The terrifyingly prolific Sullivan took one of the 73 or so posts he penned before lunch to quickly frisk today's Wall Street Journal piece on Sarah Palin's web strategy for her Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Bullshit, Going Rouge (©McSweeney's, 2009). And what is Sarah Palin's web strategy for her book?

Among the features of this new strategy: buying Internet advertising based on Google searches of her name, and using Facebook as a key means of communicating with voters. Her team also has considered filing libel suits against bloggers who spread rumors about her family.

GAMECHANGER. Not exactly the VBS.tv campaign I was hoping for, but still: damn. Sullivan, however, took this opportunity to note his (and my) favorite part of what's otherwise a snoozer of a filing. Which was this gem:

Ms. Palin was particularly angry at bloggers and the media, associates said, for speculation that her baby Trig was really the child of Bristol, her daughter. At one point, according to people familiar with the discussions, Ms. Palin considered pursuing a libel suit against at least one blogger, the Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan. Ms. Palin decided against such a move because of the publicity it would bring. Mr. Sullivan, in response, said asking "factually verifiable questions is obviously not libel." A spokeswoman for Ms. Palin didn't respond to email requests seeking comment.

Oh ho ho. Christmas came early for Andrew (though the trees stay year-round, thug). Sullivan's been a veritable thorn in many sides of many Palins, but naturally, Sarah's the big game. And let's be clear about this: people who have bloggers who write nasty things about them should never, ever, ever admit that they read that blogger. Because that blogger now knows they have a mainline to their target's face. And like she's gonna stop reading. What does Sullivan have to say about this? Besides hysterically prefacing what's probably his favorite block of text ever with the words "Money quote," he basically goes for the jugular while victory dancing on her face. This is basically the political blogger's version of the Dirty Bird, in a post titled Sarah Palin, Obsessive Daily Dish Reader:

Sources with access to Palin have indeed told to me that the Wasilla whack-job was an obsessive reader of this blog as it dared to ask factual questions about her past that could be easily answered. I have no way of knowing this myself, and regard it as odd that a vice-presidential candidate would be hell-bent on suing a blogger who, presumably, was merely making a total ass of himself in wondering if Palin's surreal account of her last pregnancy was factually accurate. Or is there something there - of some unknown sort - that she desperately wanted to intimidate and suppress? As Bubble would note: "Who can say?" What can Levi possibly mean that "she knows what I got on her?" The MSM won't touch this, of course.

Ho! We'll take some of that, please. Move it on your left, Andrew. Shit's bomb.

Meanwhile, if Sarah Palin or Bristol Palin admit to reading this website—operative term: admit—please give us a shout and let us know so we can dedicate a tag to them or something. In the mean time, here's the latest update on your son-in-law's your ex-boyfriend's Levi Johnston's penis.

The Atlantic interview took place in Provincetown, Mass., where Sullivan keeps a summer home and where he was also ticketed for possession of marijuana in July by a federal park ranger. But a prosecutor dismissed the charges "in the interests of justice," a move that Sullivan has declined to explain.

We don't know why Sullivan is laughing, but we think it's because he wants to answer the question by saying, "I get high, all the time, with pot that I carry around on my person." But he can't because that would raise the question as to why he's allowed to do that but other people have to pay fines for it and have crimes on their records. Ha ha ha.

Here's a whole article by the LAT's media critic about how Meghan McCain is the next big media superstar. I mean look, she has the famous name, the Twitter, the opinions about issue things, the TV shows, the internet, the tattoo, the youth, the rebel, and the politics stuff. Downside, she's dumb.


Your daily BusinessWeek update, whether you like it or not: With Wasserstein out of the running, looks like Bloomberg's gonna get it. Stay tuned for more daily BusinessWeek updates!


Now that Glenn Beck has been eradicated from the face of television through ad boycotts, some other non-Republican people are organizing a boycott of Lou Dobbs. Good luck to you haters.


