Welcome to the Colette Podcast. My name is Claire Lehman and I am editor and chief of Colette.

Colette is where Free Thought lives. We are an independent grassroots platform for heterodox ideas and fearless commentary.

Our podcast is a team effort and is jointly hosted by myself,

associate editor Toby Young and Canadian editor Jonathan Kay.

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Welcome to the Colette Podcast.

I'm Jonathan Kay, Quilett's Canadian editor.

In an age when many American conservative journalists have become unapologetic cheerleaders for Donald Trump,

the Washington-based Weekly Standard magazine stood out for its independence and intellectual rigor.

But in December, the owner of the Weekly Standard closed the magazine down, following many years of financial losses.

Among the veteran journalists who lost their jobs was Bill Crystal, the magazine's founder, and until several years ago, its long time editor-in-chief.

In late January, Mr. Crystal spoke to Quilette over the phone about the Weekly Standard,

the future of journalism, conservative politics, and his own plans in the post-weekly standard era.

Here are excerpts from our conversation.

Your life has been so closely intertwined with the Weekly Standard for more than two decades.

What have you been doing with your time this last month?

I somehow managed to keep busy, but you're right, there is a kind of a twitch on Thursday which is when we'd close the print

edition of the weekly standard and I wake up Thursday morning in it you know in

the old days it was you know 20 phone calls and what should be on the cover

and let's rewrite the cover line and maybe we

...