salon vs. slate vs. atlantic

Voted Slate b/c it's the only one I actually read on the regular. Funny to think of the Atlantic as an Internet magazine, even though it does seem to have made substantial inroads into the online world w/all of its blogs.

yeah I have a friend who works there and she says even she never sees the print mag, I know it still exists somewhere in theory, where these types of print mags exist

Guy who used to be an intern in my office as a college student and was apparently a huge douche who acted like he ran the place is now an "associate editor" for TheAtlantic.com.

Greenwald, Pareene, Seitz, duh

fuck the atlantic

the cities section is pretty good, they found a good niche

I was really into Salon ca. 1998-2002. The Garrison Keillor/Sarah Vowell years. Then they did that subscription experiment and I jumped ship. Kind of forgot about it altogether until ILX political threads started linking to Pareene and Greenwald articles.

okay, i didn't even know about the atlantic cities

xp Like, the first "message board" I ever posted to was Salon's Table Talk. I mostly lurked on the film threads.

yeah, in my mind salon is a late 90s thing, stopped looking at it years ago when the pay thing became too much of a pain to wade thru.

"mothers who think"

http://www.slate.fr/

fuck the atlantic

― horseshoe, Thursday, March 8, 2012 9:17 AM (10 minutes ago)

except when once in a while they run a neat piece, like once every two years

recently deleted bookmark on slate, really just a bunch of mediocre writing & groupthink/received ideas/convential wisdom imo

never cottoned to salon, it always seemed a bit too "alt-weekly" for my taste but the ilxor who writes on politics there is v good when i see links to his stuff

the atlantic i almost never read so idk

salon the worst. paglia and greenwald, enough said. i still read it daily. slate the best, tho i miss shafer. and slate has the worst tv critic in the world.

Don't really read Atlantic apart from Sully; slate is still too corporate and some of the stuff on there is really of the magnets how the fuck do they work variety. Salon has some truly awful writers workin for them but the top politics dudes all raise it up imo

all the arts criticism in slate is lame

voted for the new yorker

Sully no longer at Atlantic

sorry yr right about that.

atlantic def has the juice right now as far as being most internet, anyway they each have one guy who i read regularly, tho prob the atlantic has the most guys i read semi regularly, slate is good for bullshit factoid pieces, salon is kinda unbearable as far as their whole tone/culture, atlantic is more thinking smart thoughts abt the world by inhuman people who have been to lots of college and twitter but not the actual world, idk theyre all p good, voted atlantic just because they r best at leveraging social media

the only one of these i ever read with any regularity was slate, but that was a while ago. remember dahlia lithwick fondly.

I just wait for longform.org to cherry-pick shit from all of the above

I really don't glance at Slate much these days unless someone links to an article. The quality of the writing has deteriorated now that it's got real competition.

I am amazed each of these sites makes enough money to pay lots of salaries and I wonder if tablet-culture is gonna make that harder. it'd prob be harder to put up a paywall today than it was in their failed-experiment days, there really are a lot of other places to go for 'this kinda stuff'. or maybe it's the opposite cause people are willing to pay for apps.

eh i feel like they hit a sweet spot of quality/accessibility that looks easier than it is

paglia and greenwald, enough said.

Ha, is Paglia seriously still writing for Salon??

I like the Atlantic blogs but man the features are risible at best (tho the blogs are getting steadily worse).

if i judged solely based on how often i actually click through my RSS feed to read the actual article i'd have to say the Atlantic wins and Slate comes in last.

Even though I can't remember reading a single Slate piece in maybe a year, they get the vote for the Hang Up and Listen / Political Gabfest podcasts.

don't know what to vote for, none of them really have my loyalty or affection. maybe the atlantic? slate is prob the worst to me

salon the worst. paglia and greenwald, enough said. i still read it daily

this made me lol

What the fuck is the deal with all the JFK conspiracy articles on Salon?

I only ever read the Atlantic in print, because my parents subscribed to it forever and have now bought me a gift subscription (likewise with Harper's). I did enjoy the recent issue on research into whether parasites from cats can alter our behavior. Had ~just~ enough tabloidness about it.

Also this great pic of the principal researcher:

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/coma/images/issues/201203/mcauliffe-wide.jpg

agl

Every time I visit Slate they have some challopsy article featured, like "Why Beer is Better Warm than Cold"

I am amazed each of these sites makes enough money to pay lots of salaries and I wonder if tablet-culture is gonna make that harder. it'd prob be harder to put up a paywall today than it was in their failed-experiment days, there really are a lot of other places to go for 'this kinda stuff'. or maybe it's the opposite cause people are willing to pay for apps.

― iatee, Thursday, March 8, 2012 12:51 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

atlantic has that "ideas conf." though it makes a legit profit on its own im pretty sure, likely thru smart web strategy
slate is owned by wapo/kaplan and i dont think would make a profit otherwise
salon im pretty sure has until very recently been on the brink of complete failure though i guess theyve turned around in the last 6mo/1yr

anyway i dont really have a strong feeling. atlantic is probably the best designed. salon has more of my favorite writers.

rly wonder abt the money side of all of these, esp salon

i'm amazed at the comment box action salon gets.

salon -- the only one of these i check every day, obv for greenwald but their political coverage is generally pretty good. i almost never read online comments but the threads on their advice columnist's posts (which usually contain no actual advice and are kind of like garrison keillor on acid or something) are invariably entertaining. andrew o'hehir is way less hateable than the zacharek/taylor terrible twosome.

slate -- kind of totally hate it, literally cannot remember ever reading a single memorable article there, except for those 'random fact' pieces like 'so whatever happened to that hole in the ozone layer'?

atlantic -- i actually had a subscription for a year, which is more than long enough to notice that all their cover stories sound exactly the same. good articles here and there, of course.

I am amazed each of these sites makes enough money to pay lots of salaries

i always wonder how much they pay their writers

does that really annoying mommy blog lady still write for salon? ayelet waldman? i used to read salon in the early 00s just to be annoyed by her.

if slate can't break even what good is it to wapo?

i dont read any of these and thought the atlantic was a 'magazine'

well wapo cant break even either

yeah i guess slate is prob a better long term bet than a newspaper

Every time I visit Slate they have some challopsy article featured, like "Why Beer is Better Warm than Cold"

― President Keyes, Thursday, March 8, 2012 4:23 PM (3 hours ago)

ha!

Until looking at this poll I am p sure I thought slate and salon were the same thing. Same looking websites! Same looking name!

Like thank god slate is not on trial and I'm not an eyewitness testimony.

even their stupid favicons are borderline indistinguishable

i think the commenters on slate are marginally saner than the ones on salon

Greenwald, Pareene, Seitz, duh

Seitz has moved to the Vulture, which brings Salon down in my estimation greatly. Still, I'll vote for it because they occasionally have some good articles, I don't read the Atlantic very often, and Slate's Cultural Gabfest is so terrible and annoying I wind up listening to at least 15 minutes every week before I go nuts and want to scream and then i go back to it just because I can't believe how awful they are.

though if I'm honest - now that Seitz is gone - I only ever read these when they're linked by someone on Twitter/fb/here.

from an older thread abt salon:

worst part of salon: the articles that say "i wondered and wondered about whether i was a bad parent for reasons x, y, and z and then realized how wrong conventional wisdom is because i am really a great parent, though i am not perfect because part of good writing is laying out your imperfections." aaaaaarrrgh.
― Maria (Maria), Sunday, July 3, 2005 2:16 PM (6 years ago)

I don't know enough about the Atlantic, but Salon and Slate both suffer from that middle-class "am I ethical enough?" bullshit. They sometimes come off as a parody of what the cliché "Guardian readers" are in the UK. That's why the Slate Culture Gabfest is so goddamn infuriating. There are so many things they treat as "ooh, I know it looks kind of stupid and I can't believe I'm saying it but I really like x".

When I was in college I had the vague notion of wanting to be a magazine journalist, and my family referred me to a friend who was a moderately successful magazine journalist, and I remember him being like "you should contact this guy Will Saletan, he's doing this thing called Slate on *the internet*" etc. I had never heard of it at the time, and I was so fucking green and dumb that I just e-mailed Will Saletan and basically said "Hi C____ S_____ said I should e-mail you about an internship can I have one?" and didn't attach a resume or anything.

http://www.movieprop.com/tvandmovie/reviews/slidingdoors.jpg

atlantic is more thinking smart thoughts abt the world by inhuman people who have been to lots of college and twitter but not the actual world

― lag∞n, Thursday, March 8, 2012 5:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

atlantic has maybe 3 writers i read, slate has 2, salon has 1, so atlantic.

I was thinking that you could make a really great site by combining writers from these 3 and you could also make the worst site on the internet

what if there were one stop shop for greenwald, megan mcardle and slate cultural criticism. wouldn't that be your homepage too?

how about a daily back and forth with joan walsh and katie roiphe?

Slate, easily. A bunch of my favourite online writers, incl John Dickerson, Dana Stevens, Jody Rosen, and very enjoyable podcasts. Don't understand the hate for their arts coverage at all.

Used to read Salon pre-subscription experiment but I don't visit it unless someone links to it on Twitter - usually a Greenwald or Pareene piece - or I'm scanning Metacritic for film reviews and I remember I like O'Hehir.

yeah i like dana stevens a lot, dahlia lithwick too.

I really really dislike their television critic. Worst writer ever.

troy paterson?? really?? i dig him a lot

i have a kneejerk contempt of all tv criticism. idk why.

yeah me too I realize it's irrational

theres a lot of bad tv criticism out there but i think paterson is pretty good

TV criticism, hardly worth the effort

Vulture is an NYmag thing, yes?

I was thinking that you could make a really great site by combining writers from these 3 and you could also make the worst site on the internet

what if there were one stop shop for greenwald, megan mcardle and slate cultural criticism. wouldn't that be your homepage too?

― iatee, Friday, 9 March 2012 17:05 (2 hours ago) Permalink

I actually think this kind of internet media could really benefit from more consolidation -- there are too many sites to check right now and I wind up checking none.

it seems so pointless. it seems most disconnected from the relationship between program and audience.

xp hurting, get yourself some rss!

troy paterson?? really?? i dig him a lot

i don't know how this is possible. i've never read anything by him that i felt was well-written or insightful about the subject matter. and plenty of embarrassing pieces that read like creative writing assignments

well the consolidation is happening on a certain level, like there are more aggregation type sites. I feel like the place where an article came from matters less and less.

xp

does that really annoying mommy blog lady still write for salon? ayelet waldman?

