《新共和》(The New Republic)杂志将于周三在华盛顿举办一场正装庆典，庆祝该杂志成立100周年，出席者包括比尔·克林顿(Bill Clinton)与拉斯·巴达·金斯堡(Ruth Bader Ginsburg)。温顿·马萨里斯(Wynton Marsalis)将献上演出，共有400名宾客出席，其中不乏重要人物。

For those in an extra-nostalgic mood, the party has brought to mind the magazine’s semilegendary 70th-anniversary gathering in 1984, when Barney Frank and Gary Hart mingled with Henry A. Kissinger, who in an after-dinner speech declared it “traumatic” to be photographed with so many liberals.
对于那些格外怀旧的人来说，这场派对会令他们想起1984年该杂志那场近乎传奇的70周年庆典，当时的出席者包括巴尼·弗兰克(Barney Frank)、加里·哈特与亨利·A·基辛格(Henry A. Kissinger)。基辛格在餐后讲话上声称，和这么多自由主义者一起合影，让他觉得“很受伤”。
“The pictures are kind of a scream,” said Franklin Foer, the magazine’s 40-year-old editor, vicariously reminiscing about the days when The New Republic was toasting its status as the hot political magazine of the moment. “You look at them and then at Washington now, and you think, ‘Wow, that’s quite a tumble.' ”
“这些照片就像一声呐喊，”杂志编辑，40岁的富兰克林·弗尔(Franklin Foer)说，人们通过照片可以间接感受到《新共和》身为最热点的政治杂志的时代。“看着他们，再看看如今的华盛顿，就会觉得‘哦，一代不如一代’。”
Like Washington’s cast of characters, The New Republic has also changed. Under Chris Hughes, the Facebook multimillionaire who bought the magazine in 2012 from a consortium including its longtime owner Martin Peretz, the biweekly publication has more than doubled its staff, redesigned its print edition and broadened its coverage to be less Beltway-centric. It has also vastly increased its web traffic to more than four million unique users a month, according to the magazine.
正如华盛顿的变化，《新共和》杂志也在改变。2012年，Facebook的亿万富翁克里斯·休斯(Chris Hughes)从一个财团手中买下这本杂志，杂志的长期所有者马丁·佩雷兹(Martin Peretz)也在该财团之中。在休斯领导下，这本双周刊的员工扩充了一倍，它重新设计了纸质版，拓宽了报道范围，使其不再像以前那样以华盛顿为中心。它的网络流量也大幅增加，杂志声称，杂志网站每月有400万名用户。
And further changes are afoot. As the anniversary arrives, Mr. Hughes has hired Guy Vidra, a 40-year-old former Yahoo News executive, for the top of masthead as The New Republic’s first chief executive. This has set off speculation in Washington journalism circles that a magazine as famous for its ferocious office politics as for its contrarian political coverage might be on the verge of another round of upheaval.
更多变化亦在发生中。周年庆典到来之际，休斯聘请了雅虎新闻的前任执行官，40岁的盖伊·维德拉(Guy Vidra)，他的名字被印在刊头，成了《新共和》的第一位首席执行官。这在华盛顿新闻界引发了一阵推测，一家以残酷的办公室政治斗争和离经叛道的政治报道而闻名的杂志，或许正处于另一场巨变的边缘。
Eyebrows were raised last year when Mr. Hughes, a former organizer for Barack Obama, introduced the redesigned magazine with an editor’s letter that omitted the words “liberal” or “liberalism.” These days, while he says he remains committed to print, he is also ready to jettison “magazine.”
去年，曾为贝拉克·奥巴马(Barack Obama)做过组织工作的休斯推出这本经重新设计的杂志，附有一封编辑致读者信，其中没有提到“自由”或“自由主义”这些词，当时有不少人对此表示疑虑。如今，休斯说自己仍对纸质印刷出版保持忠诚，但也准备好了抛弃“杂志”概念。
“Twenty years ago, no question, it was a political magazine, full stop,” Mr. Hughes said in a joint interview with Mr. Vidra in New York. “Today, I don’t call it a magazine at all. I think we’re a digital media company.”
