《新共和》雜誌 與華盛頓擡槓百年

The New Republic will celebrate its 100th birthday on Wednesday with a black-tie gala in Washington featuring remarks by Bill Clinton and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a performance by Wynton Marsalis and a 400-person guest list studded with boldface names.

《新共和》(The New Republic)雜誌將於週三在華盛頓舉辦一場正裝慶典，慶祝該雜誌成立100週年，出席者包括比爾·克林頓(Bill Clinton)與拉斯·巴達·金斯堡(Ruth Bader Ginsburg)。溫頓·馬薩里斯(Wynton Marsalis)將獻上演出，共有400名賓客出席，其中不乏重要人物。

For those in an extra-nostalgic mood, the party has brought to mind the magazine’s semilegendary 70th-anniversary gathering in 1984, when Barney Frank and Gary Hart mingled with Henry A. Kissinger, who in an after-dinner speech declared it “traumatic” to be photographed with so many liberals.

對於那些格外懷舊的人來說，這場派對會令他們想起1984年該雜誌那場近乎傳奇的70週年慶典，當時的出席者包括巴尼·弗蘭克(Barney Frank)、加里·哈特與亨利·A·基辛格(Henry A. Kissinger)。基辛格在餐後講話上聲稱，和這麼多自由主義者一起合影，讓他覺得“很受傷”。

“The pictures are kind of a scream,” said Franklin Foer, the magazine’s 40-year-old editor, vicariously reminiscing about the days when The New Republic was toasting its status as the hot political magazine of the moment. “You look at them and then at Washington now, and you think, ‘Wow, that’s quite a tumble.' ”

“這些照片就像一聲吶喊，”雜誌編輯，40歲的富蘭克林·弗爾(Franklin Foer)說，人們通過照片可以間接感受到《新共和》身爲最熱點的政治雜誌的時代。“看着他們，再看看如今的華盛頓，就會覺得‘哦，一代不如一代’。”

Like Washington’s cast of characters, The New Republic has also changed. Under Chris Hughes, the Facebook multimillionaire who bought the magazine in 2012 from a consortium including its longtime owner Martin Peretz, the biweekly publication has more than doubled its staff, redesigned its print edition and broadened its coverage to be less Beltway-centric. It has also vastly increased its web traffic to more than four million unique users a month, according to the magazine.

正如華盛頓的變化，《新共和》雜誌也在改變。2012年，Facebook的億萬富翁克里斯·休斯(Chris Hughes)從一個財團手中買下這本雜誌，雜誌的長期所有者馬丁·佩雷茲(Martin Peretz)也在該財團之中。在休斯領導下，這本雙週刊的員工擴充了一倍，它重新設計了紙質版，拓寬了報道範圍，使其不再像以前那樣以華盛頓爲中心。它的網絡流量也大幅增加，雜誌聲稱，雜誌網站每月有400萬名用戶。

And further changes are afoot. As the anniversary arrives, Mr. Hughes has hired Guy Vidra, a 40-year-old former Yahoo News executive, for the top of masthead as The New Republic’s first chief executive. This has set off speculation in Washington journalism circles that a magazine as famous for its ferocious office politics as for its contrarian political coverage might be on the verge of another round of upheaval.

更多變化亦在發生中。週年慶典到來之際，休斯聘請了雅虎新聞的前任執行官，40歲的蓋伊·維德拉(Guy Vidra)，他的名字被印在刊頭，成了《新共和》的第一位首席執行官。這在華盛頓新聞界引發了一陣推測，一家以殘酷的辦公室政治鬥爭和離經叛道的政治報道而聞名的雜誌，或許正處於另一場鉅變的邊緣。

Eyebrows were raised last year when Mr. Hughes, a former organizer for Barack Obama, introduced the redesigned magazine with an editor’s letter that omitted the words “liberal” or “liberalism.” These days, while he says he remains committed to print, he is also ready to jettison “magazine.”

去年，曾爲貝拉克·奧巴馬(Barack Obama)做過組織工作的休斯推出這本經重新設計的雜誌，附有一封編輯致讀者信，其中沒有提到“自由”或“自由主義”這些詞，當時有不少人對此表示疑慮。如今，休斯說自己仍對紙質印刷出版保持忠誠，但也準備好了拋棄“雜誌”概念。

“Twenty years ago, no question, it was a political magazine, full stop,” Mr. Hughes said in a joint interview with Mr. Vidra in New York. “Today, I don’t call it a magazine at all. I think we’re a digital media company.”