Mrs. Michael Chabon iirc!

When David Edelstein wrote for Slate in the early '00s, he was probably my favorite film critic. Then he decamped for New York in the days when its website wasn't as culturally prevalent as it is now, and I stopped reading him. Dana Stevens is generally pretty likeable, though.

voted for Slate, mostly for the podcasts which are usually pretty good

Also enjoy the Slate "Explainer" stuff.

yeah i dont know i think TP is a good writer. dunno about the creative writing pieces.

dont know goole means about audience

I actually think this kind of internet media could really benefit from more consolidation -- there are too many sites to check right now and I wind up checking none.

― the prurient pinterest (Hurting 2), Friday, March 9, 2012 2:25 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

its called twitter dawg

what if there were one stop shop for greenwald, megan mcardle and slate cultural criticism. wouldn't that be your homepage too?

― iatee, Friday, March 9, 2012 12:05 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

to poop on

atlantic has occasional actual longform reporting. i'll probably read more nonsense on salon though, which has some very good writers but also a fair amounts of huffpo-itis. haven't thought about slate in years except when i see the occasional link to some music thing there or remember fondly this article: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/vice/2001/06/monkeyfishing.html

criticism of music and movies seems to be inserted more directly into the 'conversation' about those things, because (pre d/l) there is a purchase-decision angle to weigh in on. the 'buyer's guide' aspect of criticism is subject to a lot of debate, sure, but it is part of the deal. there are also specific subculture/genre relationships and narratives to track between producers, products, and audiences. i'm kind of struggling here but the aspect of leaving your home for both music and movies gives each a kind of public life that renders critical work about it more potent? idk

tv is something that people just have in their house turn on. what is there even to criticize? pointless is maybe the wrong word, how about... ineffectual?

i guess in a dvr era tv is a bit more similar to downloaded music and streamed movies, and tv series post-hbo have become more cinematic -- so maybe we are entering into an era when writing about tv will start to have a similar function and relationship as other criticisms

my problem is there is really so little of that cinematic tv that's 'worth criticizing' that it just ends up w/ people talking about the wire again and again

like even in the neu-era of tv there really are not that many 'ps this is clearly meant to be a work of art' shows

a lot of criticism about tv -- say in the NYer though in a lot of places online too -- comes a few seasons in. so its less buyers guide (though theres a "recommendation" aspect to it) than it is like. i dont know. "actual criticism" or something. see for example emily nussbaums essay about the good wife, now in the middle of its 3rd season, in last weeks NYer

i thought nussbaum's recent piece about good children's television was excellent

i haven't read the nyer in a long time, i probably have bad memories of the franklin regime

hey should i start a thread about that AWAKE show? i think it's kinda good

i also like troy patterson but i feel like he's been "off" for a while idk. i haven't been able to read dana stevens for years and i used to be a fan back in her blog days so i mean it's probably me. dahlia lithwick is easily the best and most consistent writer at slate.

x-post i only like tv criticism that realizes its own pointlessness from the start and hopefully 1) lols ensue 2) you learn something about tv shows you would never want to know. nb i hate tv.

an occasional essay about an entire genre of television is fine. A piece on a single show is almost always bad, unless it's one of a handful of really great shows, in which case it's already been written about enough. The worst are those new-season-of-tv roundups where you watch the critic contort himself to find the better and worse among a bunch of completely shitty shows.

lots of times you get these tv-diaries episode by episode recap things where it really ends up being sort of like a group discussion with a moderator, so the author is just talking about what they did or didn't enjoy in the episode and in the comments everyone else chimes in and you get theories about if sawyer was the horse or who is going to sleep with who or whatever. so basically like a more formal version of our rolling ilx threads. and folks read and participate for the same reason -- because its more fun to consume this or that media if you have people to talk about it and argue about it with.

arguably this is not what people consider "criticism." also, arguably, this is more like what criticism used to be in a historical sense until it took a weird detour roughly coinciding with the time of modernism.

i have a hard time believing that tv writing is bad because of tv

OHHHHH wait are you guys all talking about "recaps"? thats not really "tv criticism" as sterling points out

There's a difference between recaps and reviews, even on a weekly, episode-by-episode basis.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

foto finish

salon is better w/ books than slate

http://www.salon.com/
ew

freezes my browser for like 3 minutes every time i go there + looks ugly = mega-dud

and it was so sensible-looking before, shame

so gross

The "S" looks deformed

hahaha what??

it looks for all the world like the design team was given a brief with one phrase on a piece of paper:

"vogue for men"

from the pages of slate comments:

Molly
I have been a s!ut many many times. I am not proud of it. I think I understand this left-leaning website continuing to write articles about it. They seem to think it will help them get a liberal elected. I do not think it will. Nothing they say here will matter in the election just as what I just said will not matter. Still, it is fun having a place to tell the world stuff. Thank you, slate for letting me say that.
55 Minutes Ago from slate.com · Reply

no molly, thank you

there's actually a whole weird comment community going on on this article:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/04/27/sluts_across_america_doesn_t_reclaim_the_word_slut_it_makes_it_meaningless.html

same bunch of ppl teaching each other how to post and telling corny jokes

DaveB_NH
"There is no such thing as a slut,"
Said Sister Ignatius, "but
Do not be a skank;
They're really quite rank:
Kardashians don't make the cut."
Molly, outsidethebox and PatriciaSage like this.
5 Hours Ago from slate.com

^^too easy

xp

solitary dadjoekz that sum up ilx

was gonna say new board descrip

i really love Salon running those Imprint columns

excerpt from anthony swofford's new memoir. i really don't know what to make of it. it seems totally insane to me, but i think that's the point right? the author is acknowledging his own sort of psychosis here? http://www.salon.com/2012/06/11/sex_facing_death/singleton/

that redesign is something

what is up with slate's new recent fascination with adults that choose childlessness?

read that as "adults who choose childishness" and was gonna be like i don't think it's just slate

how was there not a "wait, what's the difference?" option

recent fascination with adults that choose childlessness

is this really that new? almost feel it's up there with "feminist dissatisfied" as far as "provocative" trend pieces go.

except they've run an article on it every day for the last week!

it's like one of the editors went crazy for the topic

no-baby crazy

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/06/child_free_women_explain_themselves_.html
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/06/12/choosing_not_to_have_kids_i_d_rather_die_alone.html
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/06/13/choosing_to_be_child_free_career_mobility_.html
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/06/13/choosing_to_be_child_free_tubes_tied_at_26.html
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/06/14/child_free_do_they_change_their_minds_.html
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/06/14/choosing_to_be_child_free_there_are_other_kinds_of_babies_.html

there may be more that i missed

It seems like all the slate editors have four kids each, so it's either some perverse fascination or yearning for a different path

It was week long series btw, not a bunch of random individual articles

this person is responsible for a lot of shitty salon articles:
http://twitter.com/prachigu

she literally just started there last week

this is a horrific nightmare

http://www.salon.com/2012/08/29/what_if_the_romney_sons_were_a_boy_band/

well, first i read this piece of breaking news: http://www.salon.com/2012/08/29/dumb_tweet_of_the_day_14/

then went back into the archive and found these unconscionable acts against humanity:
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/29/child_bride_courtney_stodden_turns_18_today/
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/29/what_if_the_romney_sons_were_a_boy_band/
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/28/more_naked_prince_harry/

it seems like it goes on and on. if she really only started last week then she's already produced a prolific amount of vapid celebrity webpage view content!

five

i dunno man if you think this is shitty and unconscionable i hope you dont read my website!

well obv

sorry bro

i did like the romney infodump series tho! great stuff.

Xanax
Wednesday, Aug 29, 2012 09:26 PM CDT

The only thing dumber than these tweets is the person who had the idea for this feature.

didn't know 'strong jaws' could be hyphenated

i would rather read all of those articles than another interminable 'thinkpiece' from michael lind

Mordy Hates Prachi

new atlantic business/tech news property, making a big deal abt how its optimized for mobile for whatever reason, not sure how that relates to anything, all sites should be built to work good on mobile devices, but anyway http://qz.com

Quartz is a digitally native news outlet, born in 2012, for business people in the new global economy. We publish bracingly creative and intelligent journalism with a broad worldview, built primarily for the devices closest at hand: tablets and mobile phones.

brace yrselves for creative and intelligent journalism

"Qz" because "Hz"=hertz in the International System of Units? oooooooh that is annoying.

http://qz.com/5270/before-we-came-along-quartz-really-was-a-symbol-of-the-global-economy

that site actually is pretty crap on an iPad despite being specifically tailored for it

layout is p similar to gakwer

gakwer gakwer, can't you see i'm burning burning

there's just too much going on on the screen

Quartz is intended to embody the era in which we’re creating it, like Wired in the 1990s, Rolling Stone in the 1960s, Fortune in the 1930s, and The Economist in the 1840s.

lol

haha burn

I would read this if it were 100% economist zings

awesome burn!

http://qz.com/3416/five-ways-a-new-age-of-cheap-energy-could-shift-the-power-balance-on-the-planet-2/

a great start for this website!

5. Climate change will worsen—but less than you think

whew, thank god. climate change apologetics. i was starting to get worried.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/reader_takeover/2012/10/slate_reader_takeover_your_chance_to_boss_us_around_.html

slate: "send us your story ideas bc we are running low thx"

they'll credit you!! your name up in lights!

'slate is actually a good website' haha burn

What crazy social experiment should David Plotz and Hanna Rosin try to replicate next?

The social experiment of being fired from their jobs and never having attention paid to their writings.

atlantic's new design looks okay

quartz sucks, all the articles are bland nothingness

slate is in the publishing military fanfic business now
http://www.slate.com/blogs/quora/2012/11/27/civil_war_who_would_come_out_on_top_if_the_united_states_all_declared_war.html

slate is apparently in the reblogging quora business now idgi

quartz sucks, all the articles are bland nothingness

― iatee, Monday, November 12, 2012 8:25 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's like monocle fucked fast company its the worst

Dumbest thing about that Quora deal is that it starts with the premise that units will splinter back to their home states but leave, say, Texas with all the hardware at Fort Hood. If you wanted to write a real alt history about Civil War II: Civil Warrer that's the story - how does the military fracture?

i was kinda hoping that article would take the perky, overly literal angle slate usually does on stuff like that -- like, which state really would win in an all-out battle to the finish? instead we get that unreadable bs.