“20年前，毫无疑问，它是一本政治杂志，这一点没什么可说的，”休斯在纽约与维德拉共同接受采访时说。“如今，我并不把它称为一本杂志。我觉得我们是一家数字媒体公司。”
Mr. Hughes (who gave up the editor in chief title but remains publisher) and Mr. Vidra dismissed speculation that they wanted to take the magazine in a more lowbrow, BuzzFeed-like direction. But they did say there was room to increase the digital audience to as much as “tens of millions” of unique monthly visitors by focusing on a broader range of topics and on new forms of digital storytelling that “travel well” on the web.
休斯放弃了总编地位，但保留出版人这个头衔。有人推测他和维德拉将把这本杂志引向低俗，走向BuzzFeed的方向，他和维德拉否认了这一说法。但他们也说，有可能通过关注更广泛的题材，采取新的数码叙事形式，在网上“走得更好”，为杂志吸引数以千万计的网络读者。
Whatever The New Republic is today, it has been busy flogging its storied past. Mr. Foer and Mr. Hughes, 30, have been out promoting “Insurrections of the Mind,” an anthology of about 50 articles spanning the magazine’s history. Leon Wieseltier, the publication’s silver-maned longtime literary editor, has thrown out the first pitch at a Washington Nationals game (“high and away,” he admitted) and appeared on “The Colbert Report” to debate the merits of “centrist hair.”
不管《新共和》如今变成了什么样，它仍在忙于利用自己传奇的过去。弗尔和30岁的休斯正忙着宣传《头脑的叛乱》(Insurrections of the Mind)这本文选，它收录了贯穿该杂志历史的50篇文章。长期在杂志工作的自由主义编辑里昂·维塞尔迪尔(Leon Wieseltier)如今已是满头白发，他刚刚为华盛顿国民队的一场比赛开球（他确认“开得又高又远”），后来又上综艺节目《科尔伯特报告》(The Colbert Report)中，探讨“中分头发”的价值。
During Mr. Peretz’s tempestuous three-decade reign, whose door-slamming fights were recalled (mostly) fondly in an article in the anniversary issue by a former editor, Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Republic enraged many on the left, including many on its own staff, with its support for the contras, the anti-Communist insurgents in Nicaragua; an excerpt from “The Bell Curve,” Charles Murray’s 1994 book on race and I.Q.; and its full-throated support, later reconsidered, for the Iraq war. (Mr. Peretz, who attacked Mr. Hughes last year in an op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal, is not invited to the party, Mr. Hughes said.)
在佩雷兹暴风骤雨般的30年任期中，有过很多激烈的争吵。周年纪念专刊上，前任编辑亨德里克·赫兹伯格(Hendrik Hertzberg)在一篇文章中以亲切的口吻回忆了这些往事（大部分）。《新共和》得罪了许多左派，其中包括不少自己的员工，它支持尼加拉瓜反共产党的反对派起义者、支持查尔斯·穆雷(Charles Murray)1994年的书《弧线排序》(The Bell Curve)中关于种族与智商的章节，还在事后的反思中全力支持伊拉克战争。去年佩雷兹曾在《华尔街时报》(Wall Street Journal)的专栏文章中攻击休斯，休斯表示没有邀请佩雷兹来参加派对。
These days, The New Republic’s goal of parting its hair down the middle, starting with its decision to stop running editorials, strikes some as a diminishment.
最近，《新共和》开始走中立路线，最初的举措就是决定取消社论，有人认为这是一种衰退。
“The magazine used to be schizophrenic,” said Eric Alterman, a columnist for The Nation and a longtime critic of Mr. Peretz’s. “But now, the most you can compare it to is a nice sailboat that usually has something smart in it but isn’t taking you anywhere.”
“这家杂志曾经是精神分裂的，”《国家》(The Nation)杂志的专栏作家和佩雷兹的长期批评者埃里克·阿尔特曼(Eric Alterman)说，“但是现在，最好的比喻是，它就像一艘美丽的小帆船，上面总有很漂亮的东西，但是没法带你去往任何地方。”
But others say the magazine’s direction under Mr. Hughes represents a return to the pragmatic idealism of its Progressive Era roots. “There’s a greater public-spiritedness and broadness of vision to the magazine now,” said Robert S. Boynton, director of the literary journalism program at New York University. “The fact that there’s some confusion about its identity is actually a healthy sign.”
