The first New Republic issue since most of its staff left doesn’t hit newsstands until Monday, but some stories began to appear online this week, starting with two pieces that have in common a prominent self-referential bent.
The cover story, released last Thursday, surveyed 100 years of the liberal magazine’s at-times ugly history of racism, a public reckoning for the old New Republic by the new. The second major story, released Tuesday, is an essay by Rebecca Traister on maternity leave policies, where she notes that after The New Republic’s staff exodus last December, leave for new mothers has doubled to 16 weeks. The majority of the magazine’s former editorial staff left in December, protesting publisher Chris Hughes’ decision to unseat its beloved editor and revamp the storied brand.
Both new stories are well-argued pieces on key identity politics. But, implicitly or explicitly, both also depict The New Republic’s current leadership in a positive light, comparing it favorably to the old masthead. The choice of lead stories could be seen as a play to rebrand, and burnish the new leadership at the expense of the old.
Gabriel Snyder, the magazine’s new editor, said the decision to run Jeet Heer’s story, “The New Republic’s Legacy On Race,” on the cover was purely the editorial team’s choice.
“There was never any consultation in advance with either Chris [Hughes] or [CEO] Guy [Vidra] or any publicists. These were decisions that were made by me,” he said. “They do represent values or approaches that I’m seeking to improve on. And so I don’t feel any sort of shame pointing to them as real actions that describe the kind of New Republic I want to edit.”
Heer’s story is no hit piece on departed editor Franklin Foer and his editing team. Heer has long criticized The New Republic’s history of racism under former owner Marty Peretz, as have other commentators—notably Ta-Nehisi Coates. But Heer’s cover story, arriving at this precarious moment, no doubt serves the interests of a magazine looking to position its evolution as a positive step forwards. Heer has protested on Twitter that racist incidents in the magazine’s history are a separate problem from the recent turmoil among its staff. Yet it seems a stretch to suggest that the choice to address those issues on the front page of the first magazine under a new editor is irrelevant.
“I think the racial reckoning had to happen, but the turmoil created the opportunity for it, and also made it necessary. In the face of what Coates had written any serious magazine had to publish some sort of response,” Heer said. “It’s such a big elephant in the room.”
Similarly, Traister’s first-person description of her “lush—er, humane—Silicon Valley-style benefits, accompanying the Silicon Valley-style language that—reasonably—alarmed The New Republic’s former editorial team” compliments her new bosses, even as she ponders “Does my gratitude make me complicit in the decline of an American institution, or does it make me a lucky beneficiary of that institution’s progressive evolution?”
Traister said that her story received prominence because she was one of the few senior editors not to leave The New Republic last December, and had filed her story—which included the maternity leave policies she had encountered in her jobs—prior to the magazine’s shakeup. When after the staff exodus Vidra announced the new policy, she added it to the end of her story. “No one urged me to include it. That was entirely my decision,” she said.
Neither Traister nor Heer, it seems, contrived to praise their new bosses. But they can both make valid points while simultaneously helping an unnerved leadership shape a public narrative by assigning or giving prominence to certain stories. The reporter has a motive for writing, the magazine has a motive for publishing, and they’re not always the same.
Chris Ip is a CJR Delacorte Fellow. Follow him on Twitter at @chrisiptw.