The Atlantic's launched a new site that ranks the top 50 political pundits, making it the Mediaite list of drab political punditry, and equally useful. In a review, David Carr says he "generally gets his fill of opinions from his cab drivers." Well so does Thomas Friedman, and he's #4 on The Atlantic's list, so this site is still useful.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.In January, one media entrepreneur got an idea so crazy it just might work: Why not start a publication called "The Printed Blog," consisting of various blog posts from around the internet that you print out and distribute like a newspaper? Alas, now The Printed Blog is folding, just like we said it would, because it was a terribly backwards idea, business-wise. But points for trying. "It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all." We should keep that in mind!

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Mayor Mike has announced formal initiatives to save the media industry, right here in the Big Apple! The most interesting: 20 "fellowships" (that means money!) for tech or media entrepreneurs. Such as yourself, if you have an idea! Apply while they're hot.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.The Washington Post is still engaged in hand-wringing and self-flagellation over that fucked up memo about selling access to lobbyists. They have launched an "internal review," which is the type of typical thing that media companies do after all the facts have already come out. This has also forced The Atlantic to explain why its own 90% identical program is okay.

News of the newspapers, to-day: The NYT Co. postponed its deadline for accepting bids for the Boston Globe, perhaps in hopes of getting an actual good big; in positive NYT Co. news, "The New York Times announced today it has launched its international weekly news supplement in La Razón in Bolivia"; and, in your Crushing Numerical Reminder of the Dying Nature of the Newspaper Industry of the day, "Profits fell 100.1% since 2004 at newspapers with circulation greater than 80,000." That is more than 100%.

Full recap: Edmund Andrews writes about economics for the Times and went broke. Because he's an NYT reporter, there's the rub! He wrote a book about the experience of going broke as a Rich White Guy Who Should Know Better and excerpted it in last week's New York Sunday Times Magazine. The Atlantic's Megan McArdle did some research and found that Andrews' second wife, with whom he experienced the fiscal woes, filed for bankruptcy not once, but twice, the second time after they were married. The bankruptcies aren't mentioned in the article (and most likely, the book), which makes Andrews' story slightly less "this happened to us" and slightly more "we did this to us," which still probably could've sold the book! But leaving this out is at best, sketchy, and at worst, a lie by omission. So what'd Andrews have to say to McArdle?

NewsHour, who ran a segment on his book Thursday night, asked him for a quote on the kerfuffle. He cries innocence:

It is hard to believe that anybody would accuse me of trying to airbrush a story in which I recount the cringe-inducing details of my calamitous plunge into junk mortgages.

..These bankruptcies did occur, but they had nothing to do with our mortgage woes. They were both tied to old debts from before we were married or bought a house. They had nothing to do with my ability to get a mortgage; nor did they have anything to do with our subsequent financial problems.

...None of this has any connection to our story. It had nothing to do with Patty being a spendthrift. It had no bearing on my ability to take out a mortgage, and it had nothing to do with our financial problems.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

Schwah? What? Old debt from previous marriages unresolved during a current marriage is still an issue when you're applying for a home loan. Let's assume Andrews got the seedy flex-loan money without his wife's name on it, without her history on it, without her having any association to the mortgage whatsoever. He would still have to consciously omit her from any attempt to get said home loan. And how is that - and her financial history at large - simply not relevant to the book he's writing on his family's financial issues? Maybe because the bankruptcies were kinda scandalous, and shady in their own right.

Bankruptcy Number One came from an ex-husband who's apparently far sketchier than Andrews, five years previous to their marriage. Her ex-husband (a TV commercial producer, naturally) didn't file returns for five years. Since Patty was reporting them on their personal tax returns, she had to join him in the filing. Bankruptcy Number Two is a little more salacious:

Patty's second bankruptcy stemmed from a loan she received from her sister, while Patty was still living in Los Angeles. At the time, she was caring for four children, working for very modest pay, and receiving almost no child support from her ex-husband. (Despite multiple court orders, he remains chronically delinquent on untold thousands of dollars.) When Patty couldn't repay, her sister followed her east and sued her. I offered to pay off the loan by withdrawing money out of my 401k, but I wasn't allowed to because the purpose didn't qualify as a "hardship." Without an alternative, Patty had no choice but to seek bankruptcy protection.

