New York, NY (March 25, 2021)—The New Republic announced today it has tapped Michael Tomasky as its top editor. The iconic liberal news, commentary, and opinion outlet also announced that a majority of its editorial operation will be in Washington, D.C., with business operations remaining in New York. Tomasky will assume his role as editor on April 19.
“The New Republic, throughout its history, has been a magazine of both intellectual innovation and hard-hitting political journalism,” Win McCormack, the magazine’s owner, said. “Michael’s resume speaks clearly of his ability to handle both sides of this editorial equation with consummate skill.” McCormack added that he thought Tomasky’s deep experience with the Washington milieu will be an enormous asset to the enterprise as well.
“Joining TNR as editor will be the crowning achievement of my career,” said Tomasky. “This is a storied publication with such a rich history. At the same time, TNR is as much about the present and future. This is such a critical moment, with a new administration signaling a fresh era of American politics—but with clear and present threats emanating from an opposition party that has basically become anti-democratic. There is much important work to do.”
Along with Tomasky’s hiring, TNR announced it will centralize its editorial operation in Washington, D.C., where the publication was based until 2012, and will retain a presence in New York, with relevant desks remaining in the city. Tomasky plans to expand coverage of policy-making and the politics that drive it.
“We are grateful to our outgoing editor Chris Lehmann, who was able to restore stability to The New Republic after a decade of incessant turmoil,” McCormack said. “He built an excellent staff and inspired them to do first-class work.” McCormack added that Lehmann would retain an association with the magazine, appearing on the masthead as Editor-at-Large and making periodic contributions to its editorial mix.
“I’ve been enormously fortunate to edit The New Republic over the past two years, and I’m grateful beyond words to Win McCormack for giving me the opportunity to do so,” Lehmann said. “And I’m very happy to see Michael Tomasky take the reins at the magazine—Michael is a truly gifted reporter, editor, and writer who understands that American liberalism must urgently address the crisis of our republic, and he has both the intellectual range and the moral vision to meet the challenges of this moment.”
Michael Tomasky is a longtime liberal writer, editor, and commentator. Currently he is a columnist and editor at The Daily Beast and editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, a quarterly journal based in Washington, D.C., positions he’s held for around a decade. Michael will retain his role at Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. Before that, he was the first U.S. editor of The Guardian as it expanded its American operations, and before that, the editor of The American Prospect. He has contributed frequently to The New York Review of Books and The New York Times. He is the author of five books, most recently If We Can Keep It: How the Republic Collapsed and How It Can Be Saved (2019, Liveright).
In addition to its monthly magazine and digital edition, TNR runs an acclaimed podcast, The Politics of Everything, with guests including Laurie Garrett, Pulitzer-Prize-winning science writer and author of The Coming Plague, social psychologist Carol Tavris, author Richard Cooke, the executive director of the American Immunization Registry Association Rebecca Coyle, and Zephyr Teachout, the author of Break ’Em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money.
The New Republic’s events offer audiences a chance to dive into issues of major political and cultural significance. Recent events include The End of University which focused on the remaking of the US university system; Platforms and Pandemics, a post-Convention rundown of the Democratic meeting and the Republic National Convention; Where Do We Go From Here?, a post-election roundtable; and Voting at Risk, which focused on getting the ballot right in the face of a pandemic and a partisan meltdown.
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About The New Republic
The New Republic was founded in 1914 as an intellectual call to arms for public-minded intellectuals advocating liberal reform in a new industrial age. Now, two decades into a new century, the magazine remains, if anything, more committed than ever to its first principles—and most of all, to the need to rethink outworn assumptions and political superstitions as radically changing conditions demand. Cofounder Herbert Croly declared that TNR was an “experiment”—and today we rededicate that experiment, and our magazine’s legacy, to the urgent challenges of reclaiming the democratic faith amid dangerous, deranging new upheavals in our common world.
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