. Then a couple years later it's set to serve a public interest through digital media. I don't know how close that interest is going to be with TNR's former interest, but it sounds profitable.
Chris Hughes wrote an OpEd in the Washington Post about it. Doesn't say much.