Different publications are supposed to do different things

There's a certain stripe of business school buzzworder who wants them all to be the same company for some reason.  This seems like a recipe for failure to me. But what do I know. I'm just some dumb reader.  All I'm supposed to do is click the ads and share to Facebook, right?

Anyway Jonathan Chait's comments on the demise of The New Republic are pretty interesting.

But the conflict between Hughes and most of the staff of The New Republic is not about technology. Foer and the staff, with the exception of Wieseltier, are comfortable with modernity. They are joyous bloggers, and willingly submitted to the introduction of cringe-worthy Upworthy headlines to their stories and other compromises one must make with commercial needs.

The problem, rather, is that Hughes and Vidra are afflicted with the belief that they can copy the formula that transformed the Huffington Post and BuzzFeed into economic successes, which is probably wrong, and that this formula can be applied to The New Republic, which is certainly wrong.

Update:  But that's all just media business stuff.  Let's not lose sight of how absolutely crappy this venerated publication could be.