What does Signalgate mean for magazine makers?
MAGA's attack on Jeffrey Goldberg and The Atlantic
Hello magazine makers,
So great to see our favourite medium feature heavily in the news this week, from the relaunch of i-D making it to The Guardian to magazine editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg’s pivotal role at the centre of the biggest US security screw-up in modern memory.
I’ll get to i-D after I’ve seen it (I have thoughts), but right now I’m thinking about what the Signal stramash means for magazines.
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Little Donny Moscow’s lies
If you haven’t heard about Signalgate, where have you been and can I come to stay with you?
To cut a long and still unfolding story short, a bunch of Magamorons held a live listening party on messaging app, swapping emojis while American forces bombed a far away place. So far, so on-brand.
Their chat should have been secret, but The Proud Boys executive branch - The Silly Boys - invited in the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, a decidedly un-Maga magazine.
I could go on all day about the institutional insensitivity and incompetence of Trump’s top brass, but what I’m focusing on is how they’ve tried to bury their buffoonery under a dungheap of lies about a world renowned magazine and its editor.
Defence Dude Pete Hegseth called Jeffrey Goldberg a:
Deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who has made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again.
National Security Numpty Mike Waltz said he couldn’t pick Goldberg out in a police lineup but was confident in calling him:
The bottom scum of journalists.
And the Pussygrabber-in-Chief said:
I happen to know the guy is a total sleazebag… The Atlantic is a failed magazine, does very, very poorly. Nobody gives a damn about it.
Ladies and gentlemen, irony is truly dead.
Disparage and discredit
In contrast, Maggie Sullivan (an actual clever person) called The Atlantic:
A model of caution and good judgment.
And The Atlantic itself said in a statement:
Attempts to disparage and discredit The Atlantic, our editor, and our reporting follow an obvious playbook by elected officials and others in power who are hostile to journalists…
That playbook is the problem, and not just in Trump’s America. All over the world wise-guy politicians are attacking the credibility of media outlets that focus on facts rather that their self-serving fictions.
Failing?
To quickly set the record straight on The Atlantic. It is absolutely NOT failing.
It is profitable, with revenues over $100 million
It has more than 1 million subscribers
It is increasing print frequency from 10 to 12 issues a year
And whether you agree with Jeffrey Goldberg’s sometimes hawkish politics or not, that so-called journalist is a pro. He’s had a long and distinguised career that’s taken him from The Washington Post and The New Yorker to editor-in-chief of the 168-year old The Atlantic.
He’s interviewed grown-up politician Barack Obama five times, FFS!
And more importantly when he was ‘sucked into’ a chat group where classified information was being carelessly tossed out shared by careless people, he refused to publish it.
The Atlantic’s CEO Nick Thompson said:
One lesson from this story: how honest, consistent and careful with national security the best reporters are, compared to the people who always attack them.
‘He appears not to read’
A former colleague of Goldberg calls him a ‘very brave guy… eager to tell the truth’ and the grifters hate that.
Under Jeffrey Goldberg’s leadership, The Atlantic endorsed Hillary Clinton for the Presidency and called candidate Trump:
The most ostentatiously unqualified major-party candidate in the 227-year history of the American presidency. He is an enemy of fact-based discourse; he is ignorant of, and indifferent to, the Constitution; he appears not to read.
Can you imagine the orange man’s baby’s reaction to that?
What happens next?
Why does this latest American Psycho drama matter to you?
Magazine makers have a habit of telling stories, even the stories powerful people don’t like. The problem for us is that their response is a concerted campaign to undermine the credibility of the work we do.
You might think that all this has no impact on your heating and ventilation magazine, nothing to do with your off-road cycling publication, no effect on your music monthly.
It does.
Media is being attacked, magazines specifically in this shameful instance. And the more people that buy into the bullshit that every magazine that doesn’t toe the line, the harder your job will becomes.
Writing on World News Day last year, professor Rasmus Kleis Nielsen said:
Bellicose politicians of a populist inclination will continue to attack journalism… If journalists and publishers want to revive independent journalism, they cannot rely on people in positions of power. They have to rely on the public.
The starting point for that is calling out the lies whenever we see them.
Stand up for the truth. Stand up for your industry. Most of all, stand up for each other.
Slàinte Mhath
Peter
Is you Grub Street collection complete?
We’ve published four editions of The Grub Street Journal.
The Don Quixote issue: What kind of idiots still make magazines?
The Jerry Maguire issue: Show me the money in magazines
The Walking Dead issue: Why won’t print just lie down and die?
The Next Generation issue: Finding the future’s readers and leaders