“20年前，毫無疑問，它是一本政治雜誌，這一點沒什麼可說的，”休斯在紐約與維德拉共同接受採訪時說。“如今，我並不把它稱爲一本雜誌。我覺得我們是一家數字媒體公司。”

Mr. Hughes (who gave up the editor in chief title but remains publisher) and Mr. Vidra dismissed speculation that they wanted to take the magazine in a more lowbrow, BuzzFeed-like direction. But they did say there was room to increase the digital audience to as much as “tens of millions” of unique monthly visitors by focusing on a broader range of topics and on new forms of digital storytelling that “travel well” on the web.

休斯放棄了總編地位，但保留出版人這個頭銜。有人推測他和維德拉將把這本雜誌引向低俗，走向BuzzFeed的方向，他和維德拉否認了這一說法。但他們也說，有可能通過關注更廣泛的題材，採取新的數碼敘事形式，在網上“走得更好”，爲雜誌吸引數以千萬計的網絡讀者。

Whatever The New Republic is today, it has been busy flogging its storied past. Mr. Foer and Mr. Hughes, 30, have been out promoting “Insurrections of the Mind,” an anthology of about 50 articles spanning the magazine’s history. Leon Wieseltier, the publication’s silver-maned longtime literary editor, has thrown out the first pitch at a Washington Nationals game (“high and away,” he admitted) and appeared on “The Colbert Report” to debate the merits of “centrist hair.”

不管《新共和》如今變成了什麼樣，它仍在忙於利用自己傳奇的過去。弗爾和30歲的休斯正忙着宣傳《頭腦的叛亂》(Insurrections of the Mind)這本文選，它收錄了貫穿該雜誌歷史的50篇文章。長期在雜誌工作的自由主義編輯里昂·維塞爾迪爾(Leon Wieseltier)如今已是滿頭白髮，他剛剛爲華盛頓國民隊的一場比賽開球（他確認“開得又高又遠”），後來又上綜藝節目《科爾伯特報告》(The Colbert Report)中，探討“中分頭髮”的價值。

During Mr. Peretz’s tempestuous three-decade reign, whose door-slamming fights were recalled (mostly) fondly in an article in the anniversary issue by a former editor, Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Republic enraged many on the left, including many on its own staff, with its support for the contras, the anti-Communist insurgents in Nicaragua; an excerpt from “The Bell Curve,” Charles Murray’s 1994 book on race and I.Q.; and its full-throated support, later reconsidered, for the Iraq war. (Mr. Peretz, who attacked Mr. Hughes last year in an op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal, is not invited to the party, Mr. Hughes said.)

在佩雷茲暴風驟雨般的30年任期中，有過很多激烈的爭吵。週年紀念專刊上，前任編輯亨德里克·赫茲伯格(Hendrik Hertzberg)在一篇文章中以親切的口吻回憶了這些往事（大部分）。《新共和》得罪了許多左派，其中包括不少自己的員工，它支持尼加拉瓜反共產黨的反對派起義者、支持查爾斯·穆雷(Charles Murray)1994年的書《弧線排序》(The Bell Curve)中關於種族與智商的章節，還在事後的反思中全力支持伊拉克戰爭。去年佩雷茲曾在《華爾街時報》(Wall Street Journal)的專欄文章中攻擊休斯，休斯表示沒有邀請佩雷茲來參加派對。

These days, The New Republic’s goal of parting its hair down the middle, starting with its decision to stop running editorials, strikes some as a diminishment.

最近，《新共和》開始走中立路線，最初的舉措就是決定取消社論，有人認爲這是一種衰退。

“The magazine used to be schizophrenic,” said Eric Alterman, a columnist for The Nation and a longtime critic of Mr. Peretz’s. “But now, the most you can compare it to is a nice sailboat that usually has something smart in it but isn’t taking you anywhere.”

“這家雜誌曾經是精神分裂的，”《國家》(The Nation)雜誌的專欄作家和佩雷茲的長期批評者埃裏克·阿爾特曼(Eric Alterman)說，“但是現在，最好的比喻是，它就像一艘美麗的小帆船，上面總有很漂亮的東西，但是沒法帶你去往任何地方。”

But others say the magazine’s direction under Mr. Hughes represents a return to the pragmatic idealism of its Progressive Era roots. “There’s a greater public-Spiritedness and broadness of vision to the magazine now,” said Robert S. Boynton, director of the literary journalism program at New York University. “The fact that there’s some confusion about its identity is actually a healthy sign.”