So pissed I fell for that Atlantic linkbait about how signing off work emails with "xoxoxoxo" is "feminizing the workplace."
I'm not sure if I'm out of touch with reality or they are, but the world they are describing is not one I recognize whatsoever. So you don't have to click on it too:

The phone call was friendly, the kind any two professional contacts might have. A colleague had put Amanda McCall, a comedy writer in New York, in touch with a producer in Los Angeles. The two women had admired each other’s work from afar. They chatted about whether they might want to collaborate on a project. They made plans to talk again.

The next morning, McCall received an e‑mail from the producer. “Absolutely LOVED talking,” the woman wrote, followed by a seemingly endless string of X’s and O’s. That afternoon, a follow-up to the follow-up arrived, subject line “xo.” The body read simply: “xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo.”

McCall was mystified. Should she e‑mail back? Should she ask her what it meant? Was she weird for thinking this was weird? “I’d never seen so many hugs or kisses in any kind of correspondence, even from my parents or boyfriends,” she says, laughing. “In which case: Was this person actually in love with me? And if I didn’t respond with equal love, was it going to hurt her feelings?”

This e‑mail was extreme, yes—yet it’s an example of a tic that’s come to plague professional correspondence, especially among women. The use of xo to denote hugs and kisses dates back to at least 1763, when The Oxford English Dictionary first defined X as “kiss,” but e‑mail and social media have provided a newly fertile habitat.

“I feel like xo has taken on its own kind of life,” says Karli Kasonik, a Washington-based consultant.

“I do it, most women I know do it,” says Asie Mohtarez, a writer and social-media editor, noting that she prefers a single x to the full xo.

“In my field, you almost have to use it,” says Kristin Esposito, a yoga instructor in New York.

In some settings, xo-ing may be a way to indirectly apologize for being direct—think of all those studies concluding that women must be authoritative in the office, but also nice. One such study, by a psychologist at NYU, determined that the best way for a woman to be perceived as likeable at work is to temper strong demands with “a little bit of sugar.” In that context, xo can be seen as a savvy means of navigating a persistent double standard.

Or maybe, as Trubek suggests, xo‑ing is just like actual hugging: women do it more often than men, some women do it more often than other women, and that’s that.

“As someone who’s regularly ended letters to her accountant with xxx, I refuse to feel any shame for this widespread woman-trait,” says Caitlin Moran, the British feminist and author of How to Be a Woman. “Statistics show we’re slowly taking over the world, and I’m happy for us to do it one xxx e‑mail at a time.”

I'm about 3/4 of the way through the new issue of the Atlantic and am really thinking of cancelling my own damn subscription. It seems to have turned wholly into Freakonmics bullshit and corporation porn.

what a Moran

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/12/where-masturbation-and-homosexuality-do-not-exist/265849/

i don't fuck with the magazine at all but the site has some good writers

am kind of an alexis madrigal stan

the magazine side barely matters at this point I think, my friend who worked there said they never even had copies in the office

well when i worked in a deli i couldn't eat the food after a while either

lmao http://www.theatlantic.com/sponsored/scientology/archive/2013/01/david-miscavige-leads-scientology-to-milestone-year-/266958/

it's hard to believe the pr nightmare this is gonna be was worth whatever they got paid

lol three threads bumped sorry

scientologists should have just bought newsweek imo

their churches look really nice fwiw, except cincinnati

ha scitis trying to fill up the comments

Operation Reverse Ferret

"We have temporarily suspended this advertising campaign pending a review of our policies that govern sponsor content and subsequent comment threads."

scientologists should have just bought newsweek imo

― mookieproof, Monday, January 14, 2013 7:58 PM (Yesterday)

haha the thought of tina brown trying really hard to make scientology look Of The Now is cracking me up

http://boingboing.net/2013/01/14/dread-cthulhu-leads-his-cult-t.html

http://blogs.thescore.com/mlb/2013/01/14/jeffery-loria-leads-the-miami-marlins-to-milestone-year

lolllllll oh that is too good

http://www.theonion.com/articles/sponsored-the-taliban-is-a-vibrant-and-thriving-po,30910/

well it finally happened, salon has published a truther:

http://www.salon.com/2013/01/22/give_truthers_a_chance/

oh dear

the best thing about that is how he buries it in the middle of the piece though, like yeah these sandy hook people sure are crazy, btw planes can't melt steel

i like how he ends it by reminding us that "the jfk 'truthers' were eventually vindicated." oh right, i remember when that happened!

salon runs JFK conspiracy stuff a lot

ghost rider did 9/11

"What concerns me about the repudiation of the Hookers is that the 9/11 Truthers are being tarred with the same “crackpot” brush. "

lololololol

oh good salon finally found a replacement for greenwald

there it is

salon removed the story and apologized for the truther stuff (but not the JFK stuff lol).

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/01/no-jfk-in-salon-apology-for-truthers-piece-155038.html

Salon founder David Talbot (no longer with the company) has said that the Kennedy assassination "grew out of the American government."

"I think it was the CIA that was given the job of implementing (the coverup); I think they brought in the mob at crucial times to take care of some of the dirtier work," Talbot, the author of a 2007 book about the Kennedys called "Brothers," said in a 2011 interview. "Basically, this was an executive decision made at the highest levels of American government, and that involved people at the CIA and at the Pentagon."

In 2011, Salon published an article by Jefferson Morley called "The holy grail of the JFK story," which advised readers on how to "get into the conspiratorial weeds" of Kennedy's assassination: "Kennedy’s death was said to be the tragic result of the psychotic actions of one individual... More likely, Kennedy was ambushed by enemies who sought to avoid detection," Morley wrote.

salon is like atlantic's lil brother trying to get attention after the scientology thing

hey guys look at us we publish crazy shit too won't somebody talk about us on twitter please just a little

wow,in the last few weeks Atlantic puts up Sci-Ti propaganda and Salon publishes a Truther. It's only a matter of time until Slate starts publishing stories about how black people are genetically inferior. oh wait.

hah

lol slate couldn't help taking a swipe
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/01/23/salon_truthers_online_mag_publishes_retracts_9_11_conspiracy_story_give.html

slate won "the contest"

The article was selected from the partner site because a junior editor saw that it was connected to the Sandy Hook truther coverage and got a little “overexcited” about it, Lauerman says.

Salon fucked up that Imam gives Syrian rebels permission to rape 14-year-olds story too. I wonder if it was the same junior editor.

fuckin junior editors amirite

i totally get it. what senior editor wants to read the fucking "partner sites" for content?

favorite part of that article is when he says "all conspiracy theories" are the result of "bogus" official stories. Like, for example, the moon landing?

ok but to be fair there is a lot of strong evidence that kubrick directed the moon landing after the actual moon landing failed to provide usable footage

no real person would ever call himself 'buzz'

i wanna know where they stand on beyoncegate.

ok but to be fair there is a lot of strong evidence that kubrick directed the moon landing after the actual moon landing failed to provide usable footage

read your kottke blogs

slate won "the contest"

― J0rdan S., Thursday, January 24, 2013 1:05 AM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

http://natethayer.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-freelance-journalist-2013/

damn

Yeesh

"repurposing" is absolutely Orwellian

"we both, as it were, moved on to different places"

"repurposing" is absolutely Orwellian

― screen scraper (m coleman), Tuesday, March 5, 2013 5:49 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha no it isn't

it is a really good lengthy article to propose somebody be paid nothing at all for.

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/03/05/the-problem-with-online-freelance-journalism/

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-digital-editor-2013/273763/

interesting, but ew.

just sad all around tbh

no vision of editorial direction or mission or etc. at all in that post.

like you can talk about 'the realities of journalism' all you want but there's also _what_ do you want to publish, and _why_, and there's not even a glancing recognition of that.

I mean his stated goal is to protect the illustrious property that is 'the atlantic'

but I mean what is 'the atlantic' anymore, it's a brand and a website address

i hope that guy is haunted by the ghost of ralph waldo emerson.

This is my institution, my connection to a legacy and a lineage. And if you come after one of us, if you come after it, I am not going to take it lying down.

stfu

but I mean what is 'the atlantic' anymore, it's a brand and a website address

Lia Mahkara•3 hours ago

I can't help but think someone's being paid by the word...

13△1▽

lol

the comments section there is a fascinating set of people

here's a twitter feed for u hoos: http://twitter.com/AvoidComments

the new new republic site is really nice

I haven't read very much since bored rich dude took over but it does look good on an ipad

Thayer is unconvinced. "I was under the assumption that such practices were abolished when the [13th] amendment to the Constitution was ratified," he said. "I don't need the exposure. What I need is to pay my fucking rent. Exposure doesn't feed my fucking children. Fuck that!" he continued, adding that he can't even afford to get online. "I actually stick my fucking computer out the window to use the neighbor's Internet connection. I simply can't make a fucking living."

reads like the onion

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/03/nate-thayer-atlantic-charged-with-plagiarism.html

i read all the various stuff involved -- it doesn't seem to be plagarism. there's some poor citation and sourcing involved, but he cites things, he did reach out to and interview various people (and they've been contacted and confirmed this), and there's some fairly direct paraphrasing but it makes sure to paraphrase and not directly steal. duns also appears to be a total jerk, from browsing his blog. which doesn't make him wrong, but does make him a jerk.

thought this was pretty otm http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/03/lucrative-work-for-free-opportunity/273846

its clear that the guy shouldve just said 'i dont have the time for this cant you just excerpt and link like everyone else' but hes obvs having kinda a hard time and it hit a nerve which is understandable

i doubt much online journalism published would hold up to that level of scrutiny

it seems p obvs its not plagiarism, especially since he personally brought up the problem of n korea losing some of his attribution links in the editing process before any of this broke

i mean when north korea is yr editor you have to expect some of this stuff

feel bad for all my freelance bloggo journalists out there, dont shoot anybody, please

idk i kind of think writers should get paid

this is a p unfortunate takeaway

It turns out that when Thayer decried "the state of journalism in 2013," he was unintentionally shining a light on issues much larger than not paying freelancers.

