TNR has just released the statement on Richard Just‘s jump to Editor and Franklin Foer‘s move to Editor-at-Large.

Still developing…

WASHINGTON, D.C. – December 8, 2010 – The New Republic announced today that Richard Just has been promoted to editor. Franklin Foer, editor since 2006, has been named editor-at-large. Richard Just joined The New Republic in 2004 as online editor. Since then, he has directed editorial across platforms, also serving as deputy editor, managing editor, and most recently, executive editor. Before joining TNR, he was editor of The American Prospect Online and a writing fellow at The American Prospect.

“It goes without saying that it’s an honor to be at the helm of TNR, which I was devoted to as a reader long before I ever worked here,” said Just. “I want TNR to be the place that proves that the best attributes of magazine journalism—long-form narrative and argument, brilliant cultural criticism, and passionate and informed crusading—can flourish in the new age of journalism, and reach far more readers than ever before.”

Laurence Grafstein, chairman of The New Republic Advisory Board, said, “Richard has been essential to TNR’s editorial accomplishments and recent overall success. The board is especially enthusiastic about his vision for the company and his ability to manage and develop the magazine’s core editorial operations. Frank will retain a key  role, and the board is enormously grateful for the unparalleled leadership and journalistic excellence he has  provided TNR for the last five years. Frank has shepherded the magazine and website through conditions of  turbulence in all corners of the media industry and put the institution in as strong a position as ever.”

Foer will remain at the center of TNR’s editorial operations, covering politics and the 2012 elections for The New Republic’s print and online properties, and will be working on a narrative history of the birth of American liberalism. It will be published by HarperCollins in 2013.

More on Foer after the jump…

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TNR‘s Literary Editor Leon Wieseltier’s ears must have been burning up last night. Well before he arrived to The Phillips Collection to give a talk on a John Constable oil painting, colleagues gabbed about what a character he is – a few mentioned, for example, his penchant for blasting music at the office. One day it’s Rihanna, the next it’s opera.

Leon doesn’t disappoint. He shows up and people magnetically gravitate toward him. Or was it his hair? He has a spectacular head of shoulder-length, silky, white-gold fluff that makes him a stand-out in any crowd, but especially this well-coiffed, stylish mix.

“I don’t want that on WikiLeaks,” he deadpanned after I snapped his picture.

Later during the talk: “It’s very hard to peel back the familiarity of the work,” he tells a rapt audience stuck on his every word. “It’s a spiritual exercise. When you can do it, great things happen.”

The talk was part of TNR’s co-hosted After 5 dim sum party at The Phillips Collection. Chinatown’s Ping Pong catered the delectable cuisine with shrimp toast among its offerings. Also there to give a talk was the magazine’s Art Critic Jed Perl.

Perl, in from Manhattan, in a tailored brown corduroy blazer and skinny pants, is no slouch alongside Wieseltier. He’s thankfully game to dissect The Devil Wears Prada. He wrote for Vogue in the 80s and reminisced with FishbowlDC about what it was like to be Anna Wintour‘s Art Editor. “She was easy to work with,” he said, explaining she could be shy, not snobby. Of Meryl Streep’s character in the movie, he says, “She doesn’t just play icy bitch. It’s more complex than that.” And so is Wintour. He said she understood him perfectly, is “incredibly smart” and knew his ideal place within the publication. He surmised, “I think she gets a bum rap because she’s a woman. I have a deep respect for her.”

Find out who else attended the party after the jump…

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Good morning Washington. It’s the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Wikipedia. (See King’s Wikipedia entry here.)

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