但其他人說，這家雜誌在休斯治理下，開始迴歸它在進步時代的根源，即實用理想主義。“現在的雜誌有更大的公衆精神和更廣泛的視野，”紐約大學自由主義新聞項目的負責人羅伯特·S·博伊恩頓(Robert S. Boynton)說。“事實上，它的身份引起了一些困惑，這其實是一個健康的信號。”

Intraoffice fights still happen, but not always in the magazine’s pages. When The New Republic ran an excerpt from a book on the history of the pro-Israel lobby by John Judis, a longtime senior editor, Mr. Wieseltier vented his displeasure in a scathing, semiprivate email published by The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website.

辦公室內的鬥爭還在繼續，但並不總是體現在雜誌的版面裏。雜誌多年的高級編輯約翰·朱迪斯(John Judis)寫了一本關於親以色列遊說集團歷史的書籍，《新共和》刊登了節選，維塞爾迪爾在一封半私人的電子郵件中尖銳地表達了自己對此感到不快，這封郵件被刊登在保守派的網站“華盛頓自由燈塔”(The Washington Free Beacon)上。

“Spirited debate is an incredibly important value to the institution,” Mr. Hughes said of that incident. “So is mutual respect.”

“激烈的爭辯是這家雜誌非常重要的價值觀，”休斯這樣評價這場風波，“互相尊重也是如此。”

That might come as a relief to Mr. Clinton, who could deliver a marathon self-roast at Wednesday’s gala simply by reading choice vituperative ’90s-era coverage of him and Hillary Rodham Clinton in The New Republic.

這對於克林頓先生來說可能是個安慰。週三慶典上的祝酒詞中，光是朗讀90年代《新共和》就他與希拉里·羅德姆·克林頓(Hillary Rodham Clinton)的報道中的辱罵之詞，他就可以馬拉松般說上半天。

Not that The New Republic has gone nice. It has “dialed back on the smartypants-ness” but still runs tough pieces about Republicans and Democrats alike, Mr. Foer said, pointing to Noam Scheiber’s much-talked-about critical profile of the Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett in the anniversary issue.

並不是說《新共和》變得溫和了。弗爾說，它只是“減少了自作聰明”，仍然在刊登對共和黨與民主黨同樣嚴厲的文章。他指的是週年紀念刊上諾姆·謝伯(Noam Scheiber)關於奧巴馬的顧問瓦萊麗·賈勒特(Valerie Jarrett)的批評性特寫，這篇文章受到很多議論。

And in the culture pages, long Mr. Wieseltier’s autonomous domain, no-holds-barred criticism still reigns, as in the same issue’s gleeful takedown of Lena Dunham by James Wolcott and a long essay by Mr. Wieseltier declaring, among other things, that “ferocity is as essential to our system as civility.”

在長期處於維塞爾迪爾自治狀態下的文化版面，仍然實行無拘無束的批判主義，紀念刊中登出了詹姆斯·沃爾科特(James Wolcott)的一篇文章，歡快地諷刺莉娜·杜漢姆(Lena Dunham)；還有一篇維塞爾迪爾的長文，宣佈，“對於我們的體系來說，兇狠和禮貌同等重要。”

Mr. Wieseltier also gets in the issue’s last word, with a closing column warning against giving technology “ultimate authority over human existence.”

維塞爾迪爾還爲這期雜誌做了總結，在刊尾文章中，他警告那種賦予技術“超越人類存在的至高無上的權威”的做法。

To connoisseurs of old-school intrigue in The New Republic, that may sound like a shot at the magazine’s digital future. But Mr. Wieseltier, who calls himself a “platform pluralist,” waved away the suggestion.

品味《新共和》的老式技巧或許像是在攻擊雜誌的數碼化未來。但維塞爾迪爾否定了這種看法，把自己稱爲“平臺多元論者”。

“This is a moment to celebrate,” he said. “For a hundred years, the country has been a little less dumb than it might have been without us.”

“這是慶祝的時刻，”他說，“百年以來，如果沒有我們，這個國家怕是會更蠢一些。”