So Andrews wanted to help and couldn't; he certainly doesn't sound like a bad guy. But then again, his wife was apparently appalled at some of the things he wrote in the book while he was writing them. How is this any more scandalous than her being a chronic cash profligate? It's not! Which is why Andrews claiming that he's protecting the emotional interests of his wife sounds like bullshit.

Cover-up or foolish omission, it was just a bad play. And now, without reading or knowing the book, it's completely evident that this omission changes the context of the story at large. A financial history is just that, and Andrews' revisionist account - however supposedly well-intentioned - gets shucked of some serious credibility that's central to the conceit of the book (and the Times article, which stems from the book).

Between this and the whole Maureen Dowd thing, the Times isn't looking too good lately. All parties involved might find it in their best interests to shut up Andrews and start getting the spin-control engine turning before their credibility (and, thus: book sales) are further affected. As evidenced below, they might want to move quickly.

Ed Andrews Responds to Criticism in the Blogosphere [PBS Online NewsHour]
Making Sense (Video) [PBS NewsHour]
Customer Reviews: Busted [Amazon.com]

Hirschorn, who famously predicted that the New York Times could go out of business in May is a former magazine editor who started Inside.com with Kurt Andersen before jumping over to the world of cable TV at VH1 and now his own production company Ish Entertainment. Sullivan is a former editor of The New Republic who now is proudly a blogger who makes his home at The Atlantic's web site.

For thirty minutes they talked about the dismal state of print, but mostly it was a good old-fashioned media schmoozefest and as a testament to their draw (or the paucity of media parties these days) the turnout was impressive, bringing out the likes of Sigourney Weaver, public radio heartthrob Ira Glass, New York editor Adam Moss, and glossy gossip queen Bonnie Fuller. These are the new things I learned last evening:

• Years ago, Hirschorn and Sullivan were roommates in D.C.
• Sullivan was once straight and had a girlfriend that Hirschorn thought was hot.
• Sullivan, who suffers from sleep apnea, did not sleep well the night before because he left his air mask back in D.C.
• ABC News in-house libertarian John Stossel was unaware of Andrew Sullivan's evangelism for testosterone therapy.
• Ira Glass hops from foot to foot when he wants to ask a question.
• Sigourney Weaver doesn't read Gawker.
• The media as we know it — i.e. relatively easy way for a large few to eke out a comfortable upperclass existence — is doomed.

Photo fun! See which media figures you can spot in the crowd!

Pics courtesy of The Atlantic

But these various policies-lightweight regulation, cheap money, the unwritten Chinese-American economic alliance, the promotion of homeownership-had something in common. Even though some are traditionally associated with Democrats and some with Republicans, they all benefited the financial sector.

And of course that is all because of Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Volcker, Greenspan, Rubin, and everyone who's ever been at Goldman.

So we have a terrible situation, sorta the same as Indonesia and Ukraine and Thailand, wherein the people who broke everything still hold veto power over policy, and they refuse to admit that they can't go back to like the week before the crisis when everyone still loved them because they made lots of money for a few important people.

The challenges the United States faces are familiar territory to the people at the IMF. If you hid the name of the country and just showed them the numbers, there is no doubt what old IMF hands would say: nationalize troubled banks and break them up as necessary.

Hah, yes, Simon Johnson has been presenting this deceptively simple-sounding "expand the FDIC process to encompass multinational financial giants" plan for a while now. It sounds so perfect! And so nice! And it will only cost $1.5 trillion! And it is questionably constitutional!

