The New Republic

What you're reading

The New Republic is a magazine of politics, policy, and culture founded in 1914 by Herbert Croly as the institutional voice of American progressivism. It has been published continuously for over a century, with editorial direction that has shifted across the decades — from early-progressive Wilsonian liberalism, through the centrist neoliberalism of the Marty Peretz years (1974–2012), through the Chris Hughes-era digital-magazine attempt and turmoil (2012–2016), to its current incarnation under owner Win McCormack and an editorial line that has returned firmly to the progressive left.

The magazine publishes a quarterly print edition plus continuous digital publication at NewRepublic.com, with newsletters and a podcast. Coverage spans presidential and congressional politics, the Supreme Court and the conservative legal movement, climate policy, labor and economic policy from a left-Keynesian frame, foreign policy with skepticism of American military adventurism, and culture and book criticism. Contributors include Michael Tomasky as editor, plus a roster of progressive writers including Alex Pareene, Osita Nwanevu, Walter Shapiro, Timothy Noah, and frequent contributions from academic and activist voices. Audience is national, skews progressive-intellectual and policy-engaged.

Ownership & funding

TNR LLC (Win McCormack majority owner). Funded primarily through subscription.

Subscription-driven funding under private ownership by Win McCormack since 2016 has stabilized TNR's editorial identity after a turbulent decade. The subscription model rewards depth and reader stickiness — readers who renew because they value the magazine's specific perspective — rather than virality. There is no ad-dependent traffic floor to clear and no quarterly-earnings pressure from a public-company owner. The trade-off is that the publication is editorially committed to a particular vision of the left, and a small private-owner structure concentrates strategic decisions in McCormack himself. The model preserves long-form ambition and a coherent institutional voice at the cost of broader audience reach.

Where they land on the spectrum

nwsly's editorial team places The New Republic at Left with a factuality rating of Mostly Factual.

The Left rating reflects The New Republic's explicit progressive editorial identity under McCormack and Tomasky. Coverage prioritizes coverage gaps the left cares about — conservative-movement intellectual history and the Federalist Society pipeline, Supreme Court jurisprudence covered with skepticism of originalism, climate policy and the Inflation Reduction Act, labor and the renewed union movement, antitrust and corporate power, voting access and the campaigns to defeat election denial. Framing of the Trump and post-Trump conservative movement is consistently adversarial. The magazine has positioned itself as a vehicle for left-of-center policy and political ideas, including the case for a more aggressive economic populism inside the Democratic Party.

Where The New Republic breaks the pattern is its willingness to publish heterodox positions inside the left — criticism of the Biden administration from the left on Israel-Gaza policy, on antitrust enforcement, on immigration policy, on foreign-policy hawkishness. The magazine has also published reporting and analysis adverse to progressive nonprofits, to specific Democratic congressional figures, and to the consultant class around Democratic campaigns. The Mostly Factual rating reflects that TNR is a magazine of essays and reported pieces mixed — the reported features are documented and the corrections process is real, but the magazine's institutional voice is explicitly polemical, and the analysis essays sometimes carry interpretive claims that other publications would qualify more. The Left bias is openly declared; readers should treat the essays as opinion.

Editorial vs news side

The New Republic is a magazine of essays, reported features, and commentary, and it does not pretend to have a centrist news desk separated from a progressive editorial page. The reported features are documented; the political essays, columns, and analysis are progressive and openly so. There is no separate editorial board issuing endorsements at the publication level — the magazine speaks with a unified institutional voice across reporting and commentary. The Left rating applies to the publication as a whole. What you are reading is committed progressive intellectual journalism, and that is the product.

Why we include them in nwsly

Center-left to progressive magazine; long-form politics and culture.

The New Republic is one of the oldest progressive magazines in American journalism and gives nwsly access to long-form left intellectual analysis that the daily-paper press and the digital outlets do not produce. We cite it for essays and reported features on the conservative legal movement, Supreme Court jurisprudence, climate and labor policy, and the conceptual fights inside the Democratic Party — coverage that other Center and Lean Left outlets in our lineup file less ambitiously. The Left rating is unambiguous to readers, the perspective is legible up front, and the magazine's intellectual seriousness is the value proposition.

Recent nwsly briefs citing The New Republic

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