Now this is what I call thought leadership

National advertising campaign for the Atlantic, October, 2008:

This is good news

I emerge briefly from writing-induced blog exile to celebrate a well deserved honor for a comrade: our own James Bennet, editor of the Atlantic, being selected as AdAge's "Editor of the Year."

I have worked for five editors during my time at the Atlantic: Robert Manning, William Whitworth, Michael Kelly, Cullen Murphy, and now James Bennet. They have been different people with different styles dealing with different challenges in different times.  But all have been absolutely committed to the idea that this kind of magazine, with its determination to deal with serious issues in as interesting and news-making a fashion as possible, has a role in national life and can find an audience that will value what we do. I feel very fortunate to have been part of this institution for so long -- and I know that what makes it special are people who really do think all the time about improving the magazine. That describes everyone on the staff -- now, and over the years.

Industry "honors" like this are highly unscientific, hit-and-miss propositions. But when they work out, that's worth celebrating, as I do now.

If you feel like joining in, a subscription always makes the ideal gift! I'll save the full pitch for another time. (Andrew Sullivan has made his case here.) But, seriously, in the long run, enterprises like this have to figure out how to pay for what they do, and subscriptions make a big difference. Plus, the layout and pictures make magazines much better to read in print. Meanwhile, as members of the extended Atlantic family, please enjoy this nice bit of news.

Festival of links, part 2: Coates, Kaplan, Green

Following this earlier dispatch, a few more.

- Like my Atlantic colleague Ta-Nehisi Coates, I've been in a no-TV mode for a while -- in my case, most of the time since returning from China. We finally got TV coverage re-connected last month for the US Open tennis matches and the start of the NFL season. But I realize that I'm turning on the TV only for live sports and the occasional real-time spectacle that's easier to watch on the big screen than find on line. David Letterman's first post-scandal show; the new (and just so-so) season-opener of The Simpsons this weekend; the PBS "Obama's War" tonight. Not Mad Men, because we have to catch up with the first two seasons on DVDs.* For old times' sake and for language practice, my wife sometimes has the Chinese-language station on in the background. But in general, it's not a factor -- compared either with radio or, of course, the internet. Certainly less a presence in our life than it used to be.

I'm not making any big cultural point about TV or our haughtiness in rising above it. I am convinced that our children's four elementary-school years when we were living in Japan and Malaysia and rarely saw TV at all, were good for them (and us) in various ways. My only point at the moment is that the same technological shifts that have caused problems for the print media have, in our household's case, made even more of a difference when it comes to TV.

- My Atlantic colleague Robert Kaplan has argued on our site very strongly that it is "Time for Decisiveness on Afghanistan," by which he means that it's time to send more troops to wage a thorough counter-insurgent action. Here is why I disagree.

Bob Kaplan knows more about Afghanistan and its environs than I ever will. I like and respect him, even though we usually disagree about foreign policy, notably about Iraq. But his essay is only in part about the right strategy for Afghanistan. It is also about the way presidents make decisions about war and peace. That's something I know about, and I think his basic assumptions are wrong.

He says that Obama is causing great damage by taking so long to decide on the right course for Afghanistan. I think that presidents have caused damage by making decisions too quickly much more often than by taking too long. And he says that Obama runs the risk of seeming inconsistent -- and therefore of becoming ineffective. To me, presidents have hurt themselves and the country through rigidity born of a fear of looking inconsistent, much more often than they have by being too flexible.

A sample passage from his essay:

"It's perfectly legitimate for Obama to review Afghanistan strategy and troop numbers. But by calling into question the very strategy that he put into place earlier in the year, when he called Afghanistan the "necessary war," and promised to properly resource it, Obama is courting charges from the right that he is another ineffectual Jimmy Carter--that other Nobel Peace Prize winner....

"The Administration had many months, beginning the moment Obama was elected, to recalibrate Afghan strategy. Yet it's now in the position of publicly questioning the fundamental wisdom of the general it has chosen.... Even if Obama does end up making the correct decision on Afghanistan strategy (by which I mean adding troops, since counterinsurgency is manpower-intensive), the public agony over his deliberations may already have done incalculable damage."

You should read his whole argument. If he or others can really establish that a decision right this minute about Afghanistan is indispensable -- that this is a moment comparable to the Cuban Missile Crisis etc -- then, OK. (For a contrary argument, see this.) Otherwise, everything I've learned about politics indicates that impatience is almost always destructive, that especially when it comes to military commitments it's crucial to think and think again, and that a president should be less afraid of being "inconsistent" than of making a big mistake.

- My Atlantic colleague Josh Green, co-author with Henry Waxman of The Waxman Report, adds this about the disagreement over calorie labeling I mentioned earlier today.

"To chime in with a congressional/historical angle on the Corby/Megan labeling imbroglio: Congress considered the lack of information on most products serious enough from a public health standpoint that (led by Henry Waxman!), it passed the dull-sounding-but-important Nutrition Labeling and Dietary Supplement Act in 1996. Waxman devotes a full chapter to it in his book. Example of typically misleading industry behavior:  Sara Lee Lite Cheesecake actually contained more calories per serving than Sara Lee's regular cheesecake. The "lite" was a marketing ploy. Confronted by an FDA task force, Sara Lee claimed that the "lite" referred to the color, not the caloric content, of the cheesecake. Similar examples abound. A perhaps more resonant point for the general public: without the Nutritional Labeling Act there would be no South Beach Diet!"