But hey, that is what the IMF (pictured, at left) would tell us to do, if we were a banana republic. They'd march in and take charge! Seize the banks! It is maybe still an impossible dream. Thankfully, Johnson is an optimist at heart:

It goes like this: the global economy continues to deteriorate, the banking system in east-central Europe collapses, and-because eastern Europe's banks are mostly owned by western European banks-justifiable fears of government insolvency spread throughout the Continent. Creditors take further hits and confidence falls further. The Asian economies that export manufactured goods are devastated, and the commodity producers in Latin America and Africa are not much better off. A dramatic worsening of the global environment forces the U.S. economy, already staggering, down onto both knees. The baseline growth rates used in the administration's current budget are increasingly seen as unrealistic, and the rosy "stress scenario" that the U.S. Treasury is currently using to evaluate banks' balance sheets becomes a source of great embarrassment.

Under this kind of pressure, and faced with the prospect of a national and global collapse, minds may become more concentrated.

Then, finally, once the country has been brought to its knees, we'll finally be able to achieve real restructuring and reform. Well, either that or Emperor Glenn Beck will just have all the bankers publicly shot.

Here's how it started for the prospective intern, with the Atlantic reaching out in response to his resume:

"I work for Atlantic Media with [redacted] who shared your resume. I wanted to reach out to you regarding a new opportunity with the Atlantic-details are below. If you are interested, please apply on line. Thanks!"

Responded the prospective intern:

To:[redacted]
Sent: Thu Dec 11 17:18:19 2008
Subject: Re: Digital Media Internship - Washington, D.C.

Thanks for the share. Are the 40 hours a week and no pay nonnegotiable? I'm doing an internship now that is 20 hours a week unpaid, and it is making it increasingly hard for me to pay my rent, as craigslist "job gigs" are dwindling. Also, since I'm a full time student, it would be almost impossible to meet 40 hours a week.

Let me know.

Thanks,

And finally, the slam-down:

From: [redacted]
Date: Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 3:09 PM
Subject: Re: Digital Media Internship - Washington, D.C.
To: [redacted]

Hi Bobby, thanks for your note. I am sorry to report back that we are not able to wiggle. Thanks!

As always, offers of "opportunities" for eager and energetic youngsters looking to get into media are nothing short of insulting, and becoming more common. To the magazines: we know you're broke. But so is everybody else. So offer something, because family-funded minions will become less available as the recession progresses.

You have to remember that for a lot of reporters, today is the last gasp of glory. By the end of this week the campaign will be over, and there will be far fewer opportunities to go on TV and be "experts." There may also be far fewer opportunities to be, you know, reporters; some percentage of these people are bound to be laid off in the coming year. We already know that the LA Times will be laying off the bulk of its Washington bureau. And most ofl those plucky young embedded reporters from TV networks are preparing to be fired when this thing wraps up.

Everybody wants to make sure that you know that they were on the inside. Just because you, the consumer, didn't get all the colorful anecdotes in your morning paper doesn't mean that they didn't happen. Reporters have all types of fun memories from the campaign that they would like to share with you now that the campaign is over! Most of these fall into two categories: the "God these candidates are more morally bankrupt than I could ever say outright in the pages of my tepid publication," and the (more popular) "I made friends with important people!" Some key examples of each:

God these candidates are more morally bankrupt than I could ever say outright in the pages of my tepid publication

Michael Scherer from Time went to some Republican retreat in Michigan where politicians "came there to speak to state party activists, serving up stump pomp while waiters in white-tie tuxedos served drunk diners with pecan-coated ice cream balls." Then he finds a regular lady who says everyone in town is not like that. He rejoices.

HuffPo's Sam Stein was set upon by a gang of disgruntled Hillary supporters in a Washington bar. "And soon the denizens were letting me have a piece of their mind. 'HuffPost sucks! HuffPost sucks!' they chanted, as I bit into my now-arrived Reuben. 'Fox News, fair and balanced! Fox News, fair and balanced!'" Although he does not say so, he hates them.

