Guy Vidra is currently a partner at

Collaborative Fund Collaborative Fund is a venture capital firm focused on providing seed and early stage funding to technology companies. __TOC__ Firm Founded in 2010 by Craig Shapiro, the firm is based in New York City, New York, and manages approximately $25 ...

, a venture capital firm. Previously, he was the Head of Revenue for

XO Group The Knot Worldwide, formerly XO Group and The Knot Inc., is an American media and technology company that provides content, tools, products and services for couples who are planning weddings, creating a home, and starting a family. The company ge ...

. For 19 months, from October 2014 to April 2016, he was Chief Executive Officer of ''

The New Republic ''The New Republic'' is an American magazine of commentary on politics, contemporary culture, and the arts. Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in hu ...

''. Before that, he was the General Manager and head of Strategy & Development at

Yahoo! News Yahoo! News is a news website that originated as an internet-based news aggregator by Yahoo!. The site was created by a Yahoo! software engineer named Brad Clawsie in August 1996. Articles originally came from news services such as the Associate ...

. Vidra was appointed as CEO of The New Republic by the magazine's owner,

Chris Hughes Chris Hughes (born November 26, 1983) is an American entrepreneur and author who co-founded and served as spokesman for the online social directory and networking site Facebook until 2007. He was the publisher and editor-in-chief of ''The New R ...

, a co-founder of

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...

. Vidra's appointment to The New Republic in October 2014 was soon followed by the resignation of editor

Franklin Foer Franklin Foer (; born July 20, 1974) is a staff writer at ''The Atlantic'' and former editor of ''The New Republic'', commenting on contemporary issues from a liberal perspective. Personal life Foer was born in 1974 to a Jewish family. He is t ...

. Foer's replacement was Gabriel Snyder, previously of

Gawker ''Gawker'' is an American blog founded by Nick Denton and Elizabeth Spiers and based in New York City focusing on celebrities and the media industry. According to SimilarWeb, the site had over 23 million visits per month as of 2015. Founded ...

. In December 2014, Vidra and Hughes announced that the magazine—founded in the living room of

Theodore Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( ; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26t ...

—was to be reinvented as a vertically integrated digital-media company.

Jonathan Chait Jonathan Benjamin Chait () (born May 1, 1972) is an American pundit and writer for ''New York'' magazine. He was previously a senior editor at '' The New Republic'' and an assistant editor of ''The American Prospect''. He writes a periodic co ...

described the announcement as follows:

Vidra communicated the new vision to the staff in what I am told was an uncomfortable stream of business clichés ungrounded in any apparent strategy other than saying things like “let’s break shit” and “we’re a tech company now.” His memo to the staff predictably uses terms like “straddle generation” and “brand.” It promises to make TNR “a vertically integrated digital media company,” possibly unaware that “vertically integrated” is an actual business concept, not a term for a media company that integrates verticals.

The changes provoked tumult within the publication. The magazine’s literary editor,

Leon Wieseltier Leon Wieseltier (; born June 14, 1952) is an American critic and magazine editor. From 1983 to 2014, he was the literary editor of ''The New Republic''. He was a contributing editor and critic at ''The Atlantic'' until October 27, 2017, when the ...

; executive editors Rachel Morris and Greg Veis; nine of the magazine’s eleven active senior writers; the legal-affairs editor; the digital-media editor; six culture writers and editors and thirty-six out of thirty-eight contributing editors resigned or asked to have their names removed from the magazine’s masthead. In all, two-thirds of the names on the editorial masthead were removed. Vidra resigned from his position at The New Republic in April 2016.

Education

Vidra holds a BA in

Political Science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and ...

from

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

and a Masters in International Relations from

Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy is the graduate school of international affairs of Tufts University, in Medford, Massachusetts. The School is one of America's oldest graduate schools of international relations and is well-ranked in it ...

Tufts University Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vidra, Guy Living people Yahoo! News The Fletcher School at Tufts University alumni University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts alumni American publishing chief executives Year of birth missing (living people)