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* Why we're behind on Mad Men: Tried three times to get Seasons 1 and 2 from pirate video stores in Beijing. First time, the version we got was in Russian. Second time, Spanish and Portuguese. Third time, it was some other show altogether. Actually relieved to have a chance to rent legit versions at full price in DC!

More from the F'DOH: Summers, Schmidt

Another day, a lot more stimulation, at the "First Draft of History" event, as previously reported here.

I was the Atlantic's assigned chronicler/blogger for the interview with Lawrence Summers. First installment here; full wrapup, with clips, here. Then I got to interview Eric Schmidt of Google, who put on a real tour de force. The Atlantic's writeup by Derek Thompson, with clips, here.

Tomorrow back to reading, interview, writing -- you know, the stuff of getting the next issue of the magazine produced. But this was a worthwhile two days.

At the F'DOH

Today and tomorrow, most of the Atlantic's staff is at the Newseum in Washington, for the "First Draft of History" conference. Live streaming webcast here, along with pictures, real-time updates, after-action analyses, and so on. Atlantic staff members are rotating in the role of Official Recording Secretary (aka blogger) for each session. My duty today was the Brian Williams-David Petraeus discussion. First dispatch here; longer followup, with four clips of Petraeus in action, here.
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I spell F'DOH with an apostrophe in homage both to Homer Simpson and to Portuguese Fado music. Although I realize that for Homer alone, it should be FD'OH.

Local boys make good, China version

In an article this spring about China's recovery from the world slowdown, I mentioned a visit to the BYD company in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, where a materials-science PhD named Wang Chuanfu was leading the development of advanced battery powered cars.

On that trip I also visited the nice-but-nothing-fancy dorm-style quarters where Wang and the rest of the BYD management lived. Here's the punchline from that article (with a shot of Wang from the press conference in December announcing his new cars):

"The company's official goal is to be the biggest automaker in China by 2015, and the biggest in the world by 2025. Wang's unveiling of the car in Shenzhen coincided with U.S. congressional debate about emergency aid to GM and Chrysler. I asked Wang if he had any tips for the U.S. companies. He is a quiet, nerdish man who seemed to blanch as he heard the question translated. "For 100 years, nothing has changed in Detroit," he finally said (through the interpreter). "I think they need to reconsider their product lines."

Now, according to this report, Wang has become the richest man in China, thanks to a rise in BYD stock and a stake from Warren Buffett. That is a volatile distinction, with people's fortunes rising and falling, but impressive as an up-from-nothing manufacturing success story.

And in this article in 2007, I discussed the amazing Chinese "reality" show Win in China, which was a kind of super-capitalist version of The Apprentice. One of the finalists in the show was an earthy,  non-college-grad character named Zhou Yu and generally known as the "Lone Wolf."  Ole Schell, who has made a great new documentary about Win In China, has just posted an online report about the Wolf and his lingerie factory in Shandong province. Congrats all around. 

From the magazine: Field of dreams in China

The new issue of the Atlantic is worth reading cover to cover -- and IMHO better read on paper than on line. For sometime soon: talking systematically about what kind of material is best read, scanned, absorbed, enjoyed in what kinds of media - handheld, computer screen, "real" print, Kindle-style reader, and so on.

For the moment, a mention of my own very short article in this issue: a profile of an American family that has ended up in one of the most beautiful parts of China, trying -- against considerable odds -- to put together a coalition of local residents, Communist party officials, businesses, and NGOs to preserve traditional Chinese culture against the onslaught of kitsch-style development otherwise transforming the country's look. Their adopted home town is Xizhou, in the lush, southerly Yunnan province, and this is one view of their "Linden Centre," with local kids biking by.



More on Brian and Jeanee Linden and their ambitions here, and a four-minute narrated slideshow of the town, the center, the family, and the challenge is below (or here). That is Brian Linden, who first became known in China 25 years ago when cast in a movie about a famous and tragic US-Chinese interaction, in blue jeans and white shirt in the opening shot below.
 


If you can make your way to Yunnan, this is very much worth a visit. Below a look at "downtown" Xizhou this spring, with the bean harvest being threshed.


From a terrace in the Linden Centre.

If you're looking for the 1979 'Passionless Presidency' article...

... as mentioned by Richard Cohen in the Washington Post today, it's here.

More another time on that article, its circumstances, its aftermath, and its era -- and its applicability, or not, to current circumstances.
 

Corazon Aquino

I am sorry to hear of the death yesterday of Corazon Aquino -- former president of the Philippines, widow of the assassinated senator Benigno Aquino, heroine of the "EDSA Revolution" of 1986 that drove Ferdinand Marcos from power.

In 1987 I wrote an article about Aquino and the Philippines arguing that the removal of Marcos was sadly not likely to correct the deeper problems of political corruption and economic inequality in the country. The article was called "A Damaged Culture" and was extremely controversial in the Philippines at the time, and to a degree still now. The article as originally published is available here. Some if its references from 22 years ago now seem dated. Unfortunately many others do not. And in any reference to the Philippines, it is always important to mention the works of the great Filipino novelist F. Sionil "Frankie" Jose, whom I wrote about in the Atlantic in 1995 here and visited in Manila early this year, as described here.

