Franklin Foer Is Named Top Editor of New Republic

[quaoar]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/28/arts/28repu.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

By DAVID CARR
Published: February 28, 2006

For a small outfit, The New Republic has always gone long on drama. Its changes in leadership have usually arrived in the form of rolling coups or lightning bolts from above. So it is refreshing, if a bit underwhelming, to report that Franklin Foer, a senior editor with the magazine, is quietly taking over the shop next week from the current editor, Peter Beinart, who has a book to promote and ambitions of returning to longer form writing.

"I think this is the first bloodless transition in many years," said Mr. Foer, who was in New York yesterday.

While there is no blood spattering its walls, the magazine that Mr. Foer, 31, takes over is hardly on a roll. The New Republic's circulation has dropped by almost 40 percent in four years; it cut its circulation and staff salaries after aggressively spending on the Web in 2002. Meanwhile, its historical role as a maypole for middle-way Democrats is under challenge from countless Web sites and bloggers. And one of the magazine's major preoccupations — a search for the soul of the Democratic Party — would seem to require a lot of patience and a miner's helmet.

But the magazine is financially stable, its owners say, in part because there are now four of them. Roger Hertog and Michael Steinhardt, successful New York financiers with an interest in policy and media, were enticed in 2002 to share in The New Republic's glories and seemingly inevitable losses with its longtime owner and editor in chief, Martin Peretz. More recently, CanWest, a Canadian media conglomerate bought a share as well.

[Voltaire99]

1. Delighted to hear it's losing readership!

Couldn't happen to a nicer den of neoliberal sophists.

Here's wishing you the worst of luck, fellas--and no thanks at all for your sordid history of pushing the Contras on Nicaragua, Liebermanism upon our broken party, vicious globalism upon the world, and our imperial armies upon Iraq!

[Nomen Tuum]

2. New dog, same turds

Considering their latest cover story says we need to stay in Iraq, well that shows how this once-honorable magazine has fallen. Once upon a time, a man named Henry Wallace ran The New Republic and he was the only person with guts to stand up to Mc Carthy. But NOW...

Show me ONE contributor to The New Republic(an) who won't kiss the ass of Bush or Looneyman. oh you won't find a single one, but you will find many that emulate those liars Kelly, Sullivan and Glass!

[robcon]

3. The New Republic is still my favorite read.

Sharp, incisive and brilliant - most of the time.

[underpants]

4. I just read his "How soccer explains the World"

Apparently it all has to do with globalization and neo-liberlism. Well I'm not smart enough to understand all of it but the book never really got to relating soccer to globalization (from my reading) and the chapters seemed to just suddenly end. As if he was writing them between flights and just as he was getting to where you expect him to tie it all together and illustrate why he told you about English Hooligans or the Oligarchies of Soccer (South America and Italy) or the Serb/Croatians and what that has to do with the world as a whole it just ends.

Maybe I need to reread it.

It was very interesting in the learning about soccers big players (the clubs not the athletes)and it was a short read too.

Oh well good luck Franklin.

[Ilsa]

5. Is his name pronounced "fear"? If so, how appropriate. eom