btw: http://whopays.tumblr.com/

idk i kind of think writers should get paid

― flopson, Sunday, March 10, 2013 1:18 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

for sure, the writings been on the wall for online journos since like 2001, idk

not rly into that tnc post i gotta say. also, like, imo u can't listen to media elite like him or yglesias on this topic. even if he includes anecdotes about personal hardships, like, they have to defend the system that made their careers in some way, if at least some cop-out like "hey, it's not perfect rly what is." it's like an attribution error or whatever, impossible to imagine they would be writing the same thing about the free work they had done for exposure if they were still poor and not getting paid mad ca$h

seems like the market cannot support much of any content creation anymore, we should just stop pretending that capitalism works and move to the renaissance artist/patron model, would any millionaires like to pay me money to live inside a wal-mart for a year and blog about it - i have a paypal account you can just send the money to

w0rd

i dont think tnc is as much 'defending' the system as just sort of laying down the grim truth about it, obv he's on the other side of the chasm, but if u are trying to support a family and make a living off of being an internet freelancer, gotta say that like exactly 8 people in america are doing that rite now and 100s of 1000s of kids graduate college each each with the unfortch mindset of doing just that, good luck usa

i mean hey its great work if u can get it rite? if u can get it

i only read thought catalog

yeah i guess he's not coming strong enough on the writers should be paid part. it's like, idk imagine tnc's conclusion applied any other field. established scientist: "i can't afford to feed my children" tnc: "u shld be paid a token amount, btw where i work we are hiring more scientists than ever before & nothing is perfect"

scientists r being squeezed too aren't they?

lots of journalists get paid, freelance journalists not so much, there are lots of jobs that pay better, as for what should be happening who tf knows, its hardly an indightment of capatalism

capitalism, man *flips capitalism the bird*

I mean lots of people have asked me to design stuff for them for free over the years I never said gdamn capitalism I jus usually said no, I imagine this happens w a lot of jobs, most people just don't have a big platform to complain abt it or the self regard to think their job is the foundation of civilization

ha dayo I know you said that a least somewhat in jest ive just been fighting w Chavez apologists and I'm so sick of 'capitalism, man'

remembering these lagoon posts for when the ilx revolution comes

bring it commies, revolution aint no hs debate club u dickholes

I never said gdamn capitalism I jus usually said no,

v counterrevolutionary of u lagoon

I ride for big government liberalism, socialists were never nice people

when the revolution comes the capitalists will design the memes that we mock them with

the democratization of meme design has destroyed graphic design, designers deserve to be paid

stop pretending that capitalism works and move to the renaissance artist/patron model

patrons expect a lot for their money. if you were a painter, they could wallow in the exclusive privilege of hanging your stuff on their walls and the rabble never getting to see it. as a writer the only things you can deliver to a patron are groveling praise and a thimbleful of prestige. writers never could wring much out of the patronage model.

I ride for big government liberalism, socialists were never nice people

― lag∞n, Sunday, March 10, 2013 2:04 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah but nice liberals in power just let other not nice people become powerful or ascribe a not nice outcome to some impersonal mechanism. same effect might as well cut to the chase imo

at least u can satisfyingly locate target of blame

~exactly~

the problem with tnc's post is he's a commentator, basically. he gets paid to read a whole bunch of things and then distill them down. and when he runs dry of important things he can blog other sorts of things, because he's also building a community in the comments section and he can jump in and moderate their discussions, etc. And when he writes for somewhere else, he's also basically extending what he does -- blogging and commentary. Thayer does reportage. it's a different gig. posts/articles individually take more time and research (closer to tnc's actual print articles as opposed to blogs). it's one thing to _blog_ for free on occasion to get exposure, or knock out opinion pieces, but it's another to actually _report_ for that purpose. especially since tnc is a name draw in a way that thayer and almost everyone else won't be and don't intend to be. it's pretty clear he's not intending to build some _personal_ brand, but instead his "brand" is that editors know him and give him paid work to do in-depth reporting in the places he covers.

so if you're doing what tnc does, his advice isn't bad. but that's not the only thing to do or be.

'the Atlantic has more full-time employees than ever' is a disingenuous line of reasoning cause the atlantic made one of the single most successful print-to-digital transitions and is thus one of the least representative old school media properties.

tip for nate Thayer: write more abt gender essentialism

'what do you mean there are no full-time jobs, cracked.com is hiring 5 new editors' xp

nate I want to point out gawker is hiring & nick Denton wants to give u money right now

it seems p obvs its not plagiarism, especially since he personally brought up the problem of n korea losing some of his attribution links in the editing process before any of this broke

― lag∞n, Sunday, March 10, 2013 5:08 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the CJR article that attempted to exonerate Thayer admitted that the number Thayer gave them for one of the disputed sources doesn't work -- "I was not able to contact Gene Schmiel — Thayer gave me a wrong number. I’ve asked, several times, for the correct one"-- which is all very Stephen Glass.

that's still kinda a side issue, like this blew up because 'is asking professionals to work for free' is an issue that hits close to home for a lot of people not cause people have strong opinions on thayer and his work

duns did reach gene schmiel and confirm that thayer talked to him. the issue was that schmiel didn't feel authorized to give new quotes and so said to thayer that he could quote what he had previously said. thayer did so, treating it as though schmiel had said that stuff again. duns thinks that this is a dirty lie and he could only have quoted the fact that schmiel had said this stuff prior. i'm not keen on thayer's approach, but duns' approach leaves out that thayer actually did the legwork of contacting schmiel and getting quotes, only to be given old ones.

regardless its a grey area and not thayer sits on a throne of lies/

remembering these lagoon posts for when the ilx revolution comes

― k3vin k., Sunday, March 10, 2013 6:00 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lagoon: 12th against the wall

i suppose he like THE MODS too

'the Atlantic has more full-time employees than ever' is a disingenuous line of reasoning cause the atlantic made one of the single most successful print-to-digital transitions and is thus one of the least representative old school media properties.

― iatee, Sunday, March 10, 2013 2:58 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i would say this is a entirely valid line of reasoning if you are defending the atlantic's policies...???

well the atlantic is a successful digital media property and the digital age has been what has been killing paid journalism. so the new jobs they have are still kinda replacing what would have been even more jobs at even more institutions in a previous era.

like it's not about the atlantic, it's about the state of the industry

I mean, they're also a successful digital property in that they churn out a bunch of blog posts designed to pull in reader eyes, but I'm not sure that content is anywhere near as valuable as print articles. Then again, the writers are probably paid even less than that marginal value.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/03/i-didnt-think-about-being-ripped-off-i-thought-about-whipping-ass/273937/#

tnc has some twisted logic here

What I am asking you to do is to avoid an appeal to a more noble past. I lived there. It wasn't noble. It was fucked up. Like right now is fucked up. When you ask me to show solidarity with writers who aren't being paid, you should also ask yourself what solidarity white magazine writers have shown over the years with struggling black writers who could not break in. You are appalled that Nate Thayer was once offered $125,000 to write for The Atlantic, and was then offered nothing. Fair enough. Are you equally appalled that there were virtually no black writers who could have gotten the same deal?

like you can appeal to certain parts of the past - such as 'there was a middle class in america' - without believing that it was better in every single way for every single human being. nobody's mourning white privilege, they're mourning the privilege of getting paid for a certain form of labor, something that affects and will continue to affect, ya know, black bloggers too.

i really doubt opportunities for black writers have blossomed that freaking much in the last ten years. the real heyday for a more integrated world of journalism (to the extent there was ever even the beginnings of one) was iirc the 70s. i'm really taken aback by how offbase tnc is here.

http://www.nabj.org/news/88558/

yeah I mean his examples of today's progress is like..these 3 people have jobs now

i don't think he's saying that opportunities for black writers have exactly blossomed in the last ten years, he's just saying that those opportunities didnt exist back then and if they dont exist now because of the decline of the middle class, well thats not that different than the way it was back then either

opportunities did exist back then, maybe not the opportunity to be the token dude at the atlantic

but in terms of getting paid enough money to pay your rent for writing, more opportunities, across the board

And now everyone got to fight. Some of the writers I most admire -- Jamelle Bouie, Adam Serwer, Gene Demby -- advanced themselves, in part, by writing for free in the form of blogging. These people are warriors. And fifteen years ago -- under the system that is so lustily praised -- they would not have existed.

like he is implying that the current system is more meritocratic and we shouldn't forget that, but a. I mean how much is it really and b. again it doesn't really matter if there are 3 jobs total we're talking about

I mean this is the mothership he's putting his credibility on the line to defend:

http://www.theatlantic.com/writers/

xp Jeremy Duns is weirdly fixated on nailing people for plagiarism. He's usually right but he comes across as quite vindictive and obsessive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Duns

yeah that page of writers says it all about opportunity. i get that the atlantic has done great things for him, but its really out of touch to not see what's happening everywhere else.

Yes, they were commentators, not shoe-leather reporters: "reporting" seems to have talismanic effect over the consciousness

I wish it did

Never looked at the masthead, but Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg would be an awesome Bond villain name.

Or Ivy League smut peddler!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X30fcMb5FA

ahahah

wow that list of 'contributors' is depressing

I'm not gonna actually go research this but it doesn't seem inconceivable that there was at least 1 minority working at the atlantic 20 years ago

That would make a great piece. Could you look into it and get me 1500 words by Monday? I can't promise payment, but a lot of people read ILX.

Before llx it was hard to break into the world of message boards

"reporting"

I'm so sick of 'capitalism, man'

― lag∞n, Sunday, March 10, 2013 5:58 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ftr you know my neoliberalism gum tweet was a joke right, i have been thinking about this for 1 week

hoos added to the list

otw

I liked this reaction to the whole payment kerfuffle: http://lhote.blogspot.com/2013/03/admiring-shade-on-somebody-elses-deck.html

I wonder what unpromoted or underpromoted publications well-read journalists write for today. You know, to give aspiring publications a leg up.

