Patronage and Journalism
At the end of an item on the spectacular sums of money Portfolio seems to have burned through, Mickey Kaus remarks:
P.S.: Meanwhile, everybody’s being very nice to David Bradley, the last benign sucker willing to lose millions overpaying journalists for the right to distribute their prose on glossy paper. …
Having worked for Bradley at The Atlantic, I don’t think it’s right to see him as a “sucker.” He likes that as chairman of Atlantic Media he gets to have a lot of smart people treat him with a great deal of deference and respect. And as a businessman, I think he likes the idea of the challenge of trying to take on the impossible mission of turning a profit with Atlantic-style journalism. Losing millions on that kind of thing isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but in the scheme of things I don’t think it’s crazy to prefer doing it to spending the money on expensive paintings or whatever else you might do. Given that Bradley, though rich, is a lot less rich than many other people in this country I sometimes wonder what it is the rest of them are all doing with their money that they find more worthwhile.
That said, a couple of the most talented young people who were working at the company have left recently and I’m not sure how far a willingness to spend freely gets you under those circumstances.
22 Responses to “Patronage and Journalism”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
April 29th, 2009 at 9:23 am
Clearly, there is no better use for a fortune than writing checks to Matthew Yglesias
(The emoticon, don’t you know, makes this a good-natured joke instead of a complaint)
April 29th, 2009 at 9:24 am
That said, a couple of the most talented young people (koff, koff) who were working at the company have left recently …
April 29th, 2009 at 9:38 am
I can’t believe Yglesias meant himself, so who could he be talking about?
April 29th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Paintings are art. Journalism is talk.
Art is higher than talk. Art is permanent. Talk, is not.
April 29th, 2009 at 9:48 am
Paintings are art. Journalism is talk. Art is higher than talk. Art is permanent. Talk, is not.
Anything shaped by man is “art”. Consider Tibetan sand painting. At the end they destroy it.
And Beauty is a whore.
April 29th, 2009 at 9:57 am
I imagine he meant himself and Mr. Douthat.
April 29th, 2009 at 10:04 am
“Paintings are art. Journalism is talk.
Art is higher than talk. Art is permanent. Talk, is not.”
The Bible was journalism in its era – Paul’s letters to the Corinthians a particularly good example. Those seem to have held up pretty well over the last 2000 years.
I think art and journalism are pretty equivalent in the volume produced versus the much smaller volume that anyone will care about many years down the road.
But what strikes me is that Yglesias’s point seems to be that the Atlantic is a vanity project of a wealthy man. That it was never intended to turn a profit, but was instead intended to feed the ego of Bradley. Yikes! That seems to be much harder on Bradley than calling him a sucker…
Then Yglesias is saying that this type of ego-feeding is more noble than that of an art collector. Well, an art collector would get his satisfaction from admiring fine pieces of art, while Yglesias says Bradley would get his satisfaction by being sucked-up to by intellectuals. Does that sound more noble to you?
April 29th, 2009 at 10:24 am
You’re not talking about Douthat are you?? The only other person that comes to mind is yourself.
April 29th, 2009 at 10:54 am
Re “Given that Bradley, though rich, is a lot less rich than many other people in this country I sometimes wonder what it is the rest of them are all doing with their money that they find more worthwhile.”
————-
Keeping expensive, pampered pets known as Members of Congress.
April 29th, 2009 at 11:02 am
Agree with above – that final sentence needs more explication. Only talking about the up-front “voices” people we all know and love, or has there been an exodus from the editing room we don’t know about…?
April 29th, 2009 at 11:17 am
Yeah, that’s crazy. McMegan still works there, right?
April 29th, 2009 at 11:18 am
The decline of the Atlantic is largely Bradley’s fault. He converted what had been a magazine of ideas and exploration of interesting parts of the intellectual and physical landscape into just another political magazine.
I think either he never understood the property, or he wanted to own a brand name under which to publish political ’stuff’.
The magazine was bad under Kelly and got worse over time.
The challenge of “trying to take on the impossible mission of turning a profit with Atlantic-style journalism” is only impossible because Bradly redefined what Atlantic-style journalism was. It lost its comparative advantage and became just another outlet for pundits.
April 29th, 2009 at 11:19 am
Well, as far as I know she’s still employed there; whether your statement is accurate, however, I wouldn’t venture to say.
April 29th, 2009 at 11:49 am
The decline of the Atlantic is largely Bradley’s fault. He converted what had been a magazine of ideas and exploration of interesting parts of the intellectual and physical landscape into just another political magazine.
I cannot even begin to express how strongly I agree with JMM’s comment, excepted above.
April 29th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Excuse me, I mean “excerpted.” (So far as I know, that’s my first MY-level typo in all the comments I’ve posted on this blog.)
April 29th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
I’d guess he means Douthat’s coauthor Reihan Salam.
April 29th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
cough. Bradley bought the atlantic because it was cheap. He really wanted National Journal as a way to control the conversation in DC. With bradley-clones getting appointed to the CTO, CIO and Chief efficiency officers of the US, I expect they will get a lot of good play in NJ and their associated newsletters. that is real power.
April 29th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
“Benign sucker” is probably not a phrase that Mickey “blower of goats” Kaus should use too often.
April 29th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
I hear all the time about how far the Atlantic has fallen, but I just don’t get it. They still publish great long-form journalism about political and non-political topics, they have great high-brow and medium-brow reviews. I did like it when they had William Lange-whatever, but writers come and go, it happens. Every magazine has cut back in this economy, but the Atlantic still seems pretty great to me.
April 29th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
That’s what I like about you, Matt–you’re not just some hotshot Harvard kid but a businessman who brings real-world experience to your subjects. Well done.
April 30th, 2009 at 9:20 am
Geez, first Matt lets the boss hijack his blog to slap him around about Third Way–now he’s sucking up to the owner.
He says Bradley “likes that as chairman of Atlantic Media he gets to have a lot of smart people treat him with a great deal of deference and respect.”
Yu say that like it’s a good thing. Truth to power, Matt.
April 30th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
[...] in a good way! Jeez, you call Atlantic owner David Bradley a “benign sucker” and all sorts of people want to rush to his defense! Here’s what I meant: Every magazine I’ve ever [...]