Marc Ambinder from the Atlantic recalls watching Obama's little daughter Sasha talking to her daddy on stage at the Democratic convention; it "was very cute, but it also revealed how staged even Obama’s campaign had become." The thought of a little girl talking to her dad now makes him want to absolutely vomit. Politics has ruined him.

I made friends with important people!

Wacky old Dana Milbank from the Washington Post remembers Mike Huckabee "taking reporters hunting, taking them jogging, taking them to the barber for a face massage and shave." Dana Milbank would not object to being asked to appear on Mike Huckabee's teevee show, if Mike Huckabee so chose.

Ana Marie Cox from Time had fun singing karaoke with McCain campaign hacks Mark Salter and Steve Schmidt. Salter even sung Dylan tunes! Later they went back to figuring out how to oppress black people.

Adam Nagourney from the Times liked nothing better than sharing his Christmas dinner with failed Hillary flack Howard Wolfson: "We were quick to discover that there aren't a lot of restaurants open in Des Moines on Christmas night (or bars, but that's another story). But what was open was sure to warm the heart of two displaced Jews from New York: A Chinese restaurant." Aw! Then they made passionate love.

You see, just about everyone on the campaign trail goes a little crazy. It's classic Stockholm syndrome; trapped on buses and planes for months on end, reporters come to regard their captors as friends. Just to get a fact-free look back at the election season to fill a hole in its Week in Review section yesterday, the NYT had to turn to Frank Bruni, who's spent the entire campaign eating brains at Manhattan's finest restaurant. But they needed an outsider who could say about this godforsaken campaign, presumably with a straight face, "that we have, if anything, undervalued and even lost sight of its significance at times." Had they put Adam Nagourney on that story, the editors would have had to spend hours rewriting his knowing asides about Howard Wolfson's bewitching cologne.

For the media, the campaign means life. It means purpose, and employment, and attention, and a sense of self-importance. It's an unparalleled opportunity to cast oneself as an expert with no qualifications whatsoever, and to profess to speak for millions of "real Americans" without any factual basis. In reality, campaign reporters have a far less objective view of the Presidential race than a fat, laid-off auto worker sitting on his ass playing XBox in the ugly part of Toledo.

It takes a rare breed to remain sane during the ordeal. And we should salute those who do. So Joshua Green of the Atlantic, we salute you; you alone have found a moment that appropriately embodies American democracy:

My most memorable moment on the trail was getting offered weed by a Ron Paul supporter during the Republican primary in Ames, Iowa. He had urgently wanted to discuss the gold standard and I wasn't having any part of that, so I guess the weed was intended as an enticement.

USA.

[Pic: HST]

While the newish Harper's website fits that magazine's fusty, "who needs to turn a profit anyway" aesthetic (and subscribers get full access to the indispensable indexed archives), The Atlantic's recent branding campaigns don't seem to have anything to do with the magazine's identity, whatever the hell that is anymore (plus: 300 articles for $100 with nothing from 1964-1992 just doesn't compare to the Harper's deal.)

Honestly the Atlantic's identity crisis still stems from the move from lame Boston to miserable DC followed by a new focus on, you know, politics, though that crisis has actually produced what might be a better magazine with more interesting (to us) features.

And hey, the website looks good, the new logo is a cool appropriation of their '60s logo, and the mag redesign will probably look very nice (unless it's as pointlessly busy as that first cover). Still, a massive ad campaign and a expensive rebranding for a smart current events mag seems a bit '90s, right?

BUT! Atlantic Media also owns the expensive subscription-only political trade journals of the National Journal Group! And if there is a market for political journalism in this nation, that is the model, so far, that seems the best able to weather the storm. So, thankfully, Global Security Newswire will subsidize Andrew Sullivan well into the Obama administration and on until he turns conservative again.

