New Republic Editor: We’ll Have More Diverse Writers This Time Around

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The newly-minted editor of The New Republic, Gabriel Snyder, laid out his vision for the revamped publication Monday in his first editor’s note since his hire sparked a mass staff exodus.

“The New Republic has always been both in love and at war with its prior self,” Snyder wrote, addressing the awkward masthead shakeup. “The magazine’s early decades were marked by abrupt ownership changes, unceremonious dismissals of editors, shifting policy positions, and uprooted headquarters, all accompanied by masthead upheavals.”

Along with hiring Snyder to replace former editor Franklin Foer, the magazine’s CEO, Guy Vidra, had announced that the print publication schedule would be slashed from 20 to 10 issues per year and that TNR planned to move its headquarters from Washington, D.C. to New York City.

Snyder sought to assure readers that those changes wouldn’t detract from TNR’s mission to present a progressive take on current events.

“But if our founders sat down today to settle on the best way to achieve this mission, they would not have picked a weekly printed magazine and ignored a vast array of digital publishing possibilities,” he wrote. “And just like any publication with hopes of success in the world of 2014, they would want The New Republic to be better at welcoming into our fold readers, writers, and editors who reflect the American experience as it exists today.”

To that end, Snyder pledged to bring in new contributors that are “diverse in race, gender, and background.”

“As we build our editorial staff, we will reach out to talented journalists who might have previously felt unwelcome at The New Republic,” he wrote. “If this publication is to be influential, and not merely survive, it can no longer afford to represent the views of one privileged class, nor appeal solely to a small demographic of political elites.”

Snyder announced some of those new contributors Monday on Twitter:

Read the whole editor’s note here.

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