Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes has taken
over the political magazine The New Republic for an undisclosed sum,
in a bid to apply his digital expertise to the almost 100-year-old
liberal publication, he said Friday.
In a message to readers on the New Republic's website, Hughes said
his goal in taking over the 98-year-old progressive magazine was to
use technology to further its mission of "serious reporting and
analysis."
"The web has introduced a competitive, and some might argue
hostile, landscape for long, in-depth, resource-intensive
journalism," said Hughes, 28, who took on the role of publisher and
editor-in-chief of the magazine.
"But as we've seen with the rise of tablets and mobile reading
devices, it is an ever-shifting landscape -- one that I believe now
offers opportunities to reinvigorate the forms of journalism that
examine the challenges of our time in all their complexity."
Hughes was a roommate of Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard and played a
key role in Facebook's early years. He left the company in 2008 to
work as an online strategist for the election campaign of Barack
Obama and his Facebook shares were estimated to be worth some $800
million before the company filed to go public.
