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Comment by hardlianotion | Hacker News Reader

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hardlianotion·

I didn't understand the segue from author's meeting with Vitra to the main story about Amazon.

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His previous boss Chris Hughes (the owner) wanted to turn a profit -- but didn't have expertise to do it.

Therefore, CH brought in Guy Vidra with a directive to make profits.

Criticizing Amazon about the Hachette negotiations triggers Amazon to pull advertising dollars. This conflicts with making profits. (Which points back to why Vidra was brought in: make the magazine profitable.)

Has anyone ever made a profit with The New Republic? It seems unlikely to me.

>The one year we turned a profit, we celebrated with a pizza party that pushed us back into the red.

Literally the 3rd line of the article.

Seems just intended to show that the politics at his work place weren't likely to support his crusade against Amazon. Basically that he picked the worst moment to do it.

But, he appears to still have his job. So perhaps that part was a bit exaggerated?

Edit: Apparently, he was fired, but didn't change his LinkedIn profile to note that. That's odd, especially since your current job shows up in the byline on these posts.

Unless I've entirely misunderstood, he was fired, most of the rest of the team quit because they hated the clickbait-happy CEO, the publication was sold to somebody else, and then he got hired back again. There's more discussion on this upthread.

I think the whole article is an excerpt from a full book, maybe that story continues there?

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