The American Prospect: Paul Starr: 'The Crash of The New Republic'

The American Prospect: Opinion: Paul Starr: The Crash of The New Republic

This post was originally posted at The New Democrat on WordPress

I would put it differently and if I was writing for The American Prospect, well if I was writing for The American Prospect, they probably wouldn’t of published what I have to say about The New Republic, because I wasn’t backing the party line. But for the sake of this piece had I wrote this article at The Prospect about The New Republic I would’ve put it differently. I probably would’ve called it The Death of The New Republic: How Chris Hughes Killed a Great Liberal Magazine. And he did it a couple of ways.

Chris Hughes took a great center-left liberal magazine, not a far-left more social democratic oriented magazine like The Nation or The New Republic and turned TNR into The Nation or The Prospect ideologically. You read TNR today and it is very similar to Nation or Prospect or the AlterNet, TruthOut, Salon or any other far-left publication that struggles just to stay in business today. Because they don’t have any advertising revenue. Because they are anti-business if not anti-private enterprise all together.

When Mike Kinsley was running TNR they were still that great center-left magazine. That had solid suspicions about big government in people’s economic and personal lives. Today’s TNR now not only supports a Scandinavian social democratic high taxed welfare state to manage people’s economic affairs for them. But backs Mike Bloomberg’s nanny state and would like to regulate how Americans can eat an drink.The New Republic might not become like The Prospect or Nation financially. Because they do have wealthy backers and are entertainment and tabloid driven with what they want to cover. So that alone might keep them in business. But The Liberal Republic is gone.

The other issue has to do with Chris Hughes himself. He’s a businessman first and comes from the OMG awesome entertainment universe and politics and current affairs is not his meat and potatoes. He goes where the money is and that is probably where TNR is headed with a few political writers left over to tell people what the far-left is thinking. And why middle class Americans are under-taxed and that the Federal Government is too small, states and local governments, as well as individuals have too much power and can’t be trusted and you need a bigger government to take care of them. Which is what you get from The Prospect, The Nation and Salon today.