2013 – Page 1092

The Atlantic Apologizes

In a classy way – and they are reviewing the entire strategy. That’s great – and the swiftness and clarity of their apology does indeed, as my old friend TNC notes, show that their integrity endures. That matters to me because I deeply love the institution and respect its writers. But the more I have read about new advertizing strategies online the more relieved I am that we are trying – and trying is the best I can say so far – to stay out of this advertizing business.

Obviously sponsored content from Scientologists, with Atlantic employees systematically removing negative comments, is self-evidently awful. But I have to say I tend to agree with Pareene: why is the Church of Scientology more objectionable as “sponsored content” than, say, Shell or Intel or IBM? Here’s a video entirely provided by Shell:

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This is corporate propaganda, not journalism. Yes, it is identified as such – but on the video page, actual journalism by brilliant writers like Alexis Madrigal is interspersed with corporate-funded propaganda. You can easily mistake one for the other.

Here’s another screen shot that troubles me:

The author of the second article is one Martin Duggan. What’s his journalism background?

Martin Duggan is the vice president of market strategy, responsible for
driving strategic efforts across IBM’s Cúram product portfolio and
evaluating new markets. He has 20 years of social enterprise experience
working in a variety of delivery, strategy development, and consulting
roles and is viewed as a social services thought leader around the
globe.

On the same page, we have two other ads by IBM, an infographic by IBM, two more stories written by IBM, three links to IBM pages, and one IBM video. It’s made legit by a tiny box up top, which you have to roll over to find out that:

Sponsor content is created by The Atlantic’s Promotions Department in partnership with our advertisers. The Atlantic editorial team is not involved in the creation of this content.

Did IBM also provide the art? Then I went to Quartz, the company’s new global business site. Two out of the first ten pieces I saw on the main-page last night were written by corporations, Chevron and Cadillac, presumably in collaboration with the Atlantic. (The Cadillac has now gone, replaced by another identical Chevron “piece”.) I’d like to know as a subscriber and former senior editor who exactly on staff helped write those ads, and how their writing careers are different than that of regular journalists. Jay Lauf, for whom I have immense respect, said this about the strategy of “native ads” – or what I prefer to call enhanced advertorial techniques:

“A lot of people worry about crossing editorial and advertising lines,
but I think it respects readers more. It’s saying, ‘You
know what you’re interested in.’ It’s more respectful of the reader that
way.”

Read this piece and see if you agree.

My own view, for what it’s worth, is that readers do not expect great magazines to be artfully eliding the distinction between editorial and advertorial with boosterish ad campaigns from oil companies. Usually, those advertorials are in very separate sections in magazines – “Sponsored By The Government Of Dubai” or something – but integrating them in almost exactly the same type and in exactly the same format as journalism is not that.

I can understand companies sponsoring real journalism in inventive, dynamic, interactive ways. Magazines need advertizing to survive. I also understand how banner ads are useless for many big companies. I also realize that keeping the Atlantic alive requires herculean efforts in this tough climate. But please, please, please remember that the most important thing you have at the Atlantic is your core integrity as one of the great American magazines. I see no evidence the editorial staff has compromised that in any way and regard their writers and editors as role-models as well as journalists and friends. But there comes a time when the business side of a magazine has to be reminded that a magazine can very gradually lose its integrity in incremental, well-meant steps that nonetheless lead down a hill you do not want to descend. I know they are principled and honorable people there; and I know they understand this. But please know that this stuff makes an Atlantic reader grieve.

You Just Got A Little More Insignificant

Rebecca J. Rosen profiles the Huge-LQG, a distant wall of galaxies that scientists at University of Central Lancashire have uncovered as “quite definitely [the] largest structure ever seen in the entire universe”:

Because the Huge-LQG is so, well, huge, and particularly because it is located so near another huge object, the results throw into doubt the cosmological principle, an assumption that traces back to Einstein, which presupposed that given a large enough scale, the universe should look the same everywhere you look. But with an object this extraordinarily large, it seems that that region of the universe is quite unusual. Even given the cosmological principle, you expect to see some unusually large features, but the Huge-LQG exceeds even the largest expected size “substantially,” [Head of research] Clowes wrote to me over email. “Some of our previous findings came close, but didn’t exceed it. This one does.”

