Initial thoughts on the closing of The Weekly Standard

The publisher just pulled the trigger:

The Weekly Standard, the magazine that espouses traditional conservatism and which has remained deeply critical of President Donald Trump, will shutter after 23 years, Clarity Media Group, the owner of its publisher announced Friday morning. It will publish its final issue on December 17.

The announcement came after the magazine's editor-in-chief, Stephen Hayes, met privately with Ryan McKibben, the chairman of The Weekly Standard's publisher, MediaDC.

"For more than twenty years The Weekly Standard has provided a valued and important perspective on political, literary and cultural issues of the day," McKibben said in a press release. "The magazine has been home to some of the industry's most dedicated and talented staff and I thank them for their hard work and contributions, not just to the publication, but the field of journalism."

Employees were told that they would be paid through the end of the year, and that afterward they would receive severance which would range in scale depending on factors like seniority, two people familiar with the matter told CNN. To receive severance, however, employees would need to sign a non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreement, the people said. 

Employees were also told to clear out their desks by the end of the day, the people told CNN. The people said that their email addresses were already in the process of being shut off.

McKibben attributed the closing to the decline in subscription rates, rather than its editorial stance, but that amounts to the same thing in this age of Trump cult worship. Even more than National Review, which continues to publish Trump enthusiasts like Conrad Black and Victor Davis Hanson, TWS had eked out terrain for itself that pretty uniformly found Trump objectionable. (It's true that NR published an entire issue devoted to against-Trump essays in the spring of 2016, and that most of its regular contributors see Trump for what he is. Still, it had not developed the reputation that TWS had.)

Haven't had time to check a lot of chiming-in, but I'm sure the shills are wallowing in schadenfreude. (I have seen that some outfit called "Trump Train News" is already on the case.)

And with RedState having morphed into an entirely different animal since its acquisition by Salem, which also runs Townhall (which publishes such throne-sniffers as Wayne Allen Root and Kurt Schlichter), and with sites like PJ Media and The American Spectator trying to cover all bases right of center, it seems National Review and Commentary are the remaining flagships for actual conservatism.

It will be interesting to monitor The Washington Examiner, also owned by MediaDC, for any changes in tone.

There are some resolutely pro-character-and-integrity-and-consistent-conservatve-vision sites on tiers underneath that top stratum. There's The Resurgent and Daren Jonescu's blog. And, of course, this site, which has no intention of sweeping Trump's egregious and manifold flaws as a human being and president under the rug.

But this development makes it more clear than it was just a day ago that objecting to the Very Stable Genius is not going to make any writer rich or land him or her any television gigs.

It is very late in the day.