From the original article, about Corazon Aquino's prospects:

"Because previous changes of government have meant so little to the Philippines, it is hard to believe that replacing Marcos with Aquino, desirable as it doubtless is, will do much besides stanching the flow of crony profits out of the country. In a sociological sense the elevation of Corazon Aquino through the EDSA revolution should probably be seen not as a revolution but as the restoration of the old order. Marcos's rise represented the triumph of the nouveau riche. He was, of course, an Ilocano, from the tough, frugal Ilocos region, in the northwest corner of Luzon. Many of those whom he enriched were also outsiders to the old-money, old-family elite that had long dominated the country's politics. These elite groups, often referred to in shorthand as Makati (the name of the wealthy district and business center of Manila), regarded Marcos the way high-toned Americans regarded Richard Nixon: clever and ambitious, but so uncouth.

"Corazon Aquino's family, the Cojuangcos, is part of this landowning elite...."

RIP.

Let a thousand flowers bloom again, Atlantic style

Here is a genuine strength of the community assembled at the Atlantic. We all take our work and the issues we're exploring seriously -- but we don't agree always or even a lot of the time about important issues. The closest thing to an across-the-board outlook was during last year's presidential election, when only a couple of people on the staff were rooting hard for the McCain-Palin ticket. But before the Iraq war, there was a really deep split, with our then-editor and many prominent writers strongly in favor of the war, and our then-managing editor and many others strongly against. Those differences were apparent -- I think in a useful way -- to anyone reading the magazine in those days and seeing the different perspectives argued out. Right now there are real differences on economic-policy matters, various aspects of foreign policy from Afghanistan to the Middle East to China, the futures of the Republican and Democratic parties, defense issues, and a lot of other specific points.

I mention this as a strength of the organization internally and also, I think, a virtue from the reader's point of view. The real differences but also real sense of community and respect can encourage people to explain and argue-out their positions more carefully rather than just assuming agreement. It's like "not Red States or Blue States but the United States of the Atlantic Monthly"!

In that spirit of respectful disagreement with a colleague and friend, let me say that Robert Kaplan's "we" does not speak for the whole magazine's staff when he says just now about China:

For years we had perceived China as a state galloping ever forward, en route to peer competitor status with the United States and its military. We forgot that foreign and defense policy emanates from a country's domestic conditions, and that if its domestic conditions are less than harmonious, its policy toward the outside world, too, may be less than robust. In other words, China's rise cannot be taken for granted. To wit, China is also grinding away at its environmental base. Its water table is diminishing, along with the nutrients in its soil. But the regime cannot afford to slow down its economic growth for fear of a popular eruption far broader than what we just saw in Xinjiang....Remember, nothing is destiny.

The limits on China's "galloping" rise and the "nothing is destiny" perspective on its future are points I've tried to convey so often that many readers may be going crazy from the repetition. (Eg here or here or here.) In a sense the heart of my disagreement with Niall Ferguson at the Aspen Ideas Festival was his seeming confidence that anything at all could be assumed as certain about China's future -- either the rise that seemed inevitable to some people until recently, or the breakup with the U.S. and the outside world that he says is now certain to come. That's my disagreement with Bob Kaplan's statement of previous views on China: "we" may have seen things that way, but "I" most certainly didn't.

Arguing for uncertainty, or for many possible futures that will in fact be shaped by real choices by real human beings, may seem weak and unsatisfying. On the other hand: it conforms to the facts, and, at least as important, it focuses attention on the difference that "we" can make through our choices, wise or foolish, about China policy and other matters from economic interaction to environmental protection. And by "we" I mean political leaders and the politically-interested community in the United States, and China, and around the world.

Beijing construction triptych #3: Opposite House

The Atlantic's latest issue has a brief article by me about a very unusual new hotel in Beijing called the Opposite House. For details -- get the magazine!

Here are a few amateur shots of what makes the place a noticeable exception among the other fancy Western hotels that have sprung up all over Beijing. Giant version of a traditional Chinese medicine chest, with (mainly) workable drawers, in the atrium:
 

Scando-Japanese minimalism in the rooms -- I mean, "studios":


Enormous woven-metal drape or sail hanging from the upper stories down through the atrium:


There are genuine, professional photos in the magazine, and this brings me to my real point. Seriously, you should read articles like this in the magazine itself, not on line.

 Some written material is merely "text" and can be absorbed equally well regardless of medium. I've claimed that I like reading novels just as much on a Kindle as in printed form. All that matters is a novel is the words. But some material is designed for something other than a computer screen, and is best absorbed from printed pages, with illustrations and thought-through layout. Most of what's in a good magazine is in this category. Long, narrative articles are simply better to read on a sequence of pages, with illustrations and margins and call-out text, than as clicked-through screens.

I'm saying: subscribe to our magazine because you'll enjoy it more that way. And: subscribe because you should! Anyone who worries about the "crisis of the press" has a chance to do something about it for two bucks a month. 

PR updates: NPR, Stanford Review, WNYC, plus NYT Mag

- On the Media interview with Bob Garfield, here, about the media-politics of health care reform. Back in 1995, I wrote this Atlantic article about the way the Clinton health-care proposal fell apart -- including the damaging role played by a hugely misleading article by Elizabeth "Betsy" McCaughey. Interview covers whether it could happen again.

