This is really no surprise, coming from David Bradley:
Atlantic Media publisher David Bradley on Monday issued a full-throated defense of the kind of off-the record, corporate-sponsored “salons” that last week ensnared the Washington Post in controversy, arguing that they are both a source of revenue “and advance a legitimate purpose for a media organization – promoting debate and discussion.”
In a highly-personal 1,500-word letter published on the Hotline, Bradley wrote that Atlantic Media has been hosting sponsored salon dinners for more than six years, and he doesn’t “believe that any one of these events had any of the ill intention or effect that some have attributed to the Washington Post concept.”
I think there is a big difference between the Atlantic doing this and Washington Post doing it. The Washington Post, love it or hate it, has a pretty storied journalistic history, from Woodward and Bernstein to Dana Priest and Barton Gellman. Whatever its editorial page’s failings are, the newsroom has a lot of credibility.
The Atlantic is run by an openly neoconservative publisher (Bradley) who literally sends ponies to writers he would like to hire. It has no journalistic credibility and it never will. So who cares what it does behind closed doors?
Don’t me wrong, I like the Atlantic. James Fallows is a national treasure (this piece may be the best piece yet written on the “planning” of the Iraq war). I like Sully’s and Coates’s blogs. All in all, the Atlantic is fairly high-quality, right-center infotainment. But it’s also a David Bradley vanity project and no one is ever going to confuse Bradley with Kay Graham or Punch Sulzberger.
Bill E Pilgrim
The piece by Bradley also reads entirely different from the announcement the Washington Post put out, which said openly that “lobbyists” would be invited to pay anywhere from $25,000 to $250,000 to meet members of the Obama administration. Bradely describes “meetings” of journalists, people from non-profits, designed to foster discussion, and often “sponsored” by corporations.
I’d say this is a far cry from reading that a DC newspaper that covers politics and the White House as journalists is going to collect huge amounts of money to put lobbyists together with the White House.
I’m not sure that Bradley gets what the furor was even about. In fact, I’m fairly certain he doesn’t, from reading that.
inkadu
Everytime I’m about to get on a plane, I pick up a copy of the Atlantic. I thought it was sort of centrist/leftist mag with a lot of political/government content, investigative reporting, and well-written articles.
Which was why randbot Megan McArdle always confused me. She did no research, was completely immune to fact, and had a philosophy completely detached from reality. How did she get a job writing at a good magazine?
And Doug – Are you implying that the Washington Post has journalistic integrity? I’d take the Atlantic Monthly over the Post.
Batocchio
Fallows wrote about six essays on Iraq in all, collected in the book of the same name, Blind Into Baghdad. It’s very good, and pretty short, if you haven’t read the other pieces. I had a subscription to The Atlantic years ago, and some of their features were superb – a great post-mortem of the hit job on the Clinton health care plan and that BS New Republic article, Reefer Madness by Eric Schlosser, and just some solid in-depth analysis and wonky goodness. And now there’s Goldberg and McCardle. Yeesh.
Napoleon
I am so pissed that I just renewed my Atlantic subscription. For the last two years I have ignored the renewal notices for months and have thought about writing them about how I can not continue to subscribe to a magazine like theirs that IMO is around just to sell conservatism/neoconservatism with a little sugar on it only to renew at the last second because of Fallows.
@inkadu:
Who knows. What kills me is people like Ezra K. Kevin Drum. and Matt Y. will take her seriously and actaully do post based on what she has posted.
JGabriel
DougJ @ Top:
Literary History of The Atlantic from Wikipedia:
The Atlantic certainly had credibility once upon a time.
That Doug’s assessment is largely correct highlights a loss for all of us.
.
Riggsveda
I second JGabriel’s regret at what The Atlantic has devolved to. I subscribed to the magazine regularly for decades, and when Michael Kelly took over and began cheerleading for the Iraq War, I could barely recognize it. It quickly became a standard-bearer for the Bush agenda, and then starting tossing in contrarian pains in the ass like Caitlin Flanagan just to stir the pot and maintain some sort of facade that it was still providing the wide range of opinion and thought pieces that it always had. Except that Flanagan’s a cossetted idiot, as are most of the regulars it now employs. I keep going back to it because it does carry the occasional important work, but Fallows and Corby Kummer can’t carry the whole damn magazine forever.
