US magazine The New Republic is being sold after a failed four-year effort to revitalize the century-old publication by a Facebook Inc entrepreneur, the owner said on Friday.
Chris Hughes, the Facebook co-founder who in 2012 bought the publication that has been a leading left-wing voice, announced the sale to Win McCormack, editor of the literary quarterly Tin House and a political activist.
The deal is to bring in as publisher Hamilton Fish, who has held the same role at another prominent, but small publication, The Nation.
“My conversations with Win and the incoming publisher Hamilton Fish began as soon as I announced the search and over the course of the past seven weeks, I have become convinced that their backgrounds in publishing and progressive politics will make them strong leaders for this important institution,” Hughes said in a Facebook posting. “I look forward to watching their progress over the years to come.”
Hughes, 32, invested more than US$20 million in an effort to bring The New Republic into the digital era.
However, last month, he acknowledged it was not working, saying: “I underestimated the difficulty of transitioning an old and traditional institution into a digital media company in today’s quickly evolving climate.”
Hughes, a Harvard roommate of Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and part of the original team at the social network, had faced friction with the editorial staff.
It turned into a full-scale revolt in 2014 when Hughes decided to shake up the top management and reconfigure the publication as a digital media organization.
In a statement, McCormack said he hoped to maintain the magazine’s traditions.
“The New Republic was founded in 1914 as the organ of a modernized liberalism and then-dominant Progressive Movement and has remained true to its founding principles, under all its multiple owners, ever since,” McCormack said.
“We intend to continue in that same tradition, preserving the journal as an important voice in a new debate over how the basic principles of liberalism can be reworked to meet the equally demanding challenges of our era,” he added.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last