The latest issue of The New Republic features a cover story about the dour state of Britain’s government, so naturally they plastered Kate Middleton on the cover sporting some rotting teeth.

If the British invade, we’ll all know who to blame.

Richard Just is joining Newsweek/The Daily Beast. Just is coming from a stint as editor-in-chief of The New Republic. He served as TNR’s editor from 2010 until late last month, when Franklin Foer returned to the magazine as editor.

At Newsweek/The Daily Beast, Just will work as consulting editor at the company’s Washington D.C. bureau.

See below for the internal memo from Tina Brown announcing Just’s arrival.

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The New Republic is serious about beefing up its staff. The Huffington Post reports that it has brought Greg Veis back from The New York Times Magazine. Veis was previously the web editor at the magazine; he will now serve as executive editor.

Additionally, the New Republic has named Michael Schaffer its new editorial director. Schaffer comes to the magazine from Washington City Paper, where he worked as editor-in-chief.

At The New Republic, Schaffer will be responsible for all digital content.

Walter Kirn is joining the New Republic. Kirn tweeted this morning that he was “thrilled” and that he would be serving as National Corespondent for the magazine. He told Politico that he will cover the converging world of politics and culture.

Kirn is an essayist and published author. Some of his books include Up in The Air, Thumbsucker and Mission to America. He has written for The New York Times Magazine, New York and more.

Franklin Foer, the Editor-in-Chief of The New Republic from 2006 to 2010, is returning to the magazine for another stint in the same role. Foer has been working on side projects since leaving the title, and told The New York Times that he had no intention of coming back. “But to me, it feels like a new project,” Foer explained. “It doesn’t feel like I’m going back to my old job.”

For The New Republic’s relatively new owner, Chris Hughes, hiring Foer is a big step toward rebuilding The New Republic. Other changes that are planned include adding pages to the print version, redesigning the website and setting up offices here in the city.

Hughes, who worked for Facebook and left with a fortune estimated at $700 million, knows kickstarting the magazine is going to be rough, but he sounds optimistic. “Our goal is to recruit a lineup of all-star. We want to hire great people, and quality costs money,” he said. Good thing he’s got plenty of it.

Atlantic Consumer Media, which publishes The Atlantic, has brought on Slate founder Michael Kinsley as a media columnist and the editor of an upcoming digital property that will launch early next year.

“As both an editor and a columnist, Michael has long been at the vanguard of publishing’s digital transformation,” said Atlantic Consumer Media President Justin B. Smith. “We are thrilled to welcome him and his considerable talents to the Atlantic Media family.”

A well-known media figure, Kinsley has been an editor at The New Republic and Harper’s and edited the opinion pages at The Los Angeles Times. He has also previously written regular columns for The Washington Post and Time magazine.

Atlantic Media didn’t provide any more detail about the upcoming digital project, but we’ll let you know if we find out any more details. The New York Times points out that Atlantic Media is also currently building Atlantic Wire, “a real-time sampling of opinion and commentary.”

Last night, Utne Reader editor-in-chief David Schimke (above) presented the magazine’s 20th Annual Independent Press Awards, honoring excellence in independent magazines.

The big winner of the night was the Virginia Quarterly Review, which took home the prize for general excellence. The Utne Reader‘s editors said they “were especially impressed with VQR‘s dedication to international coverage and long-form journalism, rare in these economic times.”

Lapham’s Quarterly received the award for best new publication while other winners included Mother Jones, The New Republic and The Walrus, a Canadian mag that was named Utne‘s best new publication in 2004.

The nominees for the Utne‘s awards are selected by the pub’s editors based on how well each magazine “fulfilled its stated mission over the past year.”

“The goal is to honor independently minded publications that don’t shy away from tough stories and innovative ideas,” the Utne Reader explained.

The full list of winners after the jump

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Well, here’s a description of the inside of the Obama plane you don’t come across everyday:

It felt like the Lord of the Flies in there…The people who have been there for a long time have all of their little decorations and knickknacks all over the back of the plane. Everyone’s a little grumpy and territorial, and there’s this sense of people thrown together who have been with each other way too long. I got the sense that I was dropping in on a hostage-captor situation.

Nope, not hostages per se, just the state of Obama’s press corps as The New Yorker‘s Ryan Lizza discovered it upon his return after a few months away. Over at The New Republic journalists are describing the peculiar aspects of the sort of “Stockholm Syndrome” that has developed in the press corp during the longest campaign season in history. For example, CNN’s Candy Crowley sets three alarms each night and writes the following down before she goes to bed: “What city is she in? What time zone? What time does she have to be out of the hotel room the next morning? What day is it?” Says the NYT Jeff Zeleny, “Now that the campaign is winding down, they’re all taking pictures of one another, and you get the sense of summer camp coming to an end.” And some people, like Politico‘s Ben Smith don’t want the madness to end: “It’s so built into my system, that it’s going to be hard to stop…it’s pathological, really.” Six more days!