The Weekly Standard Changes Owners

June 22, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, New Media, News media, Political Philosophy 

One event that received comparatively little coverage during the tumultuous events (here and abroad) of the last week was Rupert Murdoch’s sale of the journal of opinion, the Weekly Standard, to the Clarity Media Group, owned by Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz.

The Standard, edited from its inception by William Kristol and Fred Barnes, was launched in 1995 with expectations far exceeding those of the usual periodical of its type. The Republicans had captured both houses of Congress the year before. Rush Limbaugh’s audience numbers were large and still growing. But the existing conservative opinion magazines, in those days, seemed to have trouble taking advantage of the resurgence of the Right. National Review was in a somewhat fallow period. Human Events was on the borderline between moribund and fallow. And the American Spectator was approaching the chaotic period during which it nearly vanished.

So it seemed that, with financial backing from the Murdoch communications empire, the Standard would have little trouble becoming the country’s leading conservative journal. And, in its first three or four years, things looked quite promising. Within a fairly short time the magazine’s circulation moved into the high five digits. From the start, the stable Kristol and Barnes assembled included a number of young but very bright and able journalists – Andrew Ferguson, Christopher Caldwell, and Matt Labash foremost among them – and soon added more writers along those lines, including Tucker Carlson. Meanwhile, Joseph Bottum (later succeeded by Philip Terzian) supervised a Books and Arts section which, thanks to contributors like P.J. O’Rourke and Christopher Hitchens, soon proved itself the best among opinion journals in the country, whether liberal or conservative.

The flip side to these successes was the fact that the Standard did not turn a profit. This was only to be expected; the very nature of America’s journals of opinion precludes their being able to attract many advertisers, who usually prefer magazines to be nonpartisan in nature, so it is a rare year when any of them emerge from the red for even a moment. Nonetheless, thanks to Murdoch’s deep pockets it looked, during the 1990s, that the Standard might soon achieve preeminence in its field.

But during the last decade this has not been the case. There are a number of factors involved. First, the competitors managed to get out of their ruts. National Review experienced a renaissance after Rich Lowry became editor in 1997, and in the last six or seven years that magazine has established a very impressive presence online. This in turn has helped to keep its presence in print viable; its current circulation of 155,000 is almost double that of the Standard (which, according to Wikipedia, is now about 83,000).

The American Spectator, since 2003, has been undergoing a gradual but definite resurgence, with a lively website. Its circulation of about 50,000 is well below its heyday of 1991-1992 but a considerable improvement from its low point around 2001. Even Human Events, thanks to its regular contributions from Ann Coulter, has held its own.

By contrast, the Standard was rather slow to establish a comprehensive presence on the Web, and suffered for this. Its other drawback has been its ideological viewpoint. From the very beginning the magazine’s editorial stance skewed more toward neoconservatism than was the case with the competition. This was to the Standard’s advantage during the heyday of the neocons during the first term of George W. Bush. But in the last three years, with the conservative movement gradually shifting to more traditional channels (as exemplified by the return of Newt Gingrich to prominence, for example), the Standard has been left behind.

Last fall, it looked as if the rise of Gov. Sarah Palin to prominence might change this; Kristol and Barnes had been the leaders in bringing her to notice in Washington. But since the election, the Standard’s profile seems to have become less and less pronounced.

And although Rupert Murdoch’s support for the magazine never wavered, as Richard Morgan reports in thedeal.com, his wife Wendi Deng is said to have been vocal in her dislike of the weekly. This seems to have been a major factor in Murdoch’s decision to sell.

Philip Anschutz is an industrialist who’s made his mark in recent years by branching into various parts of the media; one recent success was the film version of The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe. His forays into the world of ink-on-paper have not been as successful. He owns two giveaway dailies named the Examiner (in San Francisco and Washington) but the plans he had a few years ago to expand the Examiner brand to print newspapers in several dozen cities was replaced by a concentration on local websites. Nonetheless, he definitely has the wherewithal to keep the Standard going. (In this respect the magazine is rather luckier than The American Conservative, which almost went under last month before being reconstituted as a monthly.) And a spokesman for Clarity Media has stated that there are no changes planned for the Standard’s staff or editorial position. Since the Examiner does have a substantial online presence (which is still in development), it will be interesting to see if the Standard begins to increase its visibility in this area.

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