C.E. Alexander counts down our top 25 favorite stories of the year.
#25 ‘Like’ Is, Like, Totally Cool, Linguist Says
First, the case needs to be mostly closed. See our previous remarks about chaos in Ukraine, the Israel-Gaza conflict or the current Ebola outbreak. Otherwise news, essays, studies, videos and graphics were all eligible. Continue reading
This morning I took to Twitter and promised an end to the New Republic retweets, concluding: “at this point most of us are only talking past everyone else.” Even if that was the right comment, it was the wrong medium.
This is what I might have said: the conservative end of our political spectrum has long declared TNR’s editorial positions irrelevant and offers little comment about the particulars of employee relations. TNR’s more progressive observers believe the shake-up to be only the most recent and notable skirmish between #longread and #clickbait, between print and digital. And while the departing editors chide New Republic ownership for terrible lapses in decorum and management, Hughes replied by exceeding the informal 500-word maximum by sixty percent, and not saying anything at all. In Twitterspeak, each side is talking past all others.
As someone who has worked for the same small business for twenty years–who has listened to the owners struggle with the ideas of continuance and cashing out, who has witnessed first-hand the difficulties of valuing a company, offering it for sale–I can only add that TNR’s frustrations are par for the course. Especially now that it has outlived those who wrote its mission statement.
Hopefully that does not sound detached. While corporate continuance problems are inevitable, they are not without their casualties. I have rather enjoyed getting to know the essayists at TNR and will miss seeing so many excellent writers under the same masthead: Anne Applebaum, Jonathan Chait, Noam Scheiber, Isaac Chotiner and Julia Ioffe. For an introduction to some of my favorite pieces, keep reading below the fold. No doubt some of these will show up on Zidi’s year-end list for best new articles. For now we offer only a few:
Continue reading
zidi publishing 