但其他人说，这家杂志在休斯治理下，开始回归它在进步时代的根源，即实用理想主义。“现在的杂志有更大的公众精神和更广泛的视野，”纽约大学自由主义新闻项目的负责人罗伯特·S·博伊恩顿(Robert S. Boynton)说。“事实上，它的身份引起了一些困惑，这其实是一个健康的信号。”
Intraoffice fights still happen, but not always in the magazine’s pages. When The New Republic ran an excerpt from a book on the history of the pro-Israel lobby by John Judis, a longtime senior editor, Mr. Wieseltier vented his displeasure in a scathing, semiprivate email published by The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website.
办公室内的斗争还在继续，但并不总是体现在杂志的版面里。杂志多年的高级编辑约翰·朱迪斯(John Judis)写了一本关于亲以色列游说集团历史的书籍，《新共和》刊登了节选，维塞尔迪尔在一封半私人的电子邮件中尖锐地表达了自己对此感到不快，这封邮件被刊登在保守派的网站“华盛顿自由灯塔”(The Washington Free Beacon)上。
“Spirited debate is an incredibly important value to the institution,” Mr. Hughes said of that incident. “So is mutual respect.”
“激烈的争辩是这家杂志非常重要的价值观，”休斯这样评价这场风波，“互相尊重也是如此。”
That might come as a relief to Mr. Clinton, who could deliver a marathon self-roast at Wednesday’s gala simply by reading choice vituperative ’90s-era coverage of him and Hillary Rodham Clinton in The New Republic.
这对于克林顿先生来说可能是个安慰。周三庆典上的祝酒词中，光是朗读90年代《新共和》就他与希拉里·罗德姆·克林顿(Hillary Rodham Clinton)的报道中的辱骂之词，他就可以马拉松般说上半天。
Not that The New Republic has gone nice. It has “dialed back on the smartypants-ness” but still runs tough pieces about Republicans and Democrats alike, Mr. Foer said, pointing to Noam Scheiber’s much-talked-about critical profile of the Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett in the anniversary issue.
并不是说《新共和》变得温和了。弗尔说，它只是“减少了自作聪明”，仍然在刊登对共和党与民主党同样严厉的文章。他指的是周年纪念刊上诺姆·谢伯(Noam Scheiber)关于奥巴马的顾问瓦莱丽·贾勒特(Valerie Jarrett)的批评性特写，这篇文章受到很多议论。
And in the culture pages, long Mr. Wieseltier’s autonomous domain, no-holds-barred criticism still reigns, as in the same issue’s gleeful takedown of Lena Dunham by James Wolcott and a long essay by Mr. Wieseltier declaring, among other things, that “ferocity is as essential to our system as civility.”
在长期处于维塞尔迪尔自治状态下的文化版面，仍然实行无拘无束的批判主义，纪念刊中登出了詹姆斯·沃尔科特(James Wolcott)的一篇文章，欢快地讽刺莉娜·杜汉姆(Lena Dunham)；还有一篇维塞尔迪尔的长文，宣布，“对于我们的体系来说，凶狠和礼貌同等重要。”
Mr. Wieseltier also gets in the issue’s last word, with a closing column warning against giving technology “ultimate authority over human existence.”
维塞尔迪尔还为这期杂志做了总结，在刊尾文章中，他警告那种赋予技术“超越人类存在的至高无上的权威”的做法。
To connoisseurs of old-school intrigue in The New Republic, that may sound like a shot at the magazine’s digital future. But Mr. Wieseltier, who calls himself a “platform pluralist,” waved away the suggestion.
品味《新共和》的老式技巧或许像是在攻击杂志的数码化未来。但维塞尔迪尔否定了这种看法，把自己称为“平台多元论者”。
“This is a moment to celebrate,” he said. “For a hundred years, the country has been a little less dumb than it might have been without us.”
“这是庆祝的时刻，”他说，“百年以来，如果没有我们，这个国家怕是会更蠢一些。”