7. If you are a billionaire Republican, you are willing to lose money on a magazine like Weekly Standard because it gives you a voice in GOP policy & politics. But of what value is the magazine if it is marginalized by the existing party?
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8. There are other models for high-brow magazines. There's the covert CIA funding model (used by William Kristol's dad Irving at Encounter), the foundation funding model (used by the senior Kristol at Public Interest).
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9. There's the model of affiliating with an academic institution (true of countless little literary magazines and of course of much scholarly publishing).
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10. Finally, closer to home, there's the possibility of relying not on one or two big donors but many smaller ones. The model of The Nation, National Review & American Conservative.
@ToryAnarchist discusses that here:https://spectator.us/unhappy-demise-the-weekly-standard/ …4 replies 16 retweets 80 likesShow this thread -
11. The multiple smaller donors can be supplemented various branding & fundraising exercises like cruises, talks and festivals. Both the Nation and TNR have had branded wines (ours was quite good).
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12. While we're in a difficult media market, the fact is people do manage to put out smart good magazines & political journalism by mixing and matching different funding strategies (with things like digital subscriptions taking up slack of loss advertising).
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13. So rather than the large & gloomy Weberian problem of "corporate bureaucrats" what felled the Weekly Standard was a more narrow problem: a brittle business model depending on caprice of people who don't value their product (GOP billionaires).
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Jeet Heer Retweeted Dan McLaughlin
14. I can't believe I'm typing this but Baseball Crank (
@baseballcrank) makes a good point here that GOP billionaires seem narrowly utilitarian in wanting short term obvious benefits for their $$. (see discussion below)https://twitter.com/baseballcrank/status/1074145593616990208 …Jeet Heer added,
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15. I actually think there's a good argument that GOP big money guys are being myopic & stupid here. Something like The Weekly Standard is a good investment as a Plan B for if Trump crashes and burns.
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16. I mean it's not too difficult to imagine whole Trump thing collapsing (through scandals & Trump's own personality). If that happens, it would be useful for GOP to have a group of people who can credibly say they opposed this all along.
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17. In general, Brooks column would've been better if it acknowledged the problem was TWS's business model & not some grand trend of "corporate bureaucrats."
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18. On the right, I think American Conservative, Modern Age &
@ubookman are all substantive publications; on the left there's@thebafflermag. N+1,@jacobinmag,@curaffairs & many more. So no need to mourn just yet.6 replies 14 retweets 112 likesShow this thread -
19. I was wondering why Brooks' column rubbed me the wrong way. I finally figured it out. Brooks wants GOP plutocrats to hand him & his buddies lots of dough to write whatever they want, no questions asked. That seems a bit entitled.
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