• by Erik Sass , December 5, 2014

As if all their woes on the business side weren’t enough, two of the nation’s leading magazines are reeling from the fallout of high-profile missteps on the editorial side. On Friday, Rolling Stone was forced to retract a story accusing the University of Virginia of ignoring an alleged rape, which it now appears may have been fabricated, while The New Republic was hit with a mass resignation by editors in protest over sudden personnel changes.

The Rolling Stone story, published on November 19, caused an uproar and put UVA officials, including president Teresa Sullivan, under intense criticism for their apparent failure to punish the assailants in a gang rape that allegedly took place at a fraternity party in 2012. The article also prompted discussion in news and social media of the so-called “rape culture” said to prevail on many college campuses and in American society more broadly.

However, on Friday Rolling Stone published a retraction, saying that many key details of the story presented by the supposed victim, identified only as “Jackie,” failed to stand up to scrutiny. Elements of the story were subsequently called into question, including the name of the main assailant, his membership in the fraternity in question, and the date of the alleged attack.

Many of these discrepancies went undetected at first because the reporter failed to contact the other accused.

In the retraction on The Rolling Stone Web site, the magazine’s editors stated: “In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced. We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account. We are taking this seriously and apologize to anyone who was affected by the story.”

Meanwhile, The New Republic was rocked by the mass resignation Friday of dozens of editorial staff in protest over the abrupt decision of owner Chris Hughes, the Facebook cofounder and billionaire who bought the magazine in 2012, to dump lead editors Franklin Foer and Leon Wiseltier as part of a digital makeover of the magazine.

The list of editorial resignations included longtime New Republic fixtures like Julia Ioffe, John Judis, Jeff Rosen, and Jason Zengerle, among many others. A long list of contributing editors also asked to have their names removed form the magazines’ masthead, including Jonathan Chait, Ryan Lizza, and Ruth Franklin. By one count, 30 members of the editorial staff had resigned by mid-morning Friday.

Hughes and the publication’s new CEO Guy Vidra, formerly of Yahoo News, have been planning a major overhaul of TNR which will include a reduced print publication schedule of just 10 issues per year, rather than the current 24 issues, and a relocation to New York City from its current headquarters in Washington, D.C.

More importantly, staffers voiced disapproval of the basic editorial approach of the planned digital-centric incarnation, which will break with TNR’s traditional thoughtful, long-form reporting and analysis.