Value For Your Dollar

Corporations spent 1.8 million to advertise on The Atlantic On-Line last year. What did they get for that money?

Jonathan Rauch has been making fun of me for blogging for years. Now he makes fun of the entire medium: [snipped quote]

Naturally, he publishes this manifesto from the pages of . . . Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, where he is guest-blogging for the week.

The opportunity to pay for Mrs. McArdle's catty in-fighting with other bloggers.

Congratulations, Atlantic! You're bringing the finest in journalism to the the upper crust of America.

Let us also remember:

Another source of significant revenue for the magazine comes from branded conferences, a new concept that the magazine implemented in 2006. By hosting events in places such as Aspen, Colorado, the project boosts both readership and publicity efforts and has contributed to more than 14 percent of the magazine’s revenue.

Such as from these folks, quote via Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars:

We do know some of what goes on at the Aspen Ideas Festival besides getting a chance to smell and touch sewer rats like Rupert Murdoch. Here is a great example of massive ego mixed with manipulative glee that was posted and quickly pulled from the Aspen site, but not before Fred Klonsky captured a copy for the world to see and hear.

In this Machiavellian masterpiece, we see Jonah Edelman of Stand for Children infamy (list of donors here) describe in great detail how great wads of hedge-fund and other corporate cash came to bear on the last legislative election in Illinois, how all the best lobbyists were bought up by Deform (including minority ones), how unions were outspent and how politicians followed the money, how teacher unions were lured to the table and how they were totally manhandled by the best lawyers and negotiators that money can buy, how union leaders became complicit, scared, weak, groveling.

Hear how Karen Lewis, head of Chicago Teachers Union was made a fool of, how she gave up the right to strike with less than a 75% strike vote (something that has never happened, as Jonah notes). Hear how Lewis gave the Deformer lawyers free rein to work out the details on a terrible agreement. As Jonah swaggers, "We got to decide all the fine print." In those details is the insurance needed to impose the same IMPACT teacher eval plan that DC has.