While reading articles about the New Republic Meltdown on VOX and The New Yorker I was really interested in the hate that was being sent to Chris Hughes. I honestly didn’t even know who this guy was and when I Googled him I was shocked that he was SO young. A little more research and I figured out that he was a spokesperson for Facebook and was roommates with Mark Zuckerberg. But this new New Republic was such a big deal.. People were mad.. People resigned.

But here’s the best part, roughly only four years later and Hough has decided to put The New Republic on the market. That’s right, he’s SELLING it!

He tweeted the letter announcing the decision that he wrote to his staff on January 11, writing:

“I have some difficult news today: I have decided to put The New Republic up for sale. I bought this company nearly four years ago to ensure its survival and give it the financial runway to experiment with new business models in a time of immense change in media. After investing a great deal of time, energy, and over $20 million, I have come to the conclusion that it is time for new leadership and vision at The New Republic.”

Hough’s failed to try to turn The New Republic into a digital media company, even though the many members of editorial staff protested and even resigned because of this.

Hough mentions that he saved this company from bankruptcy when traffic on the site is down 40 percent, according to ComScore.

The worst part is that Hough basically destroyed a once beloved magazine.

Hough said, “Yet I will be the first to admit that when I took on this challenge nearly four years ago, I underestimated the difficulty of transitioning an old and traditional institution into a digital media company in today’s quickly evolving climate”.

I wanted to look more into Hough because I wanted to see that he actually moved progress on the company, and I wanted to write about the efforts he is taking to do that. What I found was not what I expected, but it definitely is very interesting.