The New Republic
The New Republic is a US arts and politics magazine known for its liberal views on many domestic issues, and extreme hawkishness on foreign policy. Once an influential liberal publication, the magazine has moved increasingly to the right since its purchase in 1974 by neoconservative Martin Peretz. In 2007, Peretz sold the publication to the Canadian CanWest corporation.[1]
History
The magazine was founded in 1914 by Willard Straight, Herbert Croly, Walter Lippmann, and others. In 1974 it was bought from Gilbert Harrison by Martin Peretz with $380,000 acquired from his wife, the Singer Sewing machine heiress Anne Labouisse Farnsworth. Harrison, according to Alterman, 'believed he had secured Peretz's promise to let him continue to run the magazine for three years' but was was soon removed from his position after he rejected too many articles which Peretz hoped to publish in the magazine. Peretz appointed himself the editor.[1]
- Much of the staff, which then included Walter Pincus, Stanley Karnow, and Doris Grumbach, was either fired or chose to resign. The staffers were largely replaced by young men fresh out of Harvard, with plenty of talent but few journalistic credentials and little sense of the magazine's place in the history of liberalism.[1]
Peretz has said that he promised himself that he would: "Try, try very hard not to hire anybody who isn't smarter than you, and wiser." During the 1980s The New Republic became a leading champion of Reagan's proxy wars in Central America. It also provided platform to neoconservative hardliners like Charles Krauthammer.[1]
Criticism
For media scholar Eric Alterman, under Peretz the once liberal publication was turned into 'a kind of ideological police dog' which sought to define 'the borders of "responsible" liberal discourse, thereby tarring anyone who disagreed as irresponsible or untrustworthy. But he did so on the basis of a politics simultaneously so narrow and idiosyncratic -- in thrall almost entirely to an Israel-centric neoconservatism -- that it's difficult to understand how the magazine's politics might be considered liberal anymore.'[1] He adds:
- TNR under Peretz has been a vehicle that proved extremely helpful to Ronald Reagan's wars in Central America and George Bush's war in Iraq. It provided seminal service to Newt Gingrich's and William Kristol's efforts to kill the Clinton plan for universal health care and offered intellectual legitimacy to Charles Murray's efforts to portray black people as intellectually inferior to whites. As for liberal causes, however … well, not so much.[1]
Principals
- Martin Peretz - Editor-in-chief (also the owner)
Editors
- Herbert Croly (1914–1930)
- Bruce Bliven (1930–1946)
- Henry A. Wallace (1946–1948)
- Michael Straight (1948–1956)
- Gilbert A. Harrison (1956–1975)
- Martin Peretz (1975–1979)
- Michael Kinsley (1979–1981; 1985–1989)
- Hendrik Hertzberg (1981–1985; 1989–1991)
- Andrew Sullivan (1991–1996)
- Michael Kelly (1996–1997)
- Charles Lane (1997–1999)
- Peter Beinart (1999–2006)
- Franklin Foer (2006–present)[2]
External Resources
- Sourcewatch The New Republic
Contact
- Website http://www.tnr.com/
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Eric Alterman, My Marty Peretz Problem -- And Ours, The American Prospect, 18 June 2007
- ↑ David Carr, Franklin Foer Is Named Top Editor of New Republic, The New York Times, 28 February 2006