Unpaid, I mean

so i was on salon the other day and got this great set of recommendations:

http://i.imgur.com/5AC7567.png

I liked this reaction to the whole payment kerfuffle: http://lhote.blogspot.com/2013/03/admiring-shade-on-somebody-elses-deck.html

― maura, Tuesday, March 19, 2013 12:02 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah. i mean, what we should all be mad about, if anything, is the slow inevitable crumbling of western society as we know it. :)))))))))))))))))))

:D

might as well post this here too, because fuck the atlantic:
http://natethayer.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-freelance-journalist-2013/

http://natethayer.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-freelance-journalist-2013/

― iatee, Monday, March 4, 2013 11:05 PM (1 month ago)

oh durr. someone just posted it to my feed today. oh well.

It sure seems like Slate is going down the toilet lately.

Go on?

It's worse now than usual?

the articles just keep getting worse and more vapid. Matthew Yglesias either copies other people's work wholesale, or just pukes out every inane thought he has under the guise of "THIS IS GOING TO FUCKING CHANGE EVERYTHING" (see his articles this week on how WALGREEN IS THE FUTURE OF RETAIL, or his idiotic article about how PASTA MACHINES ARE GOING TO SAVE THE SERVICE ECONOMY). And then there's Amanda Marcotte. Holy shit, talk about someone who is nothing more than a gross caricature of feminist politics. There's really no one worth reading on there anymore.

and the number of typos, misspellings, and factual errors that riddle every article has gotten to a truly horrifying state

a truly horrifying slate

oh poliopaws

i've been loving the foreignpolicy sister site bunches

bunches? that's a cute name for a site!

hello giggles!

Foriegn Policy magazine? That's an actual print magazine led by respectable authors, thinkers, and policymakers. Foreign Policy is not a "click-bait"-style journal. I don't put Slate in the same league as that, although at one point maybe 10 years ago, Slate was closer to being in the ballpark.

owned by slate tho

Slate is owned by the Washington Post, I believe.

foreign policy is one of those things where it's interesting to read *because* the ppl reading it are "respectable" but i hate most of what i've ever read in it, the perspective is so shamelessly fukuyama

"slate group"

Slate Group is owned by the Post. But regardless, I don't see much in common between Slate and FP-- just a convenient cross-marketing opportunity.

I read Thomas Ricks's blog on FP (ricks.foreignpolicy.com) but if I miss anything I can never go back, there doesn't seem to be a way to view individual blog posts/comments without registering for FP and fuck that noise

Dave Weigel (Slate) is pushing this People Concerned about Drones equal People Ranting about Black Helicopters thing that is sickening.

seeing @bro_pair call him on the carpet about his iraq war support last week was kind of cheering tbh

yes i'm definitely cheered by being reminded how ridiculously young these folx are

Foreign Policy is trying to get hip, though - the most recent issue I saw had a color photo on the cover, instead of the National Geographic-circa-1912 look they'd had until, I don't know, two months ago? And if you go to their website they're definitely Slate-ifying their headlines.

it was a big blow to slate losing hitchens - probably their only real marquee columnist? (unless u count lol roiphe)

hitchens wasn't there that long was he?

foreign policy is one of those things where it's interesting to read *because* the ppl reading it are "respectable" but i hate most of what i've ever read in it, the perspective is so shamelessly fukuyama

― flopson, Friday, April 5, 2013 1:13 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

<3

Foreign Policy is trying to get hip, though - the most recent issue I saw had a color photo on the cover, instead of the National Geographic-circa-1912 look they'd had until, I don't know, two months ago? And if you go to their website they're definitely Slate-ifying their headlines.

a blog post i half-read today sez that in a recent fp article (AS WELL AS A TED TALK BY THE AUTHOR), so-and-so sez 'we are witnessing the rise of laughtivism'.

coolin up, yep

as noted upthread, lithwick is good at slate. don't know how regular her column contributions are though.

http://www.mrdestructo.com/2013/04/destructo-salon-does-matthew-yglesias.html

yeeeeeees

Nitpicky point of no consequence whatsoever, but Mary Elizabeth Williams describes Wolf Blitzer as "flummoxed" in the video accompanying this story:

http://www.salon.com/2013/05/22/tornado_survivor_to_wolf_blitzer_sorry_im_an_atheist_i_dont_have_to_thank_the_lord/

That counts as flummoxed? He laughed.

web media reflexively oversell the story, cf gawker calling charles ramsey hilarious, etc.

'why dads matter'

some days, reading the atlantic, you have to wonder about the massively presumptuous busybodiness its readers must be gifted with, to go around all the time being well-informed about the latest scientific research supporting surprising social policy reforms, or HOWABOUTTHAT surprisingly supporting some time-tested truths after all

the whole style of explainitudinousness all these places have affected now is so gross to me

blame it on gladwell and freakonomics and Data!

the 'turns out' problem--the opposite of the file drawer problem. everybody wants to be first to be counterintuitive.

yes, and the "turns out" pieces often draw broad conclusions from one narrow study testing one narrow phenomenon. Everything we know about dads is wrong because male bonobo chimps enjoyed playing with a toy baby bonobo more than females, etc.

lolnobos

it seems imperative that we recognize today on father's day that we must be providing the men in our society with toy baby bonobos

today's slate headlines:

What If Your Gluten Intolerance Is All In Your Head?
George Zimmerman Is Probably Going to Walk, and That’s Not a Bad Thing
Let's Ban Tipping

good job, guys

they also published a screed against flip-flops recently

summary of latest scrotum research too

I saw this a couple weeks ago and heard some sort of related thing on NPR after that:
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2013/06/fork_and_knife_use_americans_need_to_stop_cutting_and_switching.html

I was more puzzled by the idea that anyone actually eats this way, which I have literally never noticed anywhere even at fancier restaurants in a number of cities. Or maybe I'm just a huge rube.

which way are you saying you've never noticed?

Jeanette Martin, the co-author of Global Business Etiquette, couldn’t think of another major country that fork-swaps. Even among Canadians, some zig-zag, but “Continental predominates.”

ouch! #shade

I've never seen anyone eat american style - switching the utensils between hands - ever in any restaurant anywhere in the US in my entire life.

I only had a vague concept that this practice even existed from when I was a kid and a teacher who was originally from germany showed us the european style and how it differed from the american style. Which made no sense to me as I had never encountered the american style before.

true americans use their fork as a knife

we got nice tender meats here, don't need to be sawing away at them the whole meal like a belgian or whoever

i do this because i'm right-handed so i use my right hand to do the precision work (cutting, conveying) and my left to do the easy stuff (steadying). that two-spaces-after-a-period article must've gotten a lot of clicks.

In my experience I've found that some Europeans cut the American way, but no Americans cut the European way.

...or eat the American/European way, I mean, since we all cut the same way.

today's slate headlines:

What If Your Gluten Intolerance Is All In Your Head?
George Zimmerman Is Probably Going to Walk, and That’s Not a Bad Thing
Let's Ban Tipping

wow content-wise it sounds like nro/the corner!

What if this really awful thing... is good?

Slate has the Bad Astronomy blog. I pick it.

they also published a screed against flip-flops recently

― mimicking regular benevloent (sic) users' names (President Keyes),

someone had to

some poor tortured soul was all worked up enough to write an article about how wrong it is to both look and feel relaxed at the same time?

What if this really awful thing... is good?

Which is funny, because this has been the print version of The Atlantic's favorite angle for over a decade. Typically with a left-baiting premise, like "McCarthyism was a positive and necessary thing" or some such.

i still get salon and slate mixed up sometimes

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/07/how-junk-food-can-end-obesity/309396/

I'm not even reading this but

David H. Freedman is the author of Wrong: Why Experts Keep Failing Us—And How to Know When Not to Trust Them. He has been an Atlantic contributor since 1998.

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/newsroom/img/2013/04/15/0513%20Cover_768x1024_2/mag-issue-large.png

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/07/how-junk-food-can-end-obesity/309396/

I'm not even reading this but

What the fuck

Dana Stevens' flip flop tirade was pretty fucking righteous imo

I have a ridiculous crush on Dana Stevens.

The junk food article actually doesn't seem that bad? I only skimmed it, but it just seems to be saying that processed food can be used for good as well as evil.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgsQqL2u09A

Whenever people get really indignant about flipflops I just assume they've never been in South Texas in August.

hey man try Miami, like, NOW.

i live herr, why do u need flip flops when u can go barefoot
xp

because the concrete will fry your skin off

callouses, get some

is dana stephens the one on the slate podcast? is she the one that talks at hotdog contest speed?

I can't drive in flip flops, so my summer footwear this year are Sanuks. Like flip flops only more awesome.

Dana Stevens is on the slate podcast, that's where my crush developed from. I'm not even 100% sure what she looks like.

jesus christ, that Oil article. You wrote an article "Why we will never run out of oil" and it's about natural gas?

Dana Stevens is their film critic.

I also have a podcast crush on her. I tend to agree with her film reviews too.

http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/author%20images/BIO_stevens-dana-2011.jpg

they always seem to be talking about what excellent pies they found by some out of the way new england pie monger

yeah, Stephen Metcalf is such an artisansal pie-finding douche on that podcast. But they did have my friend on a weeks ago to talk about Superman

Metcalf used the phrase "well-oaked California wine" and I thought he was just leaning into the perception of him

i guess this is supposed to be kind of funny and i sympathize with the basic problem expressed but my gut reaction to reading this was 'ugh, fuck you.'

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/family/2013/07/kids_and_dogs_if_you_re_having_a_baby_do_not_get_a_puppy.html

I would say it's pretty good advice to not get a dog before your first child, because on one hand a child is a LOT more demanding than a dog, and on the other hand the child after a few years starts to become less demanding, whereas the dog will kind of peak early and stay there.

Anyway that's my plan, get a dog around when the kids are finally in school.

I mean maybe there are other people who are more efficient than I am, actually I know they are, but when you're home with a baby in the first year you feel like there is something you feel like there are demands on you pretty much all the time. So I can relate to how hard it would be to also deal with a dog under those circumstances. And the fact is, time IS a zero-sum game, and most people are going to put baby before dog.

Any time there's a decision to be made and one of the choices is "don't have kids," that's the option you take.

um, nope

Dog > baby x1000

do u have a baby

No. I have been in the presence of babies, and that was plenty.

puppies vs. babies-- everyone's taking sides

no it's probably good advice, the tone of the article is just insufferable and whiny

my gut reaction to complaints that revolve around multiple children close in age is "gee, maybe you should have stuck to one, huh?"

