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This Just In: Media

The education of Michael Kelly

By Dan Kennedy

Just 10 months after his unceremonious firing as editor of the New Republic, Michael Kelly is back in charge -- this time as editor of National Journal, a pricey ($1047 per year) weekly magazine that is the bible of Beltway insiders. Kelly's been working as a columnist for the Journal since last fall; he writes a weekly column for the Washington Post, too.

Kelly takes the helm of the Journal following the departure of Stephen Smith, who was summoned to run U.S. News & World Report after editor James Fallows was fired by (take your pick) owner Mort Zuckerman and/or editorial director Harold Evans ("This Just In," News, July 3). Kelly describes his stint atop the Journal's masthead as more than "caretaker" but less than permanent, explaining that he believes the next editor should serve in the position for five to seven years -- which he's unwilling to do.

Kelly's departure from the New Republic was marked by bitter recriminations between him and owner/editor-in-chief Martin Peretz ("Don't Quote Me," News, September 12), but Kelly now declines to badmouth his former employer. That may have something to do with Kelly's role as enabler to scam artist Stephen Glass, since exposed as, among other things, the only communicant in the now-infamous Church of George Herbert Walker Christ. ("The thought has crossed my mind that I'm a goddamn idiot," Kelly told the Columbia Journalism Review recently of his failure to detect Glass's fictions.) In fact, Kelly says he's "proud" of the forthright manner in which TNR has dealt with the Glass affair.

But Kelly does admit to learning one lesson from his fall at TNR: the editor shouldn't also write a column, lest his enemies accuse him of letting his ideological biases infect the magazine as a whole. Kelly is a vituperative Clinton-basher, but he insists TNR's overall editorial direction did not change all that much while he was editor. He's right, but his over-the-top anti-Clinton "TRB" columns gave plenty of ammunition to critics (including the most important one, Peretz) who charged that a once-liberal magazine had abandoned its roots.

Thus, Kelly will drop his National Journal column, although he'll continue to write for the Post. "I want it to be very, very clear to everyone that what we want to do with the magazine here is continue in the direction we're going in," he says. "Our franchise is defined by the essentially nonideological in-depth coverage of issues."