- Online Q-and-A with the Stanford Review's Bellum project, here.

- Interview last week about China with Brian Lehrer of WNYC, here. These all for the record.

Also for the record, let me join others congratulating the Atlantic's Megan McArdle for what she has reported about Edmund Andrews' gripping account of his descent into deadbeat hell.

Having had some experience with writing confessional, "here's a mistake I made, and what I learned from it" articles, I understand the fundamental premise of the tell-all bargain. You're asking for the reader's trust and, if not forgiveness or respect, at least forbearance because of your brave candor in facing unflattering truths. But in those tell-all circumstances, you really do have to tell it all. There would ordinarily be no reason whatsoever for Andrews to embarrass his wife by talking about her past financial problems (two declarations of bankruptcy) -- unless he undertook to write a warts-and-all book about how his household got into financial trouble. This is also connected to the first item, above, about the health care debate. For all the mixed effects of the internet on mainstream journalism, there is a fast-feedback loop now that can correct errors that would otherwise have stood.

Frankie Jose / "Damaged Culture" link update

In an item yesterday about the distinguished Filipino novelist F. Sionil "Frankie" Jose, I mentioned that I'd taken a road trip with him to the northern reaches of Luzon and written about it in the Atlantic in 1991. Thanks to our web team, especially Cotton Codinha, that article is now online, here.

I hadn't looked at the article in a very long time and was disconcerted to find that the comparison I used yesterday to describe Jose's gusto was the very same one that came to mind 18 years ago. I hope that this unintended self-plagiarism says as much about the rightness of the comparison as it does about the limits of my imagination. It comes at the end of this part of the original article:

José is a short, plump, nearly bald man of sixty-six, who would not look out of place wearing the baggy shorts and basketball-style undershirt of the typical Chinese shopkeeper in Southeast Asia. When I see him, I am reminded of a little boy--in the way he carries his body, in his quick and unconcealed switches from desolation to glee. On our five-day trip last summer, when he was driving me and a young Soviet academic to see the sights of his youth, we passed a railroad siding where the teenage José had been held by Japanese soldiers during the Second World War. "I was so scared," he said, his face clouding like a ten-year-old's. "I was so little and skinny then--ho ho ho!" he roared, slapping his round belly. We stopped every few miles so that José could see whether the cane-sugar sweets, or the little roasted birds, or the other regional delicacies were as tasty as he recalled. When he was not planning the next meal, he sat watching women with a blissful look. "Ah, I tell you, Jim, the eye never dulls!" he said in a restaurant after four stunning young women walked by our table "Only the flesh becomes weak--ho ho ho!"

Eventually I asked him how his wife, Tessie, whom he married forty-two years ago, after both had been students at the University of Santo Tomas, in Manila, feels about the adoring descriptions of young women that fill his work. "She knows I am devoted to her," he said, serious for a moment. "And she forgives me my pecadeeeeyos!" A rich roar of laughter. This, I thought, is what it must have been like to be on the road with Rabelais.

Because Frankie Jose has been so centrally involved in debates about the effects of Philippine culture on the country's political and economic destiny, for the record I include a link to my 1987 article "A Damaged Culture," which also cites Jose's works. This article generated a lot of heat, and some support, in the Philippines. From what I can tell similar debates still rage.

Let a thousand-and-one flowers bloom at the Atlantic!

(Following the previous thousand blooming flowers, here.)

I hear via my aviation grapevine that my colleague Andrew Sullivan is making fun of Newt Gingrich in general, and in specific for this idea about modernizing the US air-traffic control system:

[Newt says:] "One of the projects I'm going to launch -- we don't have a name for it yet -- is an air-traffic modernization project... You can do a space-based air-traffic-control system with half the current number of air-traffic controllers, increase the amount of air traffic in the northeast by 40 percent, allow point-to-point flights without the controllers having to have highways in the sky, and reduce the amount of aviation fuel by 10 percent."
[Andrew asks:] Why would I be even more terrified to get on a plane after that "reform"?

As for making fun of Newt in general, have at it! But on this idea, he turns out to be saying something smart.

To play the role of Mr. Gradgrind for a moment, if you're terrified getting on a plane, it has to be for reasons beyond the realm of the statistical or the "reality-based," since on average this is about the safest way you can spend your time. Often entire years pass without a single death from a crash on US airlines - something that can't be said of riding in a car, walking down the street, taking a bath, lying in your own bed, etc. Yes, when things go wrong, they're grisly, but traffic deaths, random murders, bathtub drownings, etc are also bad ways to go.  (And yes, yes, I realize that Andrew is exaggerating for effect.)

Still, there are risks both real and perceived in flying. The system Gingrich is talking about is designed to reduce at least the real ones.

What he has in mind is no doubt a variant of what is called "NextGen," for Next Generation Transportation. It involves a satellite-based navigation system (think: GPS) called ADS-B. Not everyone agrees on every detail of these new systems. But the approach as a whole constitutes a mature, vetted, sensible, picked-over-for-years proposal that has most everything going for it except the long, slow process of getting it accepted and implemented. I described its potential back in 2001 in this Atlantic cover story and the related book Free Flight. More available here, here, here, and here.

As for why this system is more modern: Today's air traffic control system is essentially like a telephone network in which you must ring up a central switchboard and ask an operator's help in placing each call. The new system would allow a lot more automated routing - with less needless, switchboard-operator-type human intervention but (as with anything in aviation) human and automated safety measures piled on triple-depth.