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/A1GRwGjHv-L._SL1500_.jpg

xp while i kind of agree with that in theory, i must admit that it also causes a gut reaction that you are a prick

'oh these crazy people with their babies, what will they burden my life with complaints about next'

It's equally prickish for a well-educated person or couple to complain about how their life/ves revolve around the kids. That's what you signed on for when you made three babies in four years. I've got a lot more sympathy for first-time parents or, god help them, people with twins.

it's also prickish to think that no one has the right to complain at all about anything they "sign on for."

Who said that?

lol carry on then

so many of the Slate writers/editors have between 3-5 kids. It's like they're breeding the next generation of link-bait generators.

I guess this a continuation of Slate's war on dogs:

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/a_fine_whine/2013/05/i_hate_dogs_they_re_lounging_in_our_offices_and_licking_us_at_our_cafes.html

manjoo is a sociopath for real

My first thought upon on reading that article was definitely not "this woman is right about dogs" and more "hahaha she has three kids, whatta dumbass, poor dog having to deal with this narcissistic asshole."

http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2013/08/15/canned_beer_is_better_than_bottled_beer.html

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/drink/2012/03/don_t_believe_coors_and_budweiser_colder_isn_t_better_.html

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/drink/2013/05/hoppy_beer_is_awful_or_at_least_its_bitterness_is_ruining_craft_beer_s_reputation.html

http://www.slate.com/blogs/scocca/2010/08/02/mosquitoes_prefer_people_with_beer_in_them.html

this is some jilted lover shit

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/08/27/new_york_times_noise_essay_man_needs_quiet_in_order_to_think_great_thoughts.html

in which slate presumably accidentally publishes onion parody of slate

That one almost had me applauding. There had to be a bet involved, like lunch for whoever could turn the most innocuous article into a think piece on male privilege and female oppression. Katy Waldman is a very versatile writer and she ate free that day.

this is a reprint from business insider but slate's editors obv realized its rightful place was with them:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2013/08/31/new_york_city_s_next_mayor_shouldn_t_be_afraid_to_say_no.html

slate's headlines have gotten SEO'd to death in the last year. e.g.

The Only Air Travel Tip That Matters
The Clearest Graphs You Will Ever See Refuting the Idea That Women Are Bad at Math
I’ve Read 500 Cover Letters for Entry-Level Media Jobs: Here are 12 tips your career counselor hasn’t told you.

If you've written 500 cover letters seeking entry-level media jobs, would that not mean you've read the same number? By the logic of that headline, wouldn't this experience then qualify one to give advice?

Oy, that cover letter article, totally screams "dysfunctional office DO NOT APPLY HERE"

i dunno that i'd call that SEO'd per se, seems more huffpostified with the ~information gap~ thing happening

its not SEO'd at all its social'd

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/09/03/the_onion_not_funny_a_slatepitches_special_report.html

The Onion is no longer funny because not as afraid as Slate of charges of liberal bias says local Dave Weigel

i love that it ends with a "c'mon guys" about the SEO op-ed

"your coverage of syria is fucked up, oh and what was the joke in your description of our economic model"

tbf the onion on Syria has been p fucking dark

hes not wrong exactly, feels like theres been a preponderance of wish-fulfillment borowitz-style "Like If Your Liberal!" stuff. (all much higher quality than borowitz or the currant it goes w/o saying). my sense tho is that theyre as good and diverse as ever and i (& maybe wiegel) just *see* more of it b/c thats the stuff that blows up facebook/twitter

imagine how much of a jerk u had to be to arrange pro-war demonstrations in college in 2003

Last week, a group of students at Northwestern University in Illinois showed up at an anti-war protest to make a point that there is more than one viewpoint on this issue and that the media hasn't covered both sides.

Northwestern University junior David Weigel — also editor-in-chief of the campus' weekly Northwestern Chronicle — organized a group of about 25 people over e-mail to counter an anti-war protest on campus last week.

Weigel said students who want to oppose the anti-war — what he calls an "anti-American" movement — should invite speakers to campus and should take part in rallies to get the message out to the media that there is another corner of the debate.

"Being there at an anti-war protest, it may seem silly," he said, "but that has the effect of not letting the media treat it like a burgeoning anti-war movement …if there is no pro-America presence whatsoever, it's very easy for American reporters to just toe the anti-American line."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,79954,00.html

related: thread needs maureen tkacik's classic http://thebaffler.com/past/omniscient_gentlemen_of_the_atlantic

this slate redesign is terrible

Ha, I came here to post those words verbatim.

cover story in two days: "everyone hates the new slate redesign. here's why they're all wrong."

haha assumed the hate above was just standard complaints anything gets after a redesign but wow this really is a mess

Slate's mechanic "you're wrong/you're doing it wrong" contrarian tic of a stance as of late is so clearly a dictum from up high it's embarrassing.

The homepage is fucked, but it's always been bad. The one article page I read (on an iPad) seemed fine though.

I'm not sure why people keep wanting responsive design to happen! Don't think I've seen it done well for a magazine site yet.

it looks better on ipad than a computer screen

well i guess i can stop visiting slate. they've been pretty bad for a few years now, and this pretty much cements their worthlessness.

Has the writing for Salon.com always been this bad? Never been a heavy reader but I recall being impressed and feeling smart for reading their stuff 10-12 years ago and now I find most of it awful. Has it degraded or have I gained/lost taste?

balls otm. Buzzfeed meets tetris.

Why Low Winter Sun has already surpassed Breaking Bad

Yeah, I'm a Hipster. You Should Thank Me For It.

thanks chump

Breaking Bad: You're Watching It Wrong.

Calcium: Why You Don't Need It

Forget Mars: Why We Need a Base on the Sun

Killed By Chemical Weapons: Not as Bad as It Sounds

Does Thanksgiving Dinner Really Need Turkey?

Why Jimmy Falon is a Genius

The Eagles: America's Greatest Band

Slate has resisted any kind of sane layout for more than ten years now, why change.

But I don't think this Tetris.0 design is any worse than the others. Kinda wish all of these sites had a little Wayback Design button that would just turn everything into a reverse-chron text list of articles. Although now I guess you'd have to wade through way more bs to find what you're looking for.

Oh well, I don't really go to Slate anymore, so the fuck do I care. As long as Hang Up And Listen comes out on Monday afternoons and Political Gabfest on friday morning, Slate can continue not figuring out how to design theirs own website.

It's not Tetris, they've tumblr-ized their homepage.

the worst thing about the redesign is how prominently it sticks those "from around the web" links that fool you into clicking them... such a sleazy practice and every news site does it these days it seems

Dunno, just went over there on my laptop, got the urge to let the two middle boxes at the top fall down the whitespace underneath and watch the Hipster article, Yglesias piece, and sponsored content go *poof* at the bottom.

New Slate page should pivot and add Korobeiniki.mid as background browsing music.

content aside I would say the manner in which Salon runs their Twitter feed is by far the most irritating out of these three

Classic Salon-in-2013 pitch

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/27/the_dangerous_transphobia_of_roald_dahls_matilda/

actually laughed out loud at the last line of that.

well with this

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/the-mcrib-enjoy-your-symptom/281413/

starting here

“Pork” is a generous term, since the McRib has traditionally been fashioned from otherwise unmarketable pig parts like tripe, heart, and stomach, material that is not only cheap but also easier to mold and bind into a coherent, predetermined shape. McDonald’s accurately lists the patty’s primary ingredient as “boneless pork,” although even that’s a fairly strong euphemism. Presumably few of the restaurant’s patrons would line up for a Pressed McTripe.

Despite its abhorrence, the McRib bears remarkable similarity to another, more widely accepted McDonald’s product, the Chicken McNugget.

but end up here

Sometimes the things we believe aren’t out there in plain view, but hidden away inside. The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan gives the name objet a to the thing that elicits desire. In French the phrase means “object other” (the a stands for autre). For Lacan, our behaviors themselves may be knowable, but the causes of those behaviors aren’t always so. Objet a is not the object of desire (the thing we desire), but the thing that causes the desire to come into being (the cause of a desire for that thing). The philosopher Slavoj Žižek sometimes calls objet a the stain or defect in the world that motivates a belief or action.

… i didn't expect it to…

oh, that's why, it's ian bogost

lol i enjoyed it. good read.

what do you think of ib j.?

i think he hasn't had any very good molecular gastronomy or he wouldn't confuse it for a cheeto.

on the other hand the article has a great punchline.

i don't know, he seems like yet another huckster/hustler, but i do recall glancing through one of his things and not being turned off

i like him. he seems like he's into cool things.

That was good, the kind of thing I miss since I started wasting too much time on forums and not enough reading essays.

Paged through most of his author archive too. This hit home -- http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/hyperemployment-or-the-exhausting-work-of-the-technology-user/281149/

Ian Bogost is not a huckster.

well, i was just thinking of the typical mode for anyone working in media now - just find it gross and tiring and insubstantial.

on the other hand, apparently he is big on object-oriented ontology, which is worthy of suspicion for charlatanism

http://www.parrhesiajournal.org/parrhesia17/parrhesia17_brown.pdf

thanks for posting that!

“OOO” seems to be relatively popular at the moment. But obscurantism usually gleans the sort of popularity that
does not last. Despite the present popularity of “OOO” the conceptual weakness, the scholarly irresponsibility,
and the rhetorical desperation of Realist Magic offer ample evidence that it is not aging well. Academic theory ATHAN BROWN
will shortly try out a new flavor of the month—and the sooner the better, I suppose. It could not be more
tasteless.

burn.

oops bad copy/paste but you get the idea.

"OOO"ps

that article is actually a really great attack on obscurantism that doesn't seem at the same time to be dismissive of complexity or difficulty. a nice balancing act.

I did a quick google search. Nathan Brown, the author of the OOO takedown, was in the Bryant- and Harman-edited Speculative Turn. Ian Bogost thanks Brown in his acknowledgements to Alien Phenomenology. Brown has given at least two symposium talks (with Morton and Bryant and Bogost variously present), one on Meillassoux, a self-described speculative materialist (under the spec. realism/OOO umbrella), and the other on a subject I forgot after I clicked away (feel free to google it yourself). Morton also references certain of Brown's anti-correlationist (OOO/spec. realism) arguments, and Brown was at UC Davis at the same time as Morton, and in the same department.

