The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Bankruptcy of #NeverTrump

Posted on | December 5, 2018 | Comments Off on The Bankruptcy of #NeverTrump

 

This morning, I noted the “Get Woke, Go Broke” factor in the failure of Mic-dot-com — which burned through $60 million in startup capital and was sold for $5 million — and a similar observation may be made about the woes of the Weekly Standard:

The Weekly Standard is not expected to survive going into 2019 and is preparing to shut down permanently, according to a current staff member and former member of the magazine’s parent company who spoke to The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Rumors had been circulating throughout the media class Tuesday about the fate of The Weekly Standard in the wake of the magazine’s dwindling readership and circulation, despite a rebranding effort as the preeminent right-leaning periodical for conservatives opposed to President Donald Trump.
“I don’t expect it to exist after December 14, 2018,” one editor at the magazine told TheDCNF. “There is no budget for it AT ALL.”
News broke Tuesday afternoon from CNN that the magazine’s editor-in-chief Stephen Hayes addressed staff about the magazine’s troubles, but did not go into detail about what the future might hold. . . .
The Weekly Standard was founded in 1995 by Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes. Originally owned by NewsCorp, the magazine was eventually sold in 2009 to billionaire Philip Anschutz. Individuals close to the magazine told TheDCNF that Anschutz was growing frustrated with the direction of the magazine.
A former employee of The Washington Examiner, which is a member of the same parent company as The Weekly Standard, told TheDCNF the office had been hearing murmurings Monday about the magazine’s fate. That employee told TheDCNF there had been talk that some of The Weekly Standard would be folded into The Washington Examiner.
“They’re either closing or they’re folding into a page of the Washington Examiner,” said the former Examiner employee.
Yet a current editor at The Weekly Standard disputed that possibility.
“I don’t think ‘folded’ is the right word. It sounds more like get rid of us entirely,” the editor said.

So they were originally funded by Murdoch, and then got bought by Anschutz, but he’s “frustrated” about a magazine whose editors bet the ranch on #NeverTrump. This move was apparently undertaken without bothering to calculate whether there was a readership for an anti-Trump “conservative” magazine. Having decided to alienate a substantial segment of their existing readership, the Weekly Standard did not attract enough new readers to replace what they’d lost and even a billionaire can’t just keep pouring cash into a magazine nobody is reading.

What’s interesting is how Bill Kristol, whose frequent appearances on Fox News made him the “face” of the Weekly Standard, left the magazine in late 2016, after Trump was elected. Did he see the handwriting on the wall? Nearly 63 million Americans voted for Trump, and maybe Kristol perceived what that meant for his anti-Trump magazine.

As Kurt Schlichter would say, ahoy. So much ahoy.

UPDATE: Remember when the Weekly Standard’s Jonathan V. Last published “The Case for Banning Alex Jones”? How ironic is it that Jonathan V. Last is now threatened with the loss of his job?

There’s just so much ahoy here.



 

Category: Media Bias

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