JGabriel
@Bill E Pilgrim:
The Heritage Foundation is non-profit.
Anyway, I find the proffered defenses for these salons astounding. It’s not the meeting for dinner and debate that’s so offensive – yes, it’s problematic, but we’re not going to prevent people from meeting for dinner and discussion, nor should we.
But once a publisher or media enterprise, is taking money to organize such events from a corporate sponsor, its journalistic independence is compromised. There’s no ethical way to erect a chinese wall here – it’s not advertising; it’s pay for play.
.
inkadu
@Napoleon:
Which is why 20% of all comments responding to a McArdle thread are, “Who cares what Megan McArdle thinks?”
There is a great blog to get your frustrations out:
Fire Megan McArdle.
Though, since the Atlantic Monthly has it’s own comments section, you can get your rant on a little closer to the source.
But, back to the pundits interest in retards like McArdle… I think they know something we don’t know. They are trying to advance their careers — every one of the three you mentioned are bloggers who want to be “legitimate” to the mainstream, and it’s worked out for Ezra and Kevin quite well; but they obviously write with an eye on future employers, and I keep it in mind.
NYT
I don’t think the Post was going to collect money to put lobbyists together with the Whitehouse. Why would a lobbyist pay the Post 25K to meet with an administration member when they can do this for free?
This was the Post collecting money to allow the lobbyists to meet with the politicians and the administration to jointly plan out their PR strategy and feed it to the Post.
IndieTarheel
David Bradley has mistaken himself for a journalist.
Awww, isn’t that cute.
But it’s WRONG!
Napoleon
@inkadu:
Trust me, I am one of those who occasionally post that in their comments.
BTW, thanks for the link.
Bill E Pilgrim
@NYT:
It sure sounded like it to me:
I’m not sure how you can assume that any lobbyist who wants it can have access to Obama administration officials. However clearly in this plan, any of them with $250K to pony up would have been able to. At least the way it’s stated.
Maybe people are objecting to this for completely different reasons, it’s occurring to me. I could care less if partisan magazines have meetings, even with corporate sponsorship. What the WAPO was proposing was selling access, and it’s supposed to be a city paper with some measure of impartiality.
inkadu
@Napoleon: No problem. Idiocy must be challenged at every turn.
Hey, everybody, I dipped into RedState and they describe the coming health care armageddon, already seen rearing its head in the liberal-democrat paradise of New Hampshire:
The horror! The horror! For the love of God, Monterssor, for the love of God!
NYT
Well I object to it for two reasons. One, same as you, is that the Post holds itself out as fair and impartial, at least in its news pages. But then it sells itself out to lobbyists. This is not about lobbyists buying access to the administration. They don’t need a middleman. It is about the Post selling itself out to lobbyists.
And frankly it looks as if the Obama administration is entirely beholden to lobbyists. This is another nail in the coffin as far as I’m concerned. Honest people would have nothing to do with what the Post proposed.
inkadu
RedState is like Coke mixed with rich creamery butter. From a comment thread on the public option:
Does anyone know why RedState doesn’t have more comments? Where is the main beehive for conservative nuttiness?
arguingwithsignposts
@inkadu:
Well, they are right about the 34 percent being stupid sheeple, but as the cliche goes, when you’re pointing a finger at someone else, there are four fingers pointed at you. The stupid sheeple contingent are represented in Bush and Cheney’s approval ratings.
inkadu
Actually on the topic of journalism —
I watched a Lifetime-meets-All ThePresidents Men pic called, “Nothing But The Truth,” about a reporter who goes to jail for refusing to give up her source in a story outing a CIA agent.
After the story comes out, someone says, “You just made your career.”
It’s funny because the only people do actual reporting prior to the Iraq war were some Knight-Ridder writers in the sticks. I’d never heard of them, and they didn’t get snapped up by the New York Times or rewarded in any way for being right on the only real news story to come out in 15 years.
