The New Republic

I have subscribed to The New Republic on my Nook since October 2012, but with the recent re-launch of the magazine I have decided to unsubscribe. The last two issues have been, for lack of a more elegant phrase, unreadable. Since the magazine re-launched under Mr. Chris Hughes, articles have been spliced together, text is jumbled, paragraphs run into each other, and everything from dollar signs to asterisks appear where letters should be, making reading more of a guessing game than an intellectual or relaxing experience. This has not just happened once, but with two consecutive issues of the magazine. And the mistakes are more than annoying: they will surely interrupt your reading flow, and make you regret the fact that you paid for such a lousy product. I typically do not write reviews online, though I thought I should warn potential customers in this case. I have really enjoyed The New Republic's writing and journalism for the past month - the book reviews were fantastic, the long-form, in-depth articles outstanding, and the commitment to "wonkish" topics suited my personal taste perfectly. Unfortunately, the magazine has made a distinct choice of putting out a sub-par product, one that will give you more headaches than joys. Even more disturbing was when I called The New Republic to complain. When I explained the mistakes and asked the operator how the magazine expects me to pay $2.25 for a virtually unreadable product, she said that the magazine "apologizes for the mistakes" and "acknowledges that there are still kinks to work out" with the re-launch. Make no mistake, this magazine is willing to sell you unreadable text for pure profit. Please, follow my lead and subscribe to The Nation, The New Yorker, and other magazines that genuinely care about their subscribers and how the formats appear on Nook devices.

Considering the spectrum of political journals out there, this may be the closest thing we have to an effort at political sanity. Yes, more often progressive than conservative, but willing to puncture ideological pretensions on both sides. Some strange obsessions: an apparent hatred of all things Robert Caro (the Johnson biographer) - with an attack recently from one writer who admits to not even having read the books he attacks. Disadvantage to a Nook subscription may be that you can't take part in commenting on the TNR website.

The New Republic provides interesting, well-researched content that, while not unique to the magazine, often provides a fresh viewpoint or, at least, a niche perspective highlighting features of stories that other magazines don't. The caveat is that some of the articles breach the line from 'intellectual' to 'pretentious' without a lot of self-awareness and while the variety of subjects is nice the reporting on these subjects tends to be uneven with some articles far outstripping others in quality. That said, The New Republic provides a progressive view well in line with their mandate and articles that, in large part, are worth the time they take to read. I'm rounding up above due to the lack of partial stars in the review system and would give the reporting 4.5/5 for those who are looking for the intellectual, liberal bent.