Gheorghemas Interlude: Journalismism

The calendar hasn’t flipped yet and already we have a candidate for Gassiest Journalism of 2024. Being a presidential election year, there will be no shortage of entries, but The Atlantic will be tough to beat. 

The venerable, respected magazine’s January-February issue shipped, and its cover theme is “If Trump Wins.” It features essays from two dozen staff writers on various topics related to the Orange Oaf’s possible re-election. There’s indisputable quality up and down the lineup – David Frum, Anne Applebaum, Adam Serwer, Barton Gellman, Caitlin Dickerson, Sarah Zhang to name a few – but it’s easy to view it as massive overkill, a journalistic vanity project geared toward reporters and commentators, policy wonks and true believers. 

Despite the mag’s longstanding motto, “Of No Party or Clique,” they’re preaching to the choir, for the most part, and unlikely to change a single mind. And twenty-four essays will wear out supporters and even the most loyal readers. It’s like a 6½-hour Scorsese movie. 

Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg attempts to make a case for the package and the decision to go all-in, pointing out Trump’s position as prohibitive GOP frontrunner, his recent inflammatory rhetoric, and ideas floated by supporters that a good deal of what he supposedly stands for is un-American. “Which is why we felt it necessary to share with our readers our collective understanding of what could take place in a second Trump term,” Goldberg writes. “I encourage you to read all of the articles in this special issue carefully (though perhaps not in one sitting, for reasons of mental hygiene). Our team of brilliant writers makes a convincingly dispositive case that both Trump and Trumpism pose an existential threat to America and to the ideas that animate it. The country survived the first Trump term, though not without sustaining serious damage. A second term, if there is one, will be much worse.” 

I don’t disagree with Goldberg’s argument, but given that mags, newspapers, publications, websites, blogs should want to attract readers, it strikes me that the case against Trump could be distilled down to five or six more digestible points: preventing a White House built upon revenge and retribution, and by extension authoritarian structure; U.S. isolation and abandonment of allies; stacking of judiciary; grift and the Oval Office becoming a personal ATM; stripping down various Federal government agencies and erosion of citizen protections. Maybe one or two more. 

Some of the separate essay topics in the issue could be folded into larger points: climate change; misogyny; China; science; abortion; disinformation; the military; America’s character. I’ll give the Big Hats the benefit of the doubt that the issue springs from sincere motives and concern. Though it’s also worth considering that the saturation approach was an attempt to separate themselves from the slow drip of piecemeal reporting about a possible second Trump term, that they wanted to present a one-stop shop of “Yikes!” and “Can you believe this effin’ guy?” 

Unintentionally, it also represents a level of haughty and an indirect dig at the present state of journalism. Publications everywhere are turfing staff, The Atlantic included, and the implied message is: You can’t cover stuff the way you used to? Well, we can have 24 people riff on one topic if ‘We’ decide it’s important enough. Knock yourself out, Sparky. If folks read and heed, then the effort was valuable. If The Atlantic’s work launches other outlets to do their own reporting, that’s a win, as well. But presentation matters. Overwhelming the audience can be as detrimental as silence.