By Kevin McCauley
Chris Hughes, the 28-year-old co-founder of Facebook, has bought a majority stake in the venerable New Republic magazine.
As publisher and editor-in-chief, Hughes plans to update NR’s online site and concentrate on development of the tablet version for owners of iPad.
In a letter posted on the NR’s site, Hughes wrote:
“It seems that today too many media institutions chase superficial metrics of online virality at the expense of investing in rigorous reporting and analysis of the most important stories of our time. When few people are investing in media institutions with such bold aims as enlightenment to the problems of the nation, I believe we must.
“Many of us get our news from social networks, blogs, and daily aggregators. The web has introduced a competitive, and some might argue hostile, landscape for long, in-depth, resource-intensive journalism. But as we’ve seen with the rise of tablets and mobile reading devices, it is an ever-shifting landscape—one that I believe now offers opportunities to reinvigorate the forms of journalism that examine the challenges of our time in all their complexity. Although the method of delivery of important ideas has undergone drastic change over the past 15 years, the hunger for them has not dissipated.”
The New Republic will “remain a journal of progressive values, but it will above all aim to appeal to independent thinkers on the left and the right who search for fresh ideas and a deeper understanding of the challenges our world faces.”
Richard Just keeps the editor job at the magazine.
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