"My Only Hope Now Is That One Day This Vital American Institution Can Be Rebuilt"

"I expect the circumstances surrounding TNR's transformation will be framed as a matter of modernity versus tradition. There is certainly an element of this. At the magazine's 100th anniversary gala two weeks ago, where Hughes, Foer, Wieseltier, and Hughes’s new CEO, Guy Vidra, all spoke, the speeches took a sharply, awkwardly divergent tone. Foer and Weiseltier gave soaring paeans to the magazine’s immense role in shaping American liberal thought. Hughes and Vidra used words like brand and boasted about page views, giving no sense of appreciation at all for the magazine's place in American life. In a comic moment, Vidra mispronounced Foer's name. I happened to run into Wieseltier a few days after the gala, and when he asked me what I thought, I told him he and Foer won the debate."


In New York, Jonathan Chait writes a "Eulogy for The New Republic."


As does David Greenberg in Slate.


But Charles Pierce at Esquire says good riddance.