SULLIVAN'S TRAVAILS

By Richard Zoglin

Openly gay, under 30, British and a Margaret Thatcher conservative, Andrew Sullivan was an unconventional choice to edit the New Republic. Since taking over the neoliberal weekly in October 1991, Sullivan has kept it roiling with controversy, running such cover stories as a 1994 attack on Clinton's health-care plan by Betsy McCaughey (which many credit with turning the political tide against the plan) and a lengthy excerpt from The Bell Curve, the book by Charles Murray and Richard J. Herrnstein, linking IQ with race. Last week, after 4 1/2 years at the helm, Sullivan resigned as editor and found himself at the center of another controversy. The question: Did he quit, or was he fired?

Sullivan, 32, informed New Republic staff members on Friday that he was leaving in order to spend more time writing. Sullivan also revealed something known only by a few close friends and associates: he is HIV positive. Sullivan said his health, which is still good, was not a factor in his resignation; he had not revealed it previously because he feared it would "obscure the magazine too much." Yet some at the notoriously contentious publication insisted that the timing of the announcement about Sullivan's health was meant to divert attention from problems that had developed during his tenure.

Sullivan, who attended Oxford and Harvard, had sought to broaden the magazine's audience, bringing in younger writers and running more stories on social and cultural trends as well as politics. He gave a forum to such provocative voices as Camille Paglia, author of a recent psychological hatchet job on Hillary Clinton titled Ice Queen, Drag Queen. Circulation crept up, from 94,000 to 100,000; more significant, advertising revenues increased 76%.

But many New Republic veterans were put off by what they described as Sullivan's disingenuous manner, penchant for sizzle over substance, and lack of close involvement in the editorial process. A number of longtime editors, including Jacob Weisberg, Morton Kondracke, Mickey Kaus and Michael Kinsley, left during Sullivan's tenure. And one of his new hires, Ruth Shalit--whose stories included a much discussed piece suggesting favoritism to blacks in the Washington Post newsroom--got in hot water for alleged plagiarism and inaccurate reporting. After initially defending her, Sullivan placed Shalit on a leave of absence.

Insiders say such problems--not to mention a pair of pending libel suits--led publisher Martin Peretz to ask for Sullivan's resignation at a meeting last Thursday morning. Peretz has declined to comment. In an interview with TIME, Sullivan insisted that his leaving was "absolutely my decision." Yet he admitted that the magazine is a "rough-and-tumble place" and that internecine tensions existed. "I wanted to challenge the world a little, and I made some mistakes," he said. "But my responsibility is to the readers, and if that meant occasionally infuriating a colleague or two, so be it." No word yet on who will replace Sullivan--and who will get a fresh chance to infuriate or please those colleagues next.

--By Richard Zoglin