(To be fair to the movie, Alan Alda makes the point that times have changed and news isn’t so much about the truth and government accountability anymore. And they also got in a good dig at entertainment news.)
We are going to go through a period when the news is bought and sold — we’re already in the thick of it. Like the banking scandals, we’ve been through a pay-for-play media environment earlier this century; and, also, like the banking scandals, we erected laws to correct and prevent it. And like the banking scandals, Republicans are doing everything they can to tear down everything that’s protected America from free-market excess for the last 70 years.
I don’t think we’re going to get back to the fairness doctrine (which I’m against, actually), or limiting media ownership, for a while yet. It’s got to get worse, and it will get worse.
At least the idea of objective media is breaking down — but maybe in a few years, people can get around a table, acknowledge that the other guys media is telling a bunch of lies for profit, and come to some sort of agreement on how to fix it.
inkadu
@arguingwithsignposts: The conservatives have been right about a lot of things this week. “34 percent of the America public are stupid.” “Alaska is better of without Sarah Palin…”
They’re just not right in the way they think they are.
And a good way to tell if someone is stupid: Ask them if they prefer PBS or Fox. A good way to tell if someone is smart: Ask them if they prefer PBS or Comedy Central.
Jason
[Edit: this was supposed to reply to Napoleon’s comment]
@inkadu: I read Drum and Yglesias, and they write their fair share of stupid shit, too. I understand McArdle is a special case, since everybody says she’s not capable of writing smart shit to mitigate the stupid. [disclosure: I don’t read her unless Edroso makes fun of her] Politically I’ve never seen KD and MY as polar opposites of the McArdles, though, and Yglesias can be a really frustrating read when they:
– drop science on the NBA’s free agent trades, because apparently it’s a law that DC dudes in their 30s dig them some basketball;
– map out endless city plans for walkable livin’ (granted, this is pretty interesting at times);
– linkloop to the Drum/Klein/TAP/Corn Axis of Eeeeeenquiry;
– maks sop msny speling arrears ot rangis eth emanting shi stoops.
Other than that, though, y’know, and the Atlantic’s storied history, well, huh. The whole blogrolling thing strikes me as a pretty quietist tendency anyway, no matter how much they go on about “progressive” legislation and that mean Ol’ Man Ben Nelson. So I got over my initial surprise at seeing McArdle linked to pretty quickly.
someguy
If a newspaper employs or is edited by right of center journalists, it’s a piece of jackassery that shouldn’t be trusted in any role except fishwrap, or perhaps firestarter. You shouldn’t waste a buck on it – I suggest stealing it if you absolutely must read the NY Post or the Atlantic or even that once liberal rag, TNR. Nevermind NRO and all the right wing extremist rags of that ilk. You shouldn’t even give their websites hits if you can help it – that shit helps them generate ad revenue and stay in business.
I mean really, why don’t you just make a donation to the RNC instead if you’re that interested in supporting wingers?
dan robinson
That is pretty harsh. The Atlantic is better than that.
inkadu
@Jason: (I know, you don’t want to talk to me. Fine.)
The walkable cities thing was interesting for a few months, but now I’m getting tired of it. Most of it seems to center around their DC area, and I don’t live there; what’s more there isn’t anything I can do about it. It’s a local issue, and a national blog isn’t really a great place to talk about local issues.
The other thing that annoyed me about Ezra Klein was the way he talked about food; people post recipes and talk about food here, but it’s about what it’s in their kitchen and their grocery store. Ezra was always bringing in the weird shit and making me feel stupid. Which, you know, I might be.
I also loved the comment section on Ezra’s blog. People would call him out for being quite wrong on basic issues all the time. Entertainment.
Jason
How is “journalistic credibility” measured anyway, since it’s being used as an measurable object?
El Cid
I disagree with the proposition or assumption that many of the readers or quoters of The Atlantic even know who runs it.
Jason
@inkadu: ha! Turns out I was replying to you, anyway. Teaches me for remarking about other bloggers’ “mistakes.”
But I get you on the food thing. That’s what Facebook’s for, right?
