The New Republics by Chris Hughes - Case Study Example

The New Republic’s by Chris Hughes 1. Executive Summary This document is a compressed summary of The New Republic’s (TNR) recent historic mass exodus of a large number of its staffers under the leadership of the owner Chris Hughes and the various business dynamics adopted by him. The co-founder of Facebook and the present owner and editor-in-chief of TNR has implemented some avid alterations within the working environment of TNR. He has logically imbibed those changes to adapt to the rapidly shifting dynamics of the media. This is to reduce the quantum of print rotations and concentrating on building the digital image. It might have portrayed a callow and incompetent image of him in public. (Lizza, “Inside the Collapse of The New Republic”). The eruptive exit of most of the senior editorial staff and critics in a masthead, following sudden resignation of Frank Foer and Leon Wieseltier made the atmosphere of TNR turbulent. Many interpreted this as the revamp of magazine style long reporting structure to follow a Silicon style way of going digital, with the advent of Vidra at TNR (Lizza, “Inside the Collapse of The New Republic”; Calderone, “Owner Chris Hughes and CEO Guy Vidra Say the New RepublicIsn’t Dead Yet”). This essay attempts to make a thorough analysis of the strategies and provides avid justifications for each of Hughes’s business decisions to revamp the business climate at TNR. 2. Opportunities In order to break shackles from the impending management pressures at TNR, Foer and Hughes started looking for a new CEO. Though there was an initial round of disagreement on getting someone hired from the magazine industry, Hughes welcomed Guy Vidra, a person with a strong corporate background for the position. With Vidra, the working climate in NR started changing. The traditional institutional model was fast changing and a separate investment vehicle was launched in the name of New Republic Fund. TNR started proclaiming itself as a vertically-integrated digital-media company of its kind (Calderone,” Owner Chris Hughes and CEO Guy Vidra Say The New Republic Isn't Dead Yet”; Horowitz,” David Brooks Calls New Republic Owner Chris Hughes 'Callow And Incompetent'”). Hughes, joining hands with Vidra, was contemplating means of making more money and preventing wastage over complicated things. Hughes is conscious of the financial bloopers and has been always aware of the mistakes (Snyder, “The new Republic- A Letter from the Editor”). While, on the one hand, going digital might be the fashion trend, but on the other hand, a high level of competition causing immense impact in the journalism industry is unavoidable. To gain maximum coverage, it was a good move by Hughes into letting grow the image of TNR from a small magazine publishing company to one with a growing circulation across the globe. It was a radical but an innovative step in steering away from the mundane printing-related tasks of plagiarism, fabrication and inaccuracy as conventionally present in long-writing style of media reporting (Abbruzzese, “Q & A with Chris Hughes of The New Republic”). This could be further explained with the help of the following matrix: Strategic Area: Opportunities to Create Value: Challenges to Create Value: Accounting Qualified prospect of revenue generation from digital platform Big data and volume of information is sometimes risky. Decision Sciences Silicon Valley is the latest hub for all technological innovations. Following its trends will keep TNR in the latest spirits in the eyes of its readers. The present number of readers and visitors might increase from 10 to 100 million and the space and capacity might not be enough and need expansion Finance With new opportunities and plans of expansion, new investments would be needed The present revenue from the existing channels needs to be sustainable to keep up with the upcoming expansions. Management Re-positioning and vertical-integration gives a new dimension to the company interface This might impart a digital start-up image to the company Marketing Outsourcing the advertising will get TNR to reach new audiences and make more impact. Outsourcing might be ineffective and raise question on its content-management discipline. 3. Challenges Till the year 2011, TNR as a small magazine company had been losing money and somehow trying to sustain its image (Lizza, “Inside the Collapse of The New Republic”). TNR seemed to work well after Chris Hughes took over the company. The employees themselves reported their feedback that it was easier to work with Hughes in the initial days. His writing, micromanaging and financial strategies were turning beneficial for TNR and its employees. Over time, Hughes got alienated from his staff as his personal life started getting intermingled with his professional responsibilities. Hughes was getting restless with the mounting financial loses. In the first quarter of 2014, one of the staff reported of him saying that he is tired of the financial loses and that he was turning hostile and contemptuous towards them. This was surprising as he seemed to like his employees and his staff appreciated like him too (Lizza, “Inside the Collapse of The New Republic”; Calderone, “Owner Chris Hughes And CEO Guy Vidra Say The New Republic Isn't Dead Yet”). To secure financial complacency within a struggling media company, it is necessary to diversify from mere delivery into some form of experimentation and innovation. This would require making some structural changes in the DNA of the organization and institute review systems. Cultural changes are also expected but these modifications are never meant to elude the year long history or its complete replacement (Abbruzzese, “Q & A with Chris Hughes of The New Republic”). An unspecified change is always debatable and what TNR was trying to achieve through the leadership of Hughes was a new organizational order of complete balance between magazine reporting and digital circulation (Calderone, “Owner Chris Hughes and CEO Guy Vidra Say the New RepublicIsn’t Dead Yet”; Horowitz,” David Brooks Calls New Republic Owner Chris Hughes 'Callow And Incompetent'”). This set out a reaction among some of its employees that the Hughes and Vidra, who took over Hughes role of writing, were losing interest in magazine content and this was taken as dishonesty. This was setting out a wave of frustration among TNR’s employees that something tragic is happening (Abbruzzese, “Q & A with Chris Hughes of The New Republic”). 