Welcome, dear readers, to the revamped TNR.com. We understand that reinvention is part of the very fabric of the internet, and so an overhaul like this is not usually regarded as an event of the same magnitude as, say, an old-fashioned print magazine relaunch. But this new site is a very big deal for us.
There are plenty of Old Media haunts where the marquee writers still turn up their noses at the web. You’ll find many venerable magazines with sites that have an entirely different roster of contributors and an entirely different sensibility from print. We’re pretty proud of the fact that the same writers who produce cover stories also produce blog posts and web pieces--an astonishing number of them, in fact.
This profusion of content meant that the last iteration of TNR.com often seemed a blur: Our pieces and items raced past so quickly that even a careful reader could miss them. A large volume of editorial requires new systems for organizing and presenting, a different sense of hierarchy. So, we’ve redesigned the architecture of the site to match the magazine we have become, capturing the dynamism of TNR.com and better touting the things we consider lasting.
Aside from the changes that will be apparent at a glance--the new homepage design, the “most read” box, more easy access to “sharing” sites--there are significant upgrades to the infrastructure of the site. At long last, we have our archives back. (Well, at least the last decade’s worth. The rest of the archives will be available in the coming months.) You’ll also be able to search these archives in new (hopefully more useful) ways. A click on an author’s byline, for instance, will send you to a writer’s TNR oeuvre.
There are substantive additions, as well. We’ve increasingly devoted blogs on our site to having experts--like our health care maven Jonathan Cohn--explain and dissect policy, in a fashion comprehensible to those who don’t speak the language of wonk. Today, we add a new one of these, The Avenue, a collaboration with the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program. The blog is about the future of American cities, filled with fascinating demographic data, cool maps, and surprising insights into the American way of life. We also welcome the economist Simon Johnson and the political analyst Ed Kilgore to our cadre of bloggers.
Just to forewarn you about a few possible annoyances. As we’ve migrated data from Canwest (our old owners) to our new servers, some user passwords may not have made the trip. Don’t worry, we still know you exist. Your name is in our database. But you may have to reset your password. (Just click on “Request new password” on the login page.) Also, our e-mail newsletter will be unavailable for the first couple of days of transition to this new site. (You can click here to sign up for our newsletters.) We’re sorry to send you through any unnecessary hoops. And while all of your comments on articles and blog posts have migrated to the new site, we apologize for the few articles that may be missing them from the past few days.
We hope that you have no doubts about the merits of this upgrade. But we’re also sure that you’ll find bugs. There will be stray instances of strangely formatted text and duplicate articles. If you could point these out in the comments section below, we’d be deeply appreciative.