So it's cool if you want to be skeptical of OOO or disagree with it on particular terms, but it's weird to cite a guy so closely associated with OOO as a way of attempting to dismiss it as unmitigated bullshit. It sounds like Nathan Brown was very much caught up in what he calls the new flavor of the month, and in spite of his involvement, for some reason he's misrepresenting Tim Morton's writings in a bungling way, writing about OOO as if it's exclusively dealing with material objects, or that the objects in OOO are exclusively material. Not that Morton doesn't like to talk about material objects! But it's an unfair way to pigeonhole a guy who's incredibly prolific and detail and learned (whether you agree with him or not).

Brown's thing seems more that he quibbles with certain ideas about finitude, which Morton's OOO and Meillassoux's spec. materialism both definitely deal with.

Aside from OOO, Bogost has other sincere, non-huckstery interests. He usually seems like the opposite of a huckster - he's not the guy selling something, but the guy saying, "Don't buy that." "Don't buy into MOOCs. Here's why." "Gamification is bad. Here's why." You can disagree with him generally or specifically, but I don't think it's fair to characterize him as a huckster. Ian Bogost likes video games and video games are cool. He's sincere. He's not, like, winning scads of friends and influence because he's a marginal OOO guy.

I'm also tired of college-educated people shitting on college and grad school, which is some of what I think Nathan Brown is doing by calling OOO the flavor of the month; OOO seems to be something that's popular with a handful of grad students, and fewer undergrads, and that makes it a thing to scorn, because it's trendy among the students you want to have relations with, but can't, because you're an ugly, chubby beardo. Although people might be disdainful of the things they thought when they were 23, it takes a hell of a lot of obliviousness to your privilege to be disdainful and dismissive of the things you learned in college or grad school. Where does that leave the rest of us? Do you think we're better off for not having gone to college? For not having gone to grad school? Are the things we learn in college just skin we shed? I've had a few conversations about college and grad school with credential students recently, and the way they feel about college... the way they feel about what they've learned... I don't know. I don't think they'll ever repudiate that. They'll never say lolcollege. Some of them would literally cry a little to hear someone be so dismissive of their education.

That's only on topic by a hair, but it's been on my mind, and it's something Brown's attitude reminded me of.

if something -is- intellectually fashionable, and its fashionableness seems to be unduly responsible for serious intellectual defects it has, then how is it anti-education, or anti-academia, to call it what (you think) it is? just the opposite, it would seem, if you care about the intellectual virtues higher education is supposed to be about.

But I sympathize with "gross and tiring and insubstantial," but re the New Yellow Press, ilx is in the belly of the beast, isn't it? Like, it must be hard for someone with high journalistic standards to hang around here. I've come to think that consistently good journalism, from any one publication, is too much to ask for. There isn't a newspaper, magazine, or journal that won't give me at least 50% of "gross and tiring and insubstantial." They also give me "pre-written article frame," "research courtesy of the interns," "wholesale recapitulation of other sources," "shitty understanding of statistics," "couldn't quote accurately to save their lives," "lifestyle porn dressed up as highbrow journalism," "letting other people's quotes justify my questionable or outright offensive opinion," "massive point-missing," "audience pandering," and a lot more.

xp

I don't think the point that intellectual fashionableness has been unduly responsible for OOO's defects has been well-made, and I'm not sure if the article, coming from a seemingly current or former spec. realist person who has associated somewhat closely with the people he's criticizing, can really be talking about serious intellectual defects rather than about particulars. I wonder about the motivations for Brown writing that article in the tone he did, given his background and associations.

And I was talking about a general attitude that I've seen expressed many times on ilx and which I think was the motivation behind some of that article. He doesn't need to say anything about its fashionableness to criticize any aspect of OOO. I don't care if anyone wants to criticize OOO. I care that college and grad students are looked down upon by college-educated people, and wonder how that must look to someone whose life is being changed by college. Intellectual standards are a different matter. Higher education itself, as it's practiced in the U.S., is a different matter.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/holidays/2013/11/thanksgivukkah_is_bad_for_jews_and_bad_for_america.html

which is worse for jews - thanksgivukkah or intermarriage?

lol

that's the stupidest article ever, as it even admits, this is the first time it's happened in 125 years (and i'm guessing it won't happen again for at least a few decades), how is that going to inextricably interweave religion and thanksgiving

it won't happen again for like 70,000 years

i actually enjoyed reading that article, ban me

http://www.salon.com/2013/11/28/what_happened_to_thanksgiving_tv_partner/

I like that piece. The new classics will be yours and mine, but not ours.

all of these publications have been extremely disappointing in the long run

i like to read the atlantic

i'm sure there is good stuff in there somewhere, but i can't get over their shitty click bait trolling enough to want to dig for the good stuff, if they still do it

salon is actually pretty good these days, would rank it way way way ahead of the other two.

Do they do investigative stuff or is it opinion or ?

yeah they're absolutely killing it

http://www.salon.com/2013/12/06/brian_is_returning_to_family_guy/
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/04/the_top_10_oral_sex_scenes/
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/09/the_10_rules_of_homeland_story_telling/

salon the worst of the 3 - pretty much only good for hate-reading in 2013

yeah they publish a lot of dreck too but in terms of political columnists/reporters i think they're way ahead of slate -- alex pareene, natasha lennard, etc are all great.

pareene is far from the worst thing at salon but even he isn't doing any original reporting, just snark + salon in-house political style + sprinkle the word privilege liberally throughout

some of the best hate-reads i've ever had have been on salon

i will always come back to this one http://www.salon.com/2011/02/02/my_fake_facebook_profile/

sites like these 3 are basically why I use RSS feeds. There's the occasional thing which will interest me, but if I had to actually go to the sites to check out the content I would never read anything by them.

yeah they really don't do a lot of investigative stuff (none at all that i can remember for years tbh) but i do prefer them to slate's toxic mix of reader-baiting "this is why i'm glad the beatles broke up" articles and hilariously inane 'in-depth' pieces (from today: "did i ruin my third-grade classmate's life when i told her the truth about santa? a slate investigation...")

ok then i'm ok not reading it -- that is all basically bs as far as i'm concerned. people who need to produce words (in order to eat?) but aren't interested in doing the work to have something worth saying. it's like being stuck in a conversation with a verbose person who won't stop talking about themselves and also gets paid by the minute.
generally i pretty much only want to read investigative journalism. no personal shit, no opinion, absolutely no trolling.

i realize that there is always opinion in one form or another, but i mean Opinion as Opinion

investigative pieces on these sites usually mean that the author found a study online and had e-mail exchanges with a few experts.

yeah that is super lame

it's like the junk food of journalism

WHITEWASHED TV IS BORING
Perpetuating stereotypes isn't just immoral -- it's bad TV. That's why shows like "Sleepy Hollow" are so crucial

Solid tv that

MY LOVE WITH A SALON COMMENTER
I read hundreds of letters on my story, but his struck me. When I reached out, I learned how much we already shared

A bit on Slate's "Dear Prudence" advice column and its rather, well, let's say _unfortunate_ view of rape victims, and how it lines up with Dave Ramsey's blame-the-victims economic blurtings

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/12/10/dave-ramsey-and-dear-prudence-when-good-advice-goes-bad/

oh nice a thinkpiece on 'dear prudence'

The Lesson from the Christie Scandal: American Politics Should Be More Corrupt

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/12/business/media/thomas-frank-author-and-historian-will-join-salon.html

Good signing

pretty good i thought:
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/16/the_matter_with_kansas_now_the_tea_party_the_1_percent_and_delusional_democrats/

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/02/up-for-polyamory-creating-alternatives-to-marriage/283920/

logical conclusion of their wonkocentric editorial perspective

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/the-dark-power-of-fraternities/357580/

^ fantastic

looks good. i would suspect the ilxor fratboy rollcall is low?

I have no beef with polyamory in and of itself, but right now I'm not sure that polyamory is conducive to stable, long term relationships. If I were shown that it is, then I could be persuaded that extending marriage rights to polyamorous unions could be a good and useful social policy. The divorces would be a bitch, though.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/02/up-for-polyamory-creating-alternatives-to-marriage/283920/

logical conclusion of their wonkocentric editorial perspective

― j., Wednesday, February 19, 2014 6:28 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Maybe I'm just prudish, but I thought this person sounded very self-centered and maybe narcissistic. It seemed like the lifestyle for her involves her as the center of a solar system. I guess if others are ok with that, then why the fuck not? But as far as actually coming up with legal structures to accommodate it, I don't feel as convinced.

Even the arguments I hear from polyamorist for "rights" often seem kind of abstract, "why not us too?" etc. I haven't heard a lot of tragic stories of people somehow missing out on the rights and benefits conferred to others because of their polyamory (as opposed to with gay rights, where this was common). I don't really buy that it's an "orientation."

caitlin flanagan sux, but that is an a+ lead paragraph

i love the opening passages of that frat story so much. if i taught a journo class that would go in my list of all time ledes.

To be fair, how can you possibly write a passage about a frat boy drunkenly lighting a rocket up his ass, suffering a sphincter explosion and causing his compatriot to fall off a deck and get wedged next to an air conditioner in a way that ISN'T enormously engaging.

Get a lawyer to write it

:*|

yeah she was just picking up apples there and lots of people woulda picked them up better </bitterwriter>

yes making it look easy is definitely the mark of a bad craftsman!!!