I think what you’re getting at is they embrace the whole DC thing too much, without actually embracing being a local blog – one of the things that attracted me here was, yeah, sure, the apparent similarity between my cultural tastes and the authors’, but also the attention to local detail. Which at once makes my assessment of DC blogs a little harsh (Steelers posts=good, Wizards posts=bad!; doggie pics=good, Friday cat blogging=bad!), but also points to the values and possible distractions of non-local blog reading. I think that sort of thing lies at the root of a lot of journalism’s problems today: either no local ethos or a really smug one. It can’t help that everybody really hates DC “insiders” when reading papers and blogs, I suppose.
arguingwithsignposts
@Jason:
media credibility is usually measured through polls asking who the public “trusts.” Here’s a bibliography from the Poynter Institute.
inkadu
@Jason: I’ve never seen a recipe on facebook yet. Maybe I don’t have the right friends and relations.
I am not particularly attracted to local blogs; heck, I mostly couldn’t be bothered to read my local state blogs. I became briefly interested in one during campaign time… But for some reason, local politics isn’t as interesting as national ones. Maybe it’s because the big stuff happens on the national level and the ideology of it is more naked. And, of course, there are a lot more people interested in to talk baseball with.
I tend to skip the local entries. Certainly any sports stuff; don’t really know what’s going on with them. I do watch a game now and then, but I never know who traded whom for what or who the last person to get caught doing drugs or dying from an amphetamine-induced heart attack or being accused of raping a prostitute or whatever the hell goes on in sports land.
I like it here so far for the comments section. People seem laid back and they have a sense of humor, they actually read comments before posting one. It gives me a sad when I see the same joke repeated 7 times in a comment section of 12 posts because nobody could be bothered to read the comments.
But one thing is sparklingly clear: I really need another hobby.
Jason
@arguingwithsignposts: Thanks!
Jason
@inkadu:
Posting recipes on Facebook could be your new thing. cf. This is the reason we don’t have flying cars.
EconWatcher
The Atlantic “has no journalistic credibility and it never will.” ???
Not sure what you’re talking about. It doesn’t purport to be a comprehensive news source, so it’s not playing the same game as the Post or the Times. What it offers is topical articles on politics and culture, many of which are as thoughtful and literate as you’ll find anywhere. It’s overall an excellent magazine. Ever read the articles Hitchens has written on literature for the Atlantic? They’re gems. (He mostly saves his political hackery for Slate and the like.)
Gus
The Atlantic is a rag, but it was founded by, among others, Emerson, Longfellow, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. I had a subscription in the mid-’90s, and it was still a pretty good magazine. Lots of good in depth journalism. When they hired that fuck Michael Kelly as editor it went from gradual to steep decline, and it has been mostly worthless for the last 10 years. Hiring McCardle means that they have no chance of recapturing any credibility.
stormhit
Just because something is in an editorial style or allows an author leeway to forward their own opinions does not make it infotainment.
Scott
Any magazine that regularly includes both features by Caitlin Flanagan and the one-note right-wing Court coverage of Ben Wittes obviously merits great derision. I gave up on it long ago. That said, the numbers section was always rather interesting.
Olly McPherson
After “The 51st State” the Atlantic went straight downhill into neo-con promotion and lukewarm contrarianism (excepting some James Fallows pieces).
Zifnab
@Olly McPherson: Didn’t the Washington Post follow a similar trajectory? I mean, at a certain point, are we even really that surprised by all of this? The running joke against WaPo editorialists is that they only write the article that will get them invited to the next dinner party. So now they’ve become little more than a catering service for the political and corporate elite. I can’t say I’m shocked in the least.
OldK
All I know is that Brother Mouzone reads the Atlantic, and that’s good enough for me.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Assuming that he isn’t just lying to CYA, this statement coming from a publisher is just head-slapping levels of stupid. Let me see, if I had a slightly used magic lamp with a jinn and only 1 wish, and what I wanted most was to “promote debate and discussion”, what would I wish for?
What to wish for, what to wish for..hmmmm??? [scratches head]
[light bulb goes off] – Eureka! I know! what about a news magzine! We could hire writers and have them do research and publish articles and stuff. Heck, we could even set up a public blog with comments from the general public. Discussion! Debate! In public!
