Awesome! 😂

Believe it or not, The Atlantic is very proud of their latest cover:

Inspired by the visual language of old Ray Bradbury and Stephen King paperbacks, Justin Metz created this illustration, which may be the first cover without a headline or typography in The Atlantic’s 167-year history.

Proud because they undoubtedly think this will sway voters about the horrors that await the nation if Trump wins the 2024 Presidential election: it’s all there in the image, with Trump driving a circus wagon holding a caged elephant while whipping the horses through a dystopian hellscape that is the Capitol in Washington D.C.

Judging from the X-Twitter reactions I don’t think that’s the message about Trump that’s being recieved. As with lawfare, conviction and failed assassinations it actually makes Trump look like an awesome badass whipping RINOS and Democrats alike as he races to rebuild America from the wreckage they’ve left behind. Aside from the snark there was this serious response about the shallowness of places like The Atlantic nowadays:

Which is a reminder of just how stupidly performative it is. In 167 years prior, you never felt there was an event so significant to warrant just cover art without a headline?

True. After all Make American Great Again is not even a new theme, as I was amused to discover with this piece of ancient American political history – for those right-wingers who supposedly loved Reagan but hate Trump.

Trump has completely broken a lot of people in America, starting with the MSM, but they can’t quit him because he’s good for clicks. The ultimate brand; he does not even have to be named or have his face shown for you can see the hair and the attitude. You know who this is, start screaming now.

But it’s not just Trump. The truth is that they’ve broken themselves, and the magazine sector of the MSM is in worse shape than newspapers, TV and radio, as this article by The Honest Broker points out:

I don’t believe there’s a single print magazine right now that’s a sure thing. Even the most popular ones might be gone in another 10-15 years.

That brings us to the subject of the recent layoffs at National Geographic—which lost 13% of its headcount a few days ago. There have been so many media layoffs recently, that few people paid any attention to this move. Everybody has forgotten about National Geographic.

Despite railing against the MSM and wishing for their slow deaths, what has happened to National Geographic has been sad and awful to watch. I still have a bunch of them in my house, occasional copies purchased over the years (in NZ you could buy them individually but in the US you had to subscribe), like this one for the final Apollo mission to the Moon in December 1972, Apollo 17.

But the youngest I have dates to the early 2000’s. It became more left-wing, more political, more politically correct, more grim and less interesting, while the quality of writing declined and it slimmed down.

Not long ago, 12 million families in the US subscribed to National Geographic, and many held on to every issue. Even in my working class neighborhood, I saw copies displayed on home bookshelves as some kind of iconic repository of the world’s riches. 

You didn’t just subscribe, you joined the National Geographic Society—it was almost like being a member of the Explorers Club. As early as 1930, more than one million people in the US alone had joined—and that was during the Great Depression.

The spin-off businesses were enormous, and included everything from maps to jigsaw puzzles. The National Geographic TV specials—which started in 1964—proved especially lucrative, and Elmer Bernstein’s theme song music was almost a clarion call to adventure.

I loved almost every one of those specials and perhaps it was the success in that area that drew the attention of The Mouse in the mid 2010’s, but the rot had already set in:

So these popular shows eventually led to a National Geographic cable channel. This was a serious endeavor before Disney took over majority control, and started promoting shows like Sharks Versus Dolphins: Blood Battle…. Operational control was transferred to Disney in 2019, and this soon turned into another kind of sharks-versus-dolphins bloodbath. In 2022, six editors were fired—the cuts focused on longform journalism, science, and travel.

And so….

The Honest Broker lists the magazines that have gone broke, some surviving as a shell of what they once were (Newsweek) whiles others just vanished (American Heritage) and argues that reader loyalty might save some, including The Atlantic and explains the doom loop they’re on, including the idea that they won’t be saved by simply slapping their labels on new outlets; it’s their brand names that are dying.

But he also shows that people still crave decent, long-form writing – except now they’re moving towards the writers themselves, who no longer need newspapers or magazines as platforms because they have things like Substack and other web-based platforms: for example see the Racket site of investigative journalist Matt Taibbi, which is in our “News” section.

That’s the future of such writing.