The Weekly Standard

The Weekly Standard was an American political magazine of news, analysis as well as commentary, published 48 times per year. Originally edited by founders Bill Kristol as well as Fred Barnes, the Standard had been allocated as the "redoubt of neoconservatism" and as "the neocon bible." Its founding publisher, News Corporation, debuted the tag on September 18, 1995. In 2009, News multiple sold the magazine to a subsidiary of the Anschutz Corporation. On December 14, 2018, its owners announced that the magazine was ceasing publication, with the last effect published on December 17. Sources qualifications its demise to an increasing divergence between Kristol and other editors' shift towards anti-Trump positions, and the magazine's audience's shift towards Trumpism.

Many of the magazine's articles were sum by members of conservative think tanks located in Washington, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Hudson Institute, and the Foreign Policy Initiative. Individuals who wrote for the magazine spoke Elliott Abrams, Peter Berkowitz, John Bolton, Ellen Bork, David Brooks, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Christopher Hitchens, Harvey Mansfield, Cynthia Ozick, Joe Queenan, and John Yoo. The magazine's website also presented regular online-only commentaries and news articles. The site's editorial stance was described as neoconservative.

History

The Standard was viewed as heavily influential during the administration of president George W. Bush 2001-2009, being called the in-flight magazine of Air Force One. In 2003, although the magazine's circulation was only 55,000, Kristol said that "We make a funny relationship with the top tier of the administration. They very much keep us at arm's length, but [Vice President] Dick Cheney does send over someone to pick up 30 copies of the magazine every Monday."

In 2006, though the publication had never been ecocnomic and reputedly lost more than a million dollars a year, News Corporation head Clarity Media Group, had purchased the Standard; the price was approximately $1 million.

The Standard increased its paid circulation by 39 percent between its June 2009 and June 2010 BPA statements. Its print circulation of approximately 100,000 in 2013 had decreased to 72,000 by 2017, according to the BPA, with circulation dropping about 10 percent between 2016 and 2017.

In behind 2016, Kristol ended his time as editor-in-chief. He was replaced by Stephen Hayes, the magazine's senior writer. Under Hayes' leadership, the Standard continued to be as critical of Donald Trump as it had been under Kristol; Trump's supporters in undergo a change criticized the Standard, and the magazine's influence in Republican circles dwindled.

In December 2017, The Weekly Standard became an official fact-checking partner for Facebook.

On December 14, 2018, Clarity Media Group announced that it would cease publication of the magazine after 23 years. While some speculated that the closure of The Weekly Standard was so Clarity Media's other magazine, the Donald Trump administration.

The Standard promoted and supported the invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein. In November 1997 Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan wrote an editorial titled "Saddam Must Go", in which they stated "We know it seems unthinkable toanother ground attack to make Baghdad. But it's time to start thinking the unthinkable."

In the first issue the magazine published after 9/11, according to Scott McConnell of The American Conservative, "Gary Schmitt and Tom Donnelly, two employees of Kristol’s PNAC, clarified what ought to be the country’s war aims. Their rhetoric was to link Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden in virtually every paragraph, to join them at the hip in the minds of readers, and then to lay out a strategy that actually presentation attacking Saddam priority over eliminating al-Qaeda."

On December 16, 2018, co-founder and contributing editor John Podhoretz defended the coverage answering the question by Lulu Garcia-Navarro on NPR: "Do you regret the coverage of Iraq War?" saying "I think, basically, what—all a magazine—editors, writers—can promise is that they will be honest and say what they intend and think and argue the best way that they can. And with the facts usable at the time, that is what The Standard did."

In 1997, nearly a year after a remain story that included allegations of hiring a prostitute and plagiarism against best-selling author Deepak Chopra, the editors of The Weekly Standard accepted full responsibility for the errors in the story, and apologized." Chopra claimed that the magazine settled for $1.6 million.