Eric Idle needs to update.

The Daily Wrap

Today on the Dish, Andrew pursued the larger implications of “native ads” after The Atlantic’s apology for its Scientology spot. He digested Kathryn Bigelow’s remarks on Zero Dark Thirty’s veracity, and asked her whether she appreciates all the praise from torture-mongers like Hannity. Disgusted by Egyptian President Morsi’s unearthed remarks on Isrealis, Andrew lamented the effect of the Hagel smears on calling out real anti-Semitism. He also took on more readers for his criticism of Jodie Foster, and introduced us to his friend Norma Holt.

In political coverage, we assessed both the past and future of Obama’s debt-ceiling strategy and wondered whether the return of pork might satisfy Congress’s appetite for progress. Frum and Tomasky counted the ways the NRA blew their latest anti-Obama ad, but not without some pushback from readers. Meanwhile, Jamelle Bouie wasn’t ready to count the South out of politics, Drum took his lead-crime argument all the way to the question of race and Yglesias pondered the economic effects of a super-sleep drug.

On the foreign beat, we looked at why Malians are supporting French boots on their ground, Michael J. Totten weighed the benefits of monarchy against democracy, and Liam Hoare traced the latest spat over the Falkland Islands. Also, we studied Israel’s increasing drift to the right and remembered a time when American cities looked quite a bit like smoggy Beijing.

In assorted coverage, we reflected on the real crux of the Lance Armstrong scandal, figured out what to make of Coke’s fresh ad campaign, and promised thatthis video from NASA will keep you glued to the screen. Trevor Butterworthenvisioned the death of punditry in the new era of automated content analysis, as Tom Vanderbilt explored the streaks of bigotry in Google search queries. Rebecca Greenfield waxed pessimistic about Amtrak’s WiFi overhaul while Aymar Jean Christian downplayed the potential for web series to innovate TV.

While Shalom Auslander struggled to reconcile his rabbis loving words with his awful deeds, Rebecca J. Rosen glanced at the new biggest object in the universe. We witnessed film critics and skateboarders overcome their blindness, and Freddiesearched the English language for the singular “their.” We trekked up to Fairbanks, Alaska for today’s VFYW, watched an old game take on a new rhythm in the MHB, and had to tip our hat to The New York Post’s penchant for black comedy.

– B.J.

(Video: A riveting tour of the International Space Station that a reader calls “my favorite Internet video in years.”)

Searching For Prejudice

Tom Vanderbilt highlights an ethical problem for search engines:

A few years ago, Google faced controversy when it was revealed a search for the word “Jew” returned several anti-Semitic websites. Through brute algorithmic logic, it made sense: the sort of people who use the word “Jew” tend to have those sorts of proclivities. Now a search for that word leads in short order to an explanatory page from Google (which states, in part: “Someone searching for information on Jewish people would be more likely to enter terms like ‘Judaism’, ‘Jewish people’ or ‘Jews’ than the single word ‘Jew’. In fact, prior to this incident, the word ‘Jew’ only appeared about once in every ten million search queries”). While [Amit Singhal, a senior vice president at Google] says that “time and again we decided that Google shouldn’t intervene in the [search] process,” it is constantly shaping the world — for example, it recently struck the peer-sharing site The Pirate Bay from autocomplete — and the fact that “Holocaust denial” yields very different results than “Holocaust lie” is as much a social as a search issue.

