New America's ruthless culture of self-promotion, while common in the think tank, advocacy, and even journalism communities, is a foreign body to the academic community. There is a reason why the academic community has created a strong culture of credit giving: it is recognized as essential to cultivating intellectual innovation. For an organization that promotes itself with the claim that it promotes and rewards innovation, the New America Foundation has been remarkably blithe about ignoring academic credit giving norms that conflict with its own credit taking interests. Since credit taking for innovative ideas is integral to the New America Foundation's public image and fundraising success, it is hard to imagine how internal forces could ever change this dynamic. Funders and others who recognize how pervasive this credit taking culture is in the DC environment probably won't care that New America has joined the game, albeit with superb execution. But New America is nevertheless a sad commentary because more than other think tanks it has touted the importance of public policy innovation while too frequently serving to poison the wells of innovation and illustrating why the Washington, DC public policy world, despite its brilliance, is characterized by so little innovation at such great tax subsidized expense.
Over the course of a decade the New America Foundation has come out of nowhere to become one of the top twenty think tanks in Washington, DC, with revenues approximately $15 million and a staff of over 100. Its forte has been recruting talented, well-established journalists who bring to the Foundation a lot of visibility and credibility with the donor community. While donors love the high profile work of the journalists, they prefer to devote most of their dollars to programs. The result is a highly creative marketing synergy between the journalistic and program staff. New America has mastered the art of being all things to all people. It claims for itself all the positive and none of the negative traits of the academic, lobbying, and journalistic communities. Going forward, it will be interesting to see how it manages these tensions. At times, the glitz factor can be a bit overwhelmingly. Many of New America's so-called "fellows" rarely if ever show up at the Foundation. A good number aren't even paid or are paid nominal amounts. But they bring prestige to the Foundation and vice versa. Now that New America is more well-established, the masthead inflation has decreased a bit--although far from disappeared. Increasingly, the New America Foundation has come under the sway of Google, whose CEO is also chair of the New America Foundation's board. Google has brought all sorts of in-kind benefits to the New America Foundation and helped add to its cache as the hip foundation of the day. The New America Foundation has definitely expanded on the meaning of what it means to be a think tank. Whether the donor community's love affair with its high octane mix of glitz, substance, and self-promotion will continue will be interesting to watch.