Leaving the New Republic, and What Its Mass Exodus Taught Me About the Future of Magazines

It’s hardly news that the magazine has become an endangered species. It’s a development I had the misfortune of witnessing first-hand during my brief but eventful tenure as assistant literary editor of the New Republic in Washington, DC.   At TNR, I was lucky enough to work for the legendary literary editor and Washington personality Leon Wieseltier, an imposing figure with a shock of unruly white hair and a mental Rolodex of apt ideas on everything from Henry James to hot dogs. (Klimt, he once told me, “is wallpaper”.)