As for why it could be more efficient and ultimately safer: Today's system funnels a great deal of traffic through a small number of specified routes - which therefore become the only crowded places in the sky. A newer system would allow more planes to take a variety of courses, staying out of each other's way. (It doesn't solve the problem of too many airplanes wanting to land at the same few over-crowded airports, but as a side effect it is designed to make smaller, under-used airports more attractive and practical.) In a sense it's like the difference between cars, which can take a variety of routes through town, and trolleys, which go where the tracks are laid and nowhere else. I am oversimplifying, but there actually is something to Gingrich's plan. It's part of what is good about him, not what's bad.

Should this be the basis of the GOP's new program? They could do a lot worse -- and, as I'm sure Andrew agrees, they probably will.

F-22 fiesta

A few days ago I said that I greatly enjoyed my colleague Mark Bowden's article about fighter aces but disagreed with his implication that the F-22 was the way to go for the Air Force or the country.

I have heard from many readers since then -- a few supporting the F-22, most against it. I'll start here with one representative "pro" comment. After the jump, a number of the meatier anti-F-22 arguments.

To be clear about a potentially awkward intramural point: although I disagree with Mark's conclusion, I am, as I said the first time, grateful for his engrossing article itself and for the opportunity it's created to air a range of opinion about a very important upcoming choice. He also has been extremely (and typically) mensch-like about the debate that his piece has inspired. 
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Pro comment -- rather, anti-anti -- from someone whose email address identifies him as an employee of a major defense contractor:

Excuse me, but you seem to be caught up in the propaganda of the F-15 mafia.  The F-15 mafia and others have successfully reduced the numbers of F-22 production to the point where economies of scale are no longer possible.*  Unfortunately, those who really know the issues and the data, are not going to engage in a debate, because the result is to trash our country and our capability.  Because of freedom of speech, you are allowed too participate in a debate that has not helped our country.  No complex aircraft is without problems, but maintainers have never had an aircraft which provided so much capability on day one...

The per unit cost isn't even the whole picture, the total life cycle cost is.  And cost is relative.  Do you have the numbers for all alternatives?  Anyway, you don't have the numbers, no one in the unclassifed media does. 

 * A major "anti" argument, as originally laid out by Chuck Spinney in 1991, was of course that economies of scale would never have been possible for this airplane, because the cost estimates used for the initial "buy-in" were implausibly low.

More after the jump:
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A project I'm proud of

Attentive viewers of this site and readers of the latest issue of the magazine will have noticed ads for a new series of DVD's called On the Frontlines: Doing Business in China. Here is the back story.

I have a certain forelock-tugging reluctance to sell, sell, sell when it comes to my own personal products and projects. Just ask my publishers! But about team efforts I feel no such diffidence. On the contrary: I think this magazine is great, and I'll say so as often as I can to anyone I can. And I think that this video series, which is the product of many peoples' labor and creativity, is very, very good and worth a serious look.

A video journalist named Bob Schapiro, with his associates Dovar Chen and others, had worked for years getting on-camera interviews with many Chinese officials, industrialists, workers, analysts, etc about the current situation of the country. About two years ago I met them in Shanghai, when they were continuing their reporting and I was one of their B-roll interviewees. 

Later, as they put the series together, I saw some of the early cuts and was genuinely impressed with what they'd been able to see and record and present on screen. I happily accepted an offer to be involved in further shaping of the series and to be one of the on-camera hosts (along with the young journalist and performer Emily Chang). Joe Nocera, my long-time friend from the Washington Monthly and Texas Monthly who is now the king of the business journalists, eventually joined the project to provide talk-show type analysis after each segment, in on-camera discussions with me.

What I particularly like about the series is that it shows people, places, and things -- inside factories, inside Chinese companies, workers from remote areas -- that are hard for most Westerners to see, and that finally leave a different impression if you actually see them as opposed to reading about them (even in the best magazines). It also shows you a little bit of the hosts: mainly, you're seeing real Chinese people in action.
 
This is very much a team effort. I'll have more to say about it periodically. The Atlantic is a partner in presenting it, and I have the same enthusiasm for it as for other projects under our label. The main site is here; a few previews and trailers are here.  If you enter a "member code" Atl-Fallows there is a $50 discount. What a deal! Seriously, I learned things about parts of China I hadn't seen by working on the project, and I think others will find it informative too.
 

Coda (for now) to the Mischke saga

David Brauer, of MinnPost.com, has posted a two-part Q-and-A with Tommy Mischke, the recently-deposed radio humorist-genius of KSTP in St. Paul. (Previously on this subject here, here, and -- eight years ago in an Atlantic article - here.)
(Mischke, as "shown" in our magazine story in 2000:)


The really surprising part of the interview is Mischke's description of exactly why he was fired "for cause" and with no warning, severance, benefits, phase-out period, etc. That's in Part 1 of the interview. In Part 2, he talks about the economic future of radio, the choices available to people like him who don't fit the standard AM political-talk mold, and various other challenges that will sound uncomfortably familiar to people in print journalism. Worth reading for culture-of-media purposes even if you've never heard of Mischke and don't care about life in "good old St. Paul, big-time Minneapolis" as Mischke always refers to "The Cities" on his show.