Naaaah, on second thought, that doesn’t make any sense at all. Much better to have closed door sessions with a small select group of hand-picked insiders. That’ll get the job done. Too bad about that new magazine thingee..what a crackpot idea…
There’s nothing wrong with reporters talking to lobbyists (amongst other people) about healthcare, but do it on the record if your purpose is something other than influence peddling. If what David Bradley really wants is to promote debate and discussion, then to paraphrase Lincoln speaking to McClellan, “if you aren’t using your magazine, may I borrow it?”
slag
Actually, when the Atlantic goes off-message, it can be quite good. Marc Ambinder’s the only “journalist” I can think of who keeps dogging the preventive detention issue. But sadly, those times are few and far between, and mostly they just wank away over there.
Olly McPherson
Zifnab–lots of bad bets by the media, that’s sure.
LondonLee
I used to work at The Atlantic and most of what people have said here is why a lot of the staff chose to leave rather than follow the magazine from Boston to DC. We could see where Bradley was taking it, and I don’t mean geographically.
Though I take issue with the characterization of Mike Kelly, no one at the mag liked what he wrote himself but he was a damn good editor who commissioned some great writing and was loved by everyone.
tammanycall
I think the magazine is pretty good. You mentioned Fallows, others have cited Hitchens, and off the top of my head, Josh Green’s 2004 article on Karl Rove’s campaign techniques was a great read: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200411/green . Their bloggers, however, are not very good, and if your primary exposure to the magazine was through its online content writers, you probably wouldn’t think too highly of it.
Re: Why McArdle won’t die. I believe Matt Y. wrote a post a while back revealing that he, McArdle, and Ezra started blogging the same year. Since they all “came up” together, it’s not surprising that there’s a schoolyard loyalty going on with the shared linking.
Riggsveda
I forgot to mention (inexcusably) that William Langewiesche wrote some of the best material ever to make it into the magazine, most notably his “American Ground”, and it’s work like that, that makes it impossible for me to quite give up reading it.
Mike
I used to read the Atlantic. Then they hired Michael Kelly at the mag became the home of foaming-at-mouth Clinton haters with Kelly as the most irrational. Like the rest of the American media, there was not lie no matter how often debunked they would not print about Clinton, and later Gore. Of course, neo-con warmongering became The Atlantic’s core issue in the Bush years. Not only do they blog idiots like McArdle, but also Zionist nutcases like Jeffrey Goldberg, GOP tool Marc Ambinder, and the sleaziest of all: Andrew Sullivan, a misogynist with the least integrity of any media whore in existence. He still touts The Bell Curve.
Today’s Atlantic Monthly: Garbage In, Garbage Out.
timb
@dan robinson: I used to think so too. Two or three episodes ago, they allowed Marc Bowden to write a piece in favor of the F-22 fighter that was not only propaganda and bullshit, but was inherently contradictory (thesis: we need the F-22 because our lead is great, but slipping, because other countries modernize our old aircraft with new software that’s as good as the F-22 has. Proposed Solution: build more F-22’s? WTF Actual solution by any rational human being: put those pods on my F-15) …..
AND then, they had a story from one of their editors about how a chemo drug she took for her cancer was not allowed in Australia or New Zealand and that’s what would happen if we had public health insurance here, which, of course, ignores the fact that 50 million aren’t wealthy enough to HAVE any healthcare here and nice rich ladies like her could opt out (and could in the other country too) and buy the drug themselves. She objected to that, because she got her drugs for free from her health insurer and that’s why public insurance won’t work: because upper and upper middle class women would HAVE to pay for the advanced drugs they use. Apparently, our system here is better, because we prioritize the worthy from the worthless.
I let the subscription lapse. Combined with the insane ramblings of Goldberg and Robert Kaplan, I can’t take it anymore.
I would love to here any suggestions for a center/left magazine. I’m thinking of going with Harpers
Riggsveda
timb–
I’ve been reading Harper’s since ’71. It never fails to enlighten. You should have read Lewis Lapham’s increasingly Cassandra-like howls of pain in the run-up to the Iraq War. It was like having a window into reality while all around crumbled into hallucination.