After co-founding the social network, Chris Hughes directed Barack Obama’s digital campaign for president. So why has he switched to old media?
“I
think that era of significant profits in the media industry in the 20th
century is largely over. But we’ve done a lot of market research and
there is a real feeling that people are barraged by facts all day long,
that they’re overwhelmed, and that they want one or two sources that
they can go to for depth and context and analysis.”
Although he says he has no plans to stop publishing the print edition
of the magazine, he clearly sees a migration to digital form as
inevitable. “Four or five years from now I think we’ll be at the point
where moving from print to the iPad doesn’t seem like the death of
anything; it will just seem like a natural progression,” he says. Still,
he jokes, the magazine is unlikely to become “the next Facebook”.
