Franklin Foer named editor of TNR
by Kevin
Franklin Foer is set to take over as top editor of The New Republic magazine according to this New York Times article:
For a small outfit, The New Republic has always gone long on drama. Its changes in leadership have usually arrived in the form of rolling coups or lightning bolts from above. So it is refreshing, if a bit underwhelming, to report that Franklin Foer, a senior editor with the magazine, is quietly taking over the shop next week from the current editor, Peter Beinart, who has a book to promote and ambitions of returning to longer form writing.
Mr. Foer, who is the author of How Soccer Explains the World , and for you literary types is the brother of Jonathan Safran Foer. Depressingly, Foer is only 31!
Foer has high hopes for making TNR a bigger player in the political and cultural debate:
“We live in the most politicized age since the 60′s, and I don’t think that political journalism has been up to the task,” he said. “The good old-fashioned things that a political journal does — the explication of ideas and ideas — are not in great abundance right now.”
Mr. Foer says that he is taking over a magazine that has a great deal of momentum from Mr. Beinart’s tenure, which began in 1999, and it is a fine time to be at its helm.
“We are more or less at the end of the Bush era, and I think it will be very interesting to see what happens to the passions that have been built up over the course of this administration,” he said. “We are going to be very much a part of that discussion.”
Foer is right about the end of the Bush era. It will be interesting to see how the parties deal with the end of Bush’s term and the passions that the President, and his policies, have ignited.
I subscribed to TNR for about 20 years, but gave up during the Clinton administration when the Permanent Campaign came into effect. I always found TNR to be worthless when in campaign mode. But maybe I should give it another chance. I’ll be interested to hear what you think of the Foer version of TNR.