The Corner

Culture

Goodbye to The Weekly Standard

It looks as though The Weekly Standard is shutting down. My sense is that people are overestimating the extent to which the magazine’s stance on Trump — its writers have a range of opinion about him, but on the whole have been critical and especially have insisted that his character flaws are real and important — contributed to its demise. It looks, to me, as if a more generic kind of corporate short-sightedness killed the Standard; but perhaps that reflects the bias of a writer, and moreover one who counts many people at the Standard as friends.

Though the magazine was a competitor to National Review, our rivalry was friendly and respectful. The Standard was a reliable source of intelligent and felicitous writing — I’d start listing some of my favorite examples, but we’d be here all day — and I hope and trust that its writers will land on their feet.

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