"under the influence of powerful inebriants, not least among them the clear ether of youth itself"

^^ this is so good.

and its not just playful, it underscores the whole thematic undercurrent of the article, the disconnect between the image of college and youth and the idea of 'greeks' harkening back to greek ideals and then this comic shitshow.

the whole 2 paras on "falling" are also delicious.

http://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2014/03/david-frum-named-senior-editor-at-the-atlantic/284510/

R.I.P. Atlantic

he seems like a good fit to me - at the very least not a worse choice than sullivan

the new Atlantic cover is a real beaut

Frum's novel sounds like the worst thing ever.

occasionally he writes like he can at least glimpse reality from wherever he is, but ugh. regrettably, he does seem like a not-bad fit.

cool do you think we'll ses an uptick in pieces about how marijuana and immigration are going to ruin America

http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/02/what-charlie-sheen-taught-salon-about-being-original/

i was surprised to see this linked to as a story about salon having a strategy to prioritize quality over quantity, since i was not aware that they had much interest left in the former anymore

grossest click-bait ever:

What I wondered after talking with all these experts is whether lice even need to be treated at all. Treatment’s expensive, it can expose your kids to pesticides, it takes forever, and all it does is rid your child of a basically harmless pest—and then only until the inevitable next time it shows up. ... My kids need to be in school to learn, and to play with their friends, and to build their bright futures, and to stay out of my hair. I don’t need them sent home because of the harmless things crawling in theirs.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/family/2014/03/lice_in_school_let_em_stay.html

I'm waiting for Slate's "Let's Stop Burying Dead People" article

http://www.slate.com/articles/slate_plus/pitch.html?wpsrc=sp_all_social_pitchshare

god all three of these are so bad now it's like a reverse sophie's choice.

vox butthoused by gizmodo sub-blog

http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/no-tech-adoption-is-not-speeding-up-1565326373

that's such an evidence-nerd slight, calling out questionable argumentation with the word 'fun'

vox + 538 both make these 3 look good. well not salon. that's pretty much unredeemable atm.

pareene is far from the worst thing at salon but even he isn't doing any original reporting, just snark + salon in-house political style + sprinkle the word privilege liberally throughout

snarky sure but this is pretty good

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/22/blow_up_the_times_op_ed_page_and_start_again_why_friedman_brooks_and_dowd_must_go/

maybe ap will be the next one to jump up?

lol who on earth would want to pay $5/mo for slate plus

It almost seems like a #slatepitch-- No one will pay for it, which is why it will make us millions

who knows, maybe their internal numbers show ppl looooove to try to be smarter than dave weigel or whatever, gain troy patterson's insights, etc.

what does the "plus" stand for?

is there any online publication, or can one even be imagined, that is so good that its subscription only content (which somehow seems like second-tier content by way of its own exclusivity) would actually entice a person to pay for it?

i dunno, the times invaahted me to sample its new paywalled recipe thing, it seems relatively decent, but i don't know why i wouldn't just buy a cookbook, or fuckin google recipes that are out there for the taking

#2003ideas

seems like second-tier content by way of its own exclusivity
never thought of it like this before but totally otm

i am proud to say that i dont even hate read any of these three anymore.

I feel like all three of these have really cheapened their brands over the years, and I no longer think of any of them as a place to go for Smart Writing On The Internet. Or maybe my standards have just been raised.

They all seem like victims of the clickbait arms race, though maybe not as much as huffpo.

slate is still managing to practice journalism, it's just that i have a hard time imagining wanting to go back to any of their stories except out of a specific interest, like if i wanted to look up opinions in-the-moment on some topic later. but rarely because i think like, damn, that one really said something.

salon, just garbage. repetitive too! how many ndgt-fights-creationist stories do they need? or sex abuse personal narratives, whatever.

the atlantic is grinding away at the bases of its dominance but at least it's still aiming for the top.

feel like the true metric is which of these three has the best tv recappers now.

huffpo has pretty much always been garbage

I'm a Fred Kaplan stan, though I have to search for his articles since of course they'll never been most read or anything.

atlantic still has a few good writers to keep it at the top. salon and slate are worthless

is there any online publication, or can one even be imagined, that is so good that its subscription only content (which somehow seems like second-tier content by way of its own exclusivity) would actually entice a person to pay for it?

new yorker is maybe the only thing i'd be willing to pay for. but i still don't.

nytimes pricewall can be avoided by reopening the link in a private browsing window

New Yorker is worth paying for--but I don't think of that as an online publication

I've recently even stopped following the rss feed for slate. It was never that great, but there used to occasionally be a story that would interest me. Lately even just glancing at the article titles has been too much for me.

I still like their sports podcast though.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/an-office-for-introverts/372130/

ouch

PunkRockOldLady • 9 hours ago

While the sound-proofing is a great idea, all that glass would make me feel like I was in an aquarium.

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Steelcase PunkRockOldLady • 7 hours ago

Thanks for joining the conversation around this important issue! We created these conceptual renderings with clear glass for demonstration of the spaces within the walls only. https://twitter.com/Steelcase/... shows a different version of the rendering with a mostly opaque film applied to the glass. Hope that helps!
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Lee Viola Steelcase • 5 hours ago

Is this an ad? Is it ethical for you to respond to readers' comments and do a sales job? Is the author receiving commissions for running this piece?

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Steelcase Lee Viola • 5 hours ago

We are just responding to confusion around the pictures, which we provided for the article. Not an ad.
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Lee Viola Steelcase • 41 minutes ago

Why are you responding and not the author of the article? This is unethical. You ARE advertising. I hope journalism reviews catch onto this scam. The editors of the Atlantic should be ashamed.

http://i61.tinypic.com/2s8iref.png

I despise Slate magazine at this stage. the latest World Cup articles are wretched stuff.

salon VS slate on twitter = tawdry clickbait death match. just by reading the headlines I've learned a LOT about my penis

http://www.salon.com/2014/08/21/welcome_to_toddlercore_how_dressing_like_a_2_year_old_became_the_fashion_worlds_latest_craze/

uhhhhhhhh

oh what the hell

?

jesus fuck

https://twitter.com/blippoblappo/status/562283289986486273

looks like any old day at Slate tbh

haven't read her piece but Dana Stevens is pretty good

http://www.theatlantic.com/

goddammit

this fuckin mobile design era

i dont know where to put this, but here'll do

In 2011, when Isaac Lee, president of news for Univision, set out to persuade his company and Disney to back Fusion, a digital news service and cable channel he wanted to start, he promised nothing less than the holy grail: young viewers for the older media conglomerates.

He played a slide show in which a middle-aged white man transformed into a young brown woman. The executives present were dazzled.

http://www.teenidols4you.com/blink/Actors/mccauly_culkin/SG_161245_Culkin.jpg

irl lol

is it just my browser/computer or did slate change the fonts (to something terribly ugly)?

http://gawker.com/how-progressive-are-the-media-liberals-1721339149

on salon not recognizing their writers' unionization acceptance yet

would be hilarious if they dropped them all

not hilarious for humanity of course

but still

wow did salon management not consider how hypocritical this was going to look considering that their primary beat is left-wing outrage?

is it normal for unions to form instantly after voting? (genuine question, wondering if there is some intermediary negotiation phase between vote and actually having union)

the story notes several quick acknowledgments etc

they have to register w/ the larger union they're joining (in this case Writers Guild East) but it doesn't sound like that is what is holding it up

the story notes several quick acknowledgments etc

― j., Friday, July 31, 2015 4:10 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it only mentioned that the guardian's was instantaneous but didn't say how long it took for gawker's to be acknowledged. just wondering if this is actually an unusual amount of time to wait

unfortunately probably not

can confirm this is mgmt stonewalling plain and simple, like if they stick their fingers in their ears it will just go away--they may be preparing to force an NLRB certified election, where they'd have the opportunity to undermine WGE.

The Huffington Post is a progressive news site. It is only a matter of time before some of their employees ask to unionize. Will Arianna Huffington, a good liberal, support their request?

Buzzfeed has publicly stated its commitment to a variety of progressive ideals. It is only a matter of time before some of its employees ask to unionize. Will Ben Smith and Jonah Peretti support their request?

aaaaah you fuckin guy

WGE and my org are jockeying for the same places, and hamno just gave their organizing committees a big WGE wink and a nudge

ha, crazy

http://www.ibtimes.com/saloncom-recognizes-union-ending-monthlong-standoff-editorial-staff-2034756

hell ya

will union labor decrease the quality of Orange Is The New Black thinkpieces? A Vox explainer

i'm just glad it shook out right, this has been some bullshit

salon is an OG 90's-era west coast internet property; resistance to collective solidarity isn't surprising in the least

fucking rich technohippies

salon can't have that much money, maybe at one point when it was the future of journalism, today it's a miracle it's still around

I mean a terrible miracle mostly

and lo on the seventh night the clickbait still burned

http://i.imgur.com/RdADR4M.gif

http://i.imgur.com/u96OJgU.png

that reads like it's by the vox dude who dislikes eating

How to stop writing for The Atlantic

The piece that got him blackballed is pointless and vapid, ftr.

couldn't have happened to a more deserving writer imo

lol at him characterizing his incredibly nasty and smug remarks in that piece as "i mentioned in passing..."

anything that means less of his shitty and worthless writing on the internet is a good development

I was trying to think of anything he'd written that I could remember reading prior to this - came up empty.

http://i.imgur.com/avoatxf.png

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZ0Sv3DWIAAAkvO.jpg

http://thebaffler.com/salvos/omniscient-gentlemen-of-the-atlantic

lol

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2016/2/six-hot-media-startups-to-watch-in-2016.html

lol lol

Al Jazeera America has removed the satirical piece originally posted on this link, which included commentary on our company that we believe was not appropriate given its imminent closure.

nooooooooooooooooooo!!!

lmao it was so good

surely if anything al-jazeera's imminent closure is what made it appropriate

anyway no right to be forgotten

more perma link https://web.archive.org/web/20160225134033/http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2016/2/six-hot-media-startups-to-watch-in-2016.html

salon about to become faintly ridiculous in a different way

http://www.politico.com/media/story/2016/08/new-salon-very-different-from-the-old-salon-004705

Can't possibly be worse

oh sure it could!

i honestly can't tell the difference between slate and onion headlines anymore:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2016/12/i_am_glad_the_harlem_deer_is_dead.html

that's really an all-time headline.

feels more clickhole tbh.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C4Vc9pAWEAArVcf.jpg

http://imgur.com/KY3Duj1.jpg

new slate website design is extremely ugly

The Atlantic, by a fair margin.

atm atlantic is the best of the 3 but they're all really bad i don't visit any regularly any more

Should Jews separate anti-Semitism from politics? https://t.co/zMNxsyBKRd pic.twitter.com/zSJSXJPmWi

— Slate (@Slate) November 1, 2018

pardon?

slate really should stop publishing anything

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/03/pete-buttigieg-gay-diversity-white-male-candidate.html

they're only good for dear prudence any more

Wow these three sites have been ILX’s collective punching bag. This thread is just seven years worth of bitching. Why is it every time a site gets redesigned everyone hates it?

i wouldn't have expected a white knight for salon, slate and the atlantic to appear at this hour and for that white knight to be mr. snrub

xp every redesign is a betrayal