Actually, one other point. I hadn't looked at my article on Mischke for lo these past eight years, but I did so just now. After the jump is one passage that tries to convey the on-air effect. And, for another long interview with Mischke from three years ago, go to the MischkeMadness site here.
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Continue reading "Coda (for now) to the Mischke saga" »

Non-politics, non-tech, non-China: Istanbul!

Twice during our past two and a half years of living in China, my wife and I have made vacation trips to Turkey. I had not been before and now really regret that fact.

My brief travel article in the new issue of the Atlantic, here, offers a vignette that may convey part of what I found so intriguing about Istanbul. This slide show, with the Atlantic's slickest new video-effect tools by Jennie Rothenberg Gritz, has more of the Ottoman empire look. Go see for yourself -- I mean, not just via the articles but with a trip to Turkey.
 

Gao Xiqing interview in the new Atlantic

I think highly of Gao Xiqing. He is the president of the China Investment Corporation, which oversees about $200 billion of China's overseas investment, largely in U.S. markets. (You think you're worried about the market's collapse....) He knows the United States and American culture well: he went to Duke Law School in the 1980s, was the first Chinese citizen to pass the NY State Bar, and practiced at Richard Nixon's old firm, Mudge, Rose. And he gives every sign of having enjoyed this immersion in America. Twenty years ago he came back to help build China's securities industry, and he took his current position when the CIC was created last year.



Gao has an earthy, jokey command of colloquial English and -- at least on my exposure to him -- he laughs frequently, including about himself. (The picture above is how he would look just before cracking a joke.) I was grateful that he agreed to an on-the-record interview, in Beijing, shortly before the U.S. presidential election. I think it is worth reading with some care: the article about the interview is in the new issue, here.

In the previous issue of the Atlantic, I complained that Chinese officialdom generally has a tin ear when it comes to explaining itself to the outside world. It is trapped in formulations and stilted language -- "jackal with a human face" to refer to a certain "splittist" leader of Tibetans, for instance -- and seems unable to present arguments that actually engage the thought processes of the outside world, as opposed to reflecting internal-Chinese concepts and power plays. Gao is a striking exception. I am in no position to assess his financial expertise, but I can judge his ability to engage seriously with outside questions. If more powerful Chinese people spoke more often to more outsiders this way, things would be better all around. 

Three colleagues

Often I make some explanatory or background comment about my own article in each new issue of the Atlantic. But I don't like to say much about other articles, because on the merits I'd end up saying: Hey, read them all, they're all great! Usually, and especially in this issue, they are.

For special reasons I want to mention three current items by my colleagues.

1) Jeffrey Goldberg's hilarious-but-serious takedown of the TSA. The wasteful spectacle of "security theater" has been on my mind for a long time, as the folly of this system was evident from pretty near the start. Very soon after 9/11, the only two airline-security measures that really matter -- fortified cockpit doors, and the vigilance of a flying public that now knows what a hijacking can mean -- were in place. Since then we've erected an edifice that imposes a huge indirect cost on the traveling public while (as Jeff points out in the article) doing very little to discourage serious terrorist threats. Two years ago in the Atlantic, I quoted John Mueller, author of Overblown, to similar effect:

The widely held view among security experts is that this airport spending is largely for show. Strengthened cockpit doors and a flying public that knows what happened on 9/11 mean that commercial airliners are highly unlikely to be used again as targeted flying bombs. "The inspection process is mostly security theater, to make people feel safe about flying," says John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State and the author of a forthcoming book about the security-industrial complex.

But there seems to be a ratchet effect in "security theater" projects. Once a "safeguard"  is adopted, no one dares propose taking it down. Here in Beijing, X-ray screening for all handbags, briefcases, and other parcels taken onto the subway was introduced as a special Olympic-security measure last July. The games are gone, but the screeners (and the long lines of people waiting in front of them) are still there. If logic and evidence had any power to change a system, Jeff Goldberg's article would have some effect.

2) Barbara Wallraff, in the latest entry in her new Atlantic blog, asks for a word to describe people whose street etiquette takes a certain form. My nominee is "the people of Beijing and Shanghai." I was actually planning to write something about the mysterious difference between Chinese and Japanese walking-styles on the street. (Pedestrians in Tokyo, in general, act as if they're aware that ten million other people need to fit onto the same streets, and make themselves small. Pedestrians in Shanghai or Beijing, in the same overgeneralization, act as if they're the only ones walking and make themselves big.) Details, theory, evidence, and photos for another time.

3) Andrew Sullivan, in this item, has very nice and accurate things to say about the Atlantic's elegant redesign, and about the virtues of actually subscribing to the magazine. He is right on all counts -- and also has a very polished and non-bloggish essay about blogs in this issue. As for subscribing, in the short term the physical magazine really is an important complement to the (ever more important) web site, in that it can combine photos, art, and text in a way not matched on screen. I feel this difference very keenly overseas, where I get print issues five or six weeks late. It's simply different to read a magazine like this on a designed page. And in the long run, this is part of how businesses like ours survive.
 

Jackal with a human face (updated)

Non-politics: Yellow Sheep River in Chinese

As previously mentioned here and here, the Atlantic's October issue has an article I put a lot of effort and heart into. It was about an idealistic attempt to improve the prospects for children living in China's remote, scenic, and very poor far western regions, including an area called Yellow Sheep River. The article, "How the West Was Wired," is here, and a narrated slideshow is here.