Searching For Prejudice

Tom Vanderbilt highlights an ethical problem for search engines:

A few years ago, Google faced controversy when it was revealed a search for the word "Jew" returned several anti-Semitic websites. Through brute algorithmic logic, it made sense: the sort of people who use the word "Jew" tend to have those sorts of proclivities. Now a search for that word leads in short order to an explanatory page from Google (which states, in part: "Someone searching for information on Jewish people would be more likely to enter terms like 'Judaism', 'Jewish people' or 'Jews' than the single word 'Jew'. In fact, prior to this incident, the word 'Jew' only appeared about once in every ten million search queries"). While [Amit Singhal, a senior vice president at Google] says that "time and again we decided that Google shouldn't intervene in the [search] process," it is constantly shaping the world — for example, it recently struck the peer-sharing site The Pirate Bay from autocomplete — and the fact that "Holocaust denial" yields very different results than "Holocaust lie" is as much a social as a search issue.

Transcendence Tech

James Wolcott connected himself to an array of self-tracking gear, including one that coaches you through the stress of modern life:

Along with my digital wristbands, I am packing an emWave2 pocket-size Personal Stress Reliever, which, through an earlobe attachment or thumb sensor, measures heart-rate variability (H.R.V.) and doubles as a biofeedback meditation assistant. By breathing in unison with a climbing and descending column of illuminated beads and thinking happy thoughts of ballerinas, I seek to raise my coherence level from red (low) to blue (medium) to green (high), achieving a steady-state flow of relaxed awareness that will undulate through the day, until somebody annoying calls. It’s like a mood ring for the heart. I practice with the emWave2 five minutes at a stretch, because any longer than that and its beeps begin to bug me and drop me into the red zone, which defeats the purpose.

Netflix Originals Get More Original, Ctd

Alyssa recently hailed the innovative aspects of Netflix's new season of Arrested Development. Jean Christian tempers this praise:

[T]he innovations Arrested Development (2013) will bring to television narrative and distribution have existed in smaller, less-obvious and lower-budget forms online for over a decade.

As I explored in a recent article in the Journal of Communication Inquiry, the web series market has existed for nearly twenty years, and in that time has routinely upended our expectations of what television is and can be. Arrested Development is building on years of work from scores of producers of independent television — television produced not just by independent production companies (mostly), but also television produced independent of the industry’s conventions. Web series are a vital and largely unexplored part of the Golden Age of Television, which critics have largely located on basic and premium cable.

A Poem For Tuesday

Doorway

"From the Doorway" by Catherine Barnett:

The night is covered
in books and papers and child

and I like having him here,
sleeping loose and uninhibited.

The room fills with sleep
and the poor dummy heart

already straining at my seams
makes the tearing sound.

Fear. Or laughter.
Love,

The strangest
of all catastrophes.

Profiting Off Prisoners

Llewellyn Hinkes-Jones is sickened by private prisons:

Prison labor has long been banned in various states from competing on the free market since it violates numerous labor laws and essentially amounts to a slave workforce who can be paid subminimum wages and have little recourse against harsh working conditions. The for-profit prison industry is determined to change that.

This profiteering might be defended as part and parcel of running an efficient penitentiary, but it’s hard not to view it as a vicious cycle of exploitation; prisoners are used as cheap labor, sometimes against their will, obstructed from leaving in due time, and given worse treatment all to help fund a lobby that seeks to trap ever more into their galley. When the venture is not profitable enough, the inventory can be auctioned off to the lowest bidder like chattel, creating a kind of de facto system of legitimized slavery.

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Amtrak’s WiFi?

Amtrak is switching to faster 4G networks. Rebecca Greenfield isn't optimistic that it will do much good, noting that "the best commuters can hope for is very fast internet…very occasionally":

Currently, Amtrak gets its onboard Wi-Fi from Verizon and AT&T cell towers, which don't happen to sit along the train routes. Cellphone companies, of course, want to cater to dense areas of people — also known as their regular customers — and the way signals work, the further away the cell tower, the worse the reception. Although Amtrak will upgrade to faster, better cellphone technologies, changing to 4G doesn't make those cell towers get any closer to the tracks.