Bill Kristol is beefing up The Bulwark, the once sleepy conservative news aggregator site of his nonprofit, the “Defending Democracy Together Institute.”
Kristol, who will serve as editor-at-large of the operation has hired former Weekly Standard employees who spent the holiday season in the wilderness after their former parent company, Clarity Media Group, abruptly shuttered the organization last month.
“On Monday, TheBulwark.com will transform from an aggregator of news and opinion from a right-wing bent into an website that provides original opinion items, analysis, and reporting,” Jim Swift, a former deputy online editor of the Weekly Standard who is now with The Bulwark, told TheWrap.
Radio host and MSNBC contributor Charlie Sykes has been tapped as the site’s new editor-in-chief and will be joined by former Weekly Standard heavyweights such as Jonathan V. Last, Rachael Larimore, Jim Swift, Ben Parker, Andrew Egger and Hannah Yoest.
The first episode of Sykes’ Podcast and a new piece by Kristol are already live on the site.
“With the recent closing of the Weekly Standard, we think it is more important than ever to provide a voice for non-Trumpian conservatives,” reads a newly updated About page. “As much of the Right descends into sophism and trollery, we will be a forum for rational, principled, fact-based conservative commentary.”
On Dec. 14, The Weekly Standard was shuttered by Clarity Media Group and their large subscriber base was rolled into a newly-expanded Washington Examiner — also a Clarity property. The decision left a lot of bitter feelings among Standard veterans, including co-founder John Podhoretz, who said the magazine’s billionaire owner Philip Anschutz actively prevented a sale of the company, preferring instead to shutter it.
“The cessation of the Standard is an intellectual and political crime,” Podhoretz thundered in a piece for Commentary. “There is no real reason we are witnessing the magazine’s demise other than deep pettiness and a personal desire for bureaucratic revenge on the part of a penny-ante Machiavellian who works for its parent company.”