If anyone was waiting to read it in Chinese, a translated version, prepared by the "Town and Talent" organization described in the article, is now available here.

I realize that there is some irony in announcing, in English, the availability of a version for people who are not comfortable reading English. (Like the safety cards in airline exit rows: "If you cannot read these instructions, please let the flight crew know...") Still, I know that many Chinese readers are English-literate but naturally prefer to handle long material in Chinese. Here it is.

Three from the archives

In the middle of Hellzapoppin news developments on the political and economic and photo-journalism fronts, I am more or less off the grid for a few days -- out of touch, ironically, because I am immersed in meetings at a company that is all about the internet. For the moment, please indulge me in references to three past Atlantic articles I think are relevant to the day's news:

1) From three years ago, Countdown to a Meltdown, in the Atlantic. Some parts of this imagined-history of the great American real estate and financial collapse of the late Bush era now seem amusingly dated. But I submit that as a primer on the factors behind the real estate and financial collapse of the late Bush era, it's not bad and is worth another look.

2) From nine months ago, The $1.4 Trillion Question. The ordinary people of China, via their government's investment of the country's accumulated trade surpluses, are tremendously exposed to the American real estate and financial meltdown. The difference between those Chinese investors and the Americans who have lost their homes, pensions, jobs, etc is that the Chinese are on average so much poorer. Again I think the article stands up all right in explaining how this arrangement happened, and how long the Chinese will put up with it.

3) From this month, How the West Was Wired. Ok, this isn't immediately connected to the breaking news. But, for me, it puts some of that news in perspective -- and describes a part of China and a slice of the human experience that left a bigger emotional mark on me than anything else I have seen in the last two years of travel through this country. On the chance that it will be overlooked in Lehman/AIG/lipstick frenzy, I mention it once more. Along with this slide show and this link to a charitable organization that is doing very impressive work and deserves support.

Back to Hellzapoppin in due course.

Yellow Sheep River

The new issue of the Atlantic is in subscribers' hands and up on the web. It includes my story on a touching and quixotic effort by two businessmen / idealists to bring the good parts of modern technology to a remote village in Gansu Province called Yellow Sheep River. Here is one of the people I write about, Kenny Lin, on horseback near a Tibetan prayer-flag structure in the 11,000-foot highlands outside Yellow Sheep River.

 

There's an accompanying slide show, here, narrated with my best Beijing-air-induced chronic rasp, that gives an idea of how completely different China's far western regions look from the images of Shanghai and Beijing now familiar on TV.

The story talks about an odd-sounding but intriguing effort to lift children from rural poverty via ...blogging! In effect, it gives them scholarships that allow them to stay in (public) school, and in return they chronicle their lives in words and pictures on web sites, developing tech skills along the way. Here are some the children he is trying to help:



The main Chinese site for this project is here; the English language version is here. It includes an easy way to sponsor students for this work, as my wife and I have done and will continue to do.

Non-Olympics, non-China: check out Josh Green's memo haul

In case you have not seen any of the (deserved) zillion other references to this at various Atlantic sites, it is very much worth reading my colleague Joshua Green's new story about what went wrong with Hillary Clinton's campaign, and the trove of memos he collected while reporting the story.

Josh has done an outstanding job on this beat for a long time, starting with his definitive article nearly two years ago about how Hillary Clinton's success in the Senate had prepared her, and perhaps mis-positioned her, for a run for the presidency. Also, as everyone in media-land knows, a year ago GQ commissioned him for a big piece on the Clinton campaign -- which the magazine then killed, by all accounts as part of a deal to get better access to Bill Clinton for a different story. Josh then published this excellent account instead in the Atlantic.

The magnum opus among the memos, based on what I've seen, is this one from Mark Penn, which is sure to be parsed and reflected-upon for months and years.

Related thought that comes to my mind while reading through these documents: I make my living writing things down, but even I have reached the point where I am not willing to put any sentiment whatsoever into reproducible form -- in an email that could be forwarded, in a document that could be cut-and-pasted -- without thinking about how it would look if it got into unintended hands.

That is, the perfection of the technology for spreading and sharing written material has made writing weirdly less useful for conveying private thought. It's risky as a way to share thoughts about running a political campaign; it's reckless as a way to say anything about any other person you might not want him or her to hear. The evolution of technology may return us to the era when the no-tech face-to-face meeting, or the hard-to-copy handwritten note, is the most secure means of communication. And when written statements, even in the "privacy" of email, are necessarily blanded-down by pre-knowledge that they could turn up somewhere unexpected months or years or decades later.
 

Coates, Yglesias, (Fallows), and Atlantic Blogs

I am sorry to see the talented and original-minded Matthew Yglesias leave the Atlantic's blog team, and I wish him well at his new site. I am glad to see the talented and original-minded Ta-Nehisi Coates join the Atlantic's blog team.

A word about that team and its makeup. Four of its members, as you can tell by their output, are "real" bloggers, whose work on this site is their main job for the Atlantic. These are: Andrew Sullivan, Megan McArdle, Marc Ambinder, and now Ta-Nehisi Coates. Matthew Yglesias was previously in this category.

