Guy Vidra
Guy Vidra is currently a partner at Collaborative Fund, a venture capital firm. Previously, he was the Head of Revenue for XO Group. For 19 months, from October 2014 to April 2016, he was Chief Executive Officer of The New Republic.[1] Before that, he was the General Manager and head of Strategy & Development at Yahoo! News.[2]
Vidra was appointed as CEO of The New Republic by the magazine's owner, Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook.[3] Vidra's appointment to The New Republic in October 2014 was soon followed by the resignation of editor Franklin Foer. Foer's replacement was Gabriel Snyder, previously of Gawker. In December 2014, Vidra and Hughes announced that the magazine—founded in the living room of Theodore Roosevelt[4][5]—was to be reinvented as a vertically integrated digital-media company.[6] Jonathan Chait described the announcement as follows:[4]
Vidra communicated the new vision to the staff in what I am told was an uncomfortable stream of business clichés ungrounded in any apparent strategy other than saying things like "let's break shit" and "we're a tech company now." His memo to the staff predictably uses terms like "straddle generation" and "brand." It promises to make TNR "a vertically integrated digital media company," possibly unaware that "vertically integrated" is an actual business concept, not a term for a media company that integrates verticals.
The changes provoked tumult within the publication. The magazine's literary editor, Leon Wieseltier; executive editors Rachel Morris and Greg Veis; nine of the magazine’s eleven active senior writers; the legal-affairs editor; the digital-media editor; six culture writers and editors and thirty-six out of thirty-eight contributing editors resigned or asked to have their names removed from the magazine's masthead. In all, two-thirds of the names on the editorial masthead were removed.[6] Vidra resigned from his position at The New Republic in April 2016.[2]
Education
[edit]Vidra holds a BA in Political Science from University of Michigan and a Masters in International Relations from Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.[7]
References
[edit]- ^ Haughney, Christine (17 September 2014). "Guy Vidra Named as Chief of The New Republic". New York Times. Retrieved 30 March 2015.
- ^ a b Sutton, Kelsey (22 April 2016). "New Republic CEO Guy Vidra resigns". Politico. Retrieved 21 February 2022.
- ^ Gold, Hadas (17 September 2014). "Chris Hughes hires new CEO for The New Republic". Politico. Retrieved 21 February 2022.
- ^ a b Jonathan Chait (4 December 2014). "A Eulogy for The New Republic". New York. Retrieved 20 February 2022.
- ^ Foer, Franklin (9 November 2014). "The Story of How The New Republic Invented Modern Liberalism". The New Republic. Retrieved 20 February 2022.
- ^ a b "Inside the Collapse of The New Republic". The New Yorker.
- ^ Staff (17 September 2014). "The New Republic names Guy Vidra, General Manager of Yahoo News, as Chief Executive Officer". The New Republic. Retrieved 21 February 2022.