Ousted New Republic journalist Timothy Noah has told Politico that he worries the magazine’s owner, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, might have “more money than sense” in his stewardship of the storied publication. Politico on Monday published Noah’s description of an exchange with Hughes:
“Once, shortly after he bought it, he said he liked a piece I’d written advocating an energy tax,” Noah wrote. “Another time, after I wrote a piece about Jim DeMint’s departure from the Senate headlined ‘Requiem For A Wingnut,’ he emailed me to say … wait, I’ve got it here: ‘I have little esteem for Jim DeMint, but I also want us to make a rule of not name-calling in headlines. We have strong opinions, but name-calling so outrightly undermines the seriousness of what we are trying to do here.’”
“I quietly changed the headline to the somewhat clumsy, ‘Farewell, Filibusteringest Senator’ and quietly worried whether the magazine’s new owner (who around that time also told an audience at the Kennedy School that he’d like to co-brand a chain of cafes called the New Republic) might be a young man with more money than sense,” he said.
Noah was fired from the magazine on Friday, after coming on staff in September 2011. The New Republic offered little explanation for the decision. In a statement, editor Frank Foer said: “Tim Noah has been a strong voice for liberalism and a rigorous columnist for The New Republic. We’ve appreciated his passion and contribution to the magazine over the past two years and wish him the very best.”
Noah has not responded to TPM’s request for comment.
Read more at Politico.
(Photo via Flickr/USV)