4. Recommendations The ultimate aim is to make two broad recommendations, namely: Recommendation 1: TNR’s journalism policy of going digital should continue unabated and reach out to many more customers. Benefits: With more than 5 million unique readers in 2013, this new form of neo-journalism and advertisement will generate surplus for TNR. Anticipated Results: There is a high probability of a firm’s projection to increase in terms of revenue from the early quarter of 2015. TNR’s journalism has been extremely strong till date. In 2013, the digital revenue accounted to nearly half of the total advertising revenue (Abbruzzese, “Q & A with Chris Hughes of The New Republic”). This has been indicative of the strategic business moves by Hughes who has been stewarding in a rightful direction to expand their influence from a historic small print organization in Washington. The first two years of Hughes’ journey with his staff started harmoniously, but deteriorated over time. There were other personal factors of frustration, personal depressions and financial struggles which let him to lash back at his employees, mostly unintentional (Snyder, “The new Republic- A Letter from the Editor).” Recommendation 2: The small magazine and publishing image of TNR will be enlarged and picture TNR in the eyes of a global and more diversified reading base. Benefits: Experimentation and innovation is the key to expansion and rationalizing. Anticipated Results: Despite the initial fall in the numbers of employees, Hughes will be able to retain the present set of employees through proper motivation and more humanistic appeal. This could be mostly made out of his comments on ‘contrition’ which worked as a damage control in this case (Lizza, “Inside the Collapse of The New Republic”). He once told that he realized that a better job could have been done to make the employees feel included with TNR. This has also placed Hughes into a sympathetic position in the eyes of his ex-employees who were reminiscing the good period spent with him at TNR. a. The Action Steps Progressive owners need to act as stewards and not as whimsical bosses in the creative process. They should be accountable for the corporate decisions and be responsible for them. It is a good practice to learn from previous mistakes but the leader needs to be wiser and less corrupt. The bloopers could be well-covered with a humbling responsibility and courteous remarks from time-to-time. There is a vast array of ideas to propel publishing houses nowadays, even in the case of digital media industry. In this case, a diversified taskforce with varied experience in both the classical and contemporary dimensions need to be roped-in and retained for long. The action plans could be further explained with the help of the following matrix: Action Steps Who When Outcome 1. Owners to act as stewards in the management and business decision-making processes Owners and Decision -makers Periodically and while implementing major changes More responsiveness and better employee-owner relationship. 2. Every mistake counts and every employee and staff, including the managerial members need to make a note of them to learn and not to repeat them in the future. All staff and Board members Periodically Strengthening the base of a company and teach more accountability. 3. Hiring and maintaining a diversified team of media professionals to get access to a varied source of information. Owner and top management Recruitment and hiring Creation of a diversified task force, with people from varied backgrounds and knowledge base. 5. Conclusion Hughes, as an efficient writer himself and a proficient owner of TNR, always ensured that the print had a good circulation and there was enough scope of experimentation and innovation as the way forward to competitiveness in business. Another perspective is that this field is deeply unsure and not without sins. So, self-confidence in deliveries, being less corrupt and increasing the global digital presence might help to create new forms within traditional organizations. 6. Overall Impact TNR’s case study has been a testimonial of its fast approaching visions of strengthening its versatility and distribution and also what mistakes to be avoided. Hughes, as an owner has deliberated skills of innovative business strategies by contemplating means of saving costs and adopting latest-industry transformations. However, his approach cannot be held as an ideal. There were some signs of misgivings and exclamation of frustration and annoyance which lashed back at him. Accepting about that in public might have lent a compassionate image to his stance but TNR’s future would need to reckon more innovative styles of reporting after its historic depression. Works Cited Abbruzzese, Jason. “Q & A with Chris Hughes of The New Republic.” Mashable. 2014. Web. 12 January 2015. Calderone, Michael. “Owner Chris Hughes And CEO Guy Vidra Say The New Republic Isn't Dead Yet.” The Huffington Post. 9 December 2014. Web. 12 January 2015. Horowitz, Alana. “Owner Chris Hughes 'Callow And Incompetent.” The Huffington Post. 26 December 2014. Web. 12 January 2015. Lizza, Ryan. “Inside the Collapse of The New Republic.” The New Yorker. 12 December 2014. Web. 12 January 2015. Snyder, Gabriel. “The new Republic- A Letter from the Editor.” The New Republic. 22 December 2014. Web. 12 January 2015. Read More