"The irony is, we were doing this at our own peril, because most of our newsstand executives and circulation executives were saying ‘Don't put Britney on the cover! It's going to bomb on the newsstand!' So we put Britney on the cover despite some of our newsstand advisors."

Of course, when Rolling Stone did it, their website traffic doubled. But you know, The Atlantic is not exactly available by the register at the A&P so yeah maybe Smith is not even lying and they knew it would tank. Still, it was basically the only reason we talked about the magazine since we made fun of their web rebranding so hey, good on you guys. [Folio]

Sitting next to Andrew Sullivan does not mean you have anything to contribute. Especially if you are so inexperienced in this raucous online world that you take such offense at a harmless dig in a post designed to call readers' attention to your brand-new unread online diary.

So Goldberg bitched to Andrew Sullivan, who was understandably "unimpressed." The nice way of saying he didn't give a shit, because he's actually got a thick skin. So Goldberg called Haber, who didn't understand what the hell he was on about. Then, "unappeased," Goldberg called Jack Shafer for some reason to whine that the Observer took his lunch money. And Shafer humored him. Mean Matt Haber should've called you for comment!

The absolute last thing the "blogosphere" needs is another boring old center-left "real journalist" magazine writer dipping his toes into the overcrowded wading pool. Hooray, another liberal hawk is here to write 1,000-word hand-wringing posts about Israel and occasionally link to something terribly interesting he read in the New Republic!

From Goldberg's intro post:

I hope to blog, when the spirit moves me, on the future of Israel, the coarsening of American life, the Jewish predisposition toward dissatisfaction, the Mets (see previous), Dylan and Springsteen, the perfidies of Wal-Mart, genocide in Africa, gun control, the civilizational struggle within Islam, airline delays, screenwriting and the bleakness of journalism.

Lord fucking save us.

The strain of black conservatism that Cosby evokes has also surfaced in the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. Early on, some commentators speculated that Obama's Cosby-esque appeals to personal responsibility would cost him black votes. But if his admonishments for black kids to turn off the PlayStation and for black fathers to do their jobs did him any damage, it was not reflected at the polls. In fact, this sort of rhetoric amounts to something of a racial double play, allowing Obama and Cosby to cater both to culturally conservative blacks and to whites who are convinced that black America is a bastion of decadence. (Curiously, Cosby is noncommittal verging on prickly when it comes to Obama. When Larry King asked him whether he supported Obama, he bristled: "Do you ask white people this question? ... I want to know why this fellow especially is brought up in such a special way. How many Americans in the media really take him seriously, or do they look at him like some prize brown baby?" The exchange ended with Cosby professing admiration for Dennis Kucinich. Months later, he rebuffed my requests for his views on Obama's candidacy.)

[via NYO]

That crisis, like Ms. Spears's, has been notably public: the magazine moved from Boston to Washington in 2005, stopped publishing fiction in every issue, moved its ad office from Washington to New York and has recently ended its pay wall to increase page views. Their anniversary party was one of the most awkward experiences I've ever had around free drinks.

But the crisis isn't to blame for The Atlantic's slip in ad pages. Like every other magazine, they're having trouble finding suckers. Putting Britney on the cover is a calculated move to improve news stand sales. There's no reason to pretend otherwise. America wants think pieces on celebrity just like it wants fluff pieces on politicians. Make more like evil genius Janice Min and don't sweat the difference!

The Atlantic is just trying to expand its appeal, as new Atlantic president Justin Smith admits: "We think the brand's relevance has a broader appeal than the current footprint. ... You could argue that doing a story on the celebrity economy and the new paparazzi economy is a broadening of the footprint."

Or, Britney Spears is a fascinating topic and The Atlantic wants to stay around for another 150 years. One piece of advice, though: If The Atlantic wants to cover celebrities, they're going to have to move faster. Britney Spears is over. Celebrity resurrection is the new celebrity scandal.

[Via TVNewser]