The Atlantic: Front for the CIA?
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Not long before The Atlantic’s parent company announced its swing into a profit-making business model despite operating in the most moribund corner of a publishing industry, I sat in a glass-paneled press room next to a small auditorium on the second floor of the Washington Newseum and took in the incipient profitability. All the unctuous little scabs who believe the future of words lies in rearranging them online would soon (inter alia) barge into the office of Harper’s publisher Rick MacArthur to trumpet their e-vindication. But they evidently forgot to wonder how much of The Atlantic’s profitability owes to operating conferences, panels, and events like the 2010 Ideas Forum. These in-gatherings count as journalism only in the vague sense that they invite journalists to crowd into plushly appointed suites. At the Ideas Forum, The Atlantic’s own editorial staff was relegated to providing rapid-fire stenography services, to ensure the event was branded and promoted in real time on the website.
The din of younger colleagues tapping keyboards is never soothing, but sitting in the press room of the Ideas Forum felt like a human rights violation. What could anyone write about something so tyrannically dull— other than an angry elegy for the massacre of meaning? The average C-SPAN 3 segment is a crowd-pleasing cliffhanger by comparison. Mind flickering between rage and somnolence, I tried my best to keep awake by writing notes. Here are some highlights, with names redacted to preserve the integrity of the tedium.