Such a fixer

The current issue of Columbia Magazine carries a profile by Tim Warner of New Republic editor Franklin Foer celebrating him as “the fixer” who is resuscitating the magazine. (The profile is not available online at present. Thanks to reader Robert Avery for sending me a copy today.) If not the most poorly timed article in the history of journalism, it is nevertheless laughable in light of the ordeal inflicted on the magazine by its Baghdad fabulist and will to believe him on the part of “the editors.”
Warner attributes the decline of the magazine’s circulation from 101,000 in 2000 to 60,000 before the reign of Foer to disenchantment with the magazine among its liberal readers: “The magazine’s stance on Iraq and its support of Connecticut senator Joseph I. Lieberman in 2004 brought vehement criticism and open disdain from liberal critics, especially those in the blogosphere, who have treated the New Republic as their personal pi