Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said this week that she cancelled her subscription to the New Republic, the latest in a long list of readers who have apparently decided to part ways with the magazine over its current leadership.
Chris Hughes, the magazine’s owner, upset writers in New York City and Washington, D.C., in late November when he unceremoniously dumped the publication’s longtime editor Franklin Foer.
Hughes also announced that he planned to transform the magazine into a slick online media venture.
More than a few journalists and pundits who are or have in the past written for the magazine were distraught, with many of them stating publicly that they no longer wanted to have their names associated with the magazine.
And Ginsburg’s action suggests that disgust for Hughes’ plans for the 100-year-old left-leaning opinion magazine is spreading beyond media precincts of the so-called “chattering class.”
Ginsburg “sent a private note to one of the departing editors telling him that she had cancelled her subscription,” the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza wrote.
The Ginsburg cancellation, which comes just months after she delivered a toast at a gala event in the nation’s capital celebrating the magazine’s 100th year, indicates Hughes’ attempts to smooth over the tumultuous staff changes aren’t succeeding.
Hughes, who purchased the New Republic in 2012 when he was just 28 years old, tried to explain his vision in an op-ed submitted to the Washington Post.
“I could have done a better job, at times, of making sure that the editorial staff knew that when we talked about experimentation, innovation, it wasn’t to come at the cost of the things that made us special,” Hughes told Lizza.
