Thursday, December 21, 2023

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.

13 comments:

  1. Thanks for the overview OBX Dave. It sounds like a real depressing read.

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  2. in better news, rudy giuliani filed for bankruptcy today. though i guess that means he'll be able to weasel out of paying off his judgment.

    and in even better news, nate knight leads the maine red claws in rebounding with 8.3 boards/game.

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  3. Rudy is still on the hook for the defamation verdict if it was willful and malicious conduct. Bankruptcy won’t discharge it.

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  4. I subscribe to the Atlantic and can’t make it all the way through this issue. There’s a lot of redundant comments about how bad Trump is as a human being. Which he is, but they are redundant.

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  5. I've been terrible with reading lately. Keeping with my one sports book/one other book cadence I'm currently reading the Rickey Henderson biography by Howard Bryant. It's very good. A shit ton of Billy Martin stuff in there too. However, I've been so busy with work that I don't even want to read during down time (which is not normal). Off for basically the rest of the year beginning tomorrow afternoon so I'm looking forward to getting back at it. Gonna pass on that issue of The Atlantic though. Let me know when Ken Cosgrove gets another article published.

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  6. best news, z! how does it work if a party found to be liable doesn’t have the resources to pay?

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  7. Not to go all literary, with Dave's G'mas piece on deck, but the movie "American Fiction" is getting a lot of love from critics and early audiences.

    It's an adaptation of a terrific book called "Erasure" by Percival Everett. Everett is a different cat who should be better known and read than he is. If you're up for a literary rabbit hole, try Erasure (or just see the movie) and then "The Trees" and "Dr. No."

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  8. Hi Gheorghies. Currently smoking an overnite pork shoulder to take it up the road to feed inlaws tomorrow. A little lifted and slaphappy, waiting on my temp to regulate so I can snooze abit.

    If these liberal rags want to be moderately helpful, they should at least give their readers some helpful tips in holding civil discussions with family members who live in a different bubble.

    you may want to listen to some am talk radio on your drive to help better acquaint you with other perspectives...

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  9. I do not love Erasure. The band.

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  10. we watched 'leave the world behind' last night. still processing, but the consensus in our house was the characters are too one-dimensional and the ending is wtf. i don't mind wtf, gives you something to chew on. if nothing else, it's an interesting film.

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  11. So I guess the Dodgers are going to be good next year? And for a while?

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  12. i wish i could buy stock in the dodgers’ japanese merch sales

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