Four of us, as you can also usually tell by our output, are in a different situation, with online writing as a side responsibility that is supposed to fit around, and come second to, main jobs writing or editing articles for the print magazine. These are: Ross Douthat, Clive Crook, Jeffrey Goldberg, and me.

As is evident in many ways, I am not producing an actual blog. So perhaps this is a moment for a one-time-only explanation of what I think I am doing, which appears after the jump.

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Members wanted: Atlantic advisory panel

In case you haven't seen this mentioned at other Atlantic blog sites, the magazine is actively recruiting readers to serve on an advisory panel, called Atlantic Exchange. The idea is to solicit ideas and reactions about the continual evolution of the web site and the magazine.

Join early! Join often! Details and "click to join" button here. I am trying to figure out the right pseudonym that will let me sign up myself.

How to find the "Envision" company of China: look for "Vision Wall"

The June issue of the Atlantic went online a few days ago. It includes a lot of great political and cultural coverage (this and this and this, among many others). I also have an article in that issue on the surprisingly positive aspects of China's generally-dire environmental situation.

Since the issue has appeared on line, I've received several queries per a day about a question I tried to answer here earlier: where to find more info on the "Envision" company that is featured in the story? This is the company that makes super-efficient window glass but has been having a hard time breaking into China's construction market. Outside China, the company is known as "Vision Wall." You can learn more and make contact here.

Technology, not politics

Andrew Sullivan asks in his blog a question several readers have asked me (as well as him) directly: Why is his part of the Atlantic blog empire blocked by the Great Firewall of China, while the rest of the Atlantic's site, archives, photos, comments, etc is not?

I love the idea that discerning Communist cadres in Beijing have pored over and parsed everything in the magazine and determined that Andrew's posts are in some basic way more threatening to the regime's long-term legitimacy -- they're betting on Hillary? -- than anything else the magazine serves up. Alas, there's a prosaic and purely mechanical explanation.

For legacy reasons -- ie, his long pre-Atlantic blog existence -- Andrew's blog is hosted on an different system from everything else displayed on TheAtlantic.com. The system Andrew uses is one of several that are subject to blanket black-outs by the Great Firewall; the one that hosts the rest of the magazine is not. Andrew, come join us on the new system! Andrew's aspiring readers in China: try a VPN!

I think of the following episode when considering the how and why of Chinese press-control policy: A few months ago I ran into a man who was operating a fairly daring museum, which had many relics from the Cultural Revolution. I asked him whether the government was giving him trouble. "The government is busy," he said. Saves time just to turn whole web domains on and off.

The bright side #3: Reinforcements in the frog wars

Stumbling just now into my apartment in Beijing, some 24 hours after pre-dawn checkout from the airport hotel at LAX, I discover that my Atlantic colleague Jeffrey Goldberg has volunteered for the noblest of efforts. This is the long, twilight struggle to mock politicians, journalists, raconteurs, etc who repeat the stupid, cruel, hackneyed, and unscientific boiled-frog cliche, so that eventually people will stop saying it. I knew I'd find an ally some day.

We all pick our causes. During my brief and enjoyable stint at Microsoft long ago, I worked on various big-think projects. But my claim to have changed the world may rest on my all-out war against "Clippy," the moronic "help" feature that popped up to say "Hey, you seem to be writing a letter!" each time you typed "Dear ..." I don't want to overstate things, but before I arrived, Word came with Clippy turned on by default. Now it's turned off by default. Judge for yourself.

So may it someday be concerning the frogs, thanks to their new defender Mr. Goldberg. And I actually have frog news, which at some point after I get some sleep I may share.

The Atlantic's motto (cont.): Today's news three years ago

Just one last reminder, this one prompted by the Bear Stearns news and the collapse of Asian stock markets around me as I type, of the Atlantic's "Countdown to a Meltdown" cover story, by me, from the summer of 2005.

The point of steering readers toward the article once more is its attempt to explain, while it was going on, the origins of the credit bubble whose collapse is now causing problems.

Some "predictions" in this fictional history are looking pretty shaky now -- for instance, the assumption that the first black American with a serious chance at the presidency would be a four-star Army general running as a Republican. (Our 45th president in this scenario, the "Desert Eagle," becomes a hero by leading the raid that captures Osama bin Laden just before the 2012 elections.) But some of the other predictions, about the spread of panic from the real estate markets to the international financial system.....

'Great Firewall' article now online

Two week ago I mentioned that the March issue of the Atlantic -- by that point snugly in subscribers' hands! -- would include my article on how the Great Firewall of China actually works. That article is now online, here. So is the entire issue, which is full of great stuff.

Also, my interview about the article and the general China-tech scene is online here. It was conducted by the Atlantic's estimable Abby Cutler -- as the last thing she did on our staff before leaving to begin medical training. Applying the healing touch in different venues, is the way we like to think about it at the magazine.

Bill Clinton on getting involved in the primaries, ca. 2002

In the fall of 2002 I flew from Washington to Little Rock and then Fayetteville, Arkansas -- in my own little propeller airplane, it was a blast -- to spend time interviewing Bill Clinton. He was just settling into his post-presidential life. Raising funds for his foundation (now a source of controversy on its own, then still a goal). Laying out plans for his presidential library, then still under construction. Working on his book -- already behind schedule, but of course it turned out well. And theorizing about how, as a young and vigorous former two-term president, he should deal with the next crop of Democratic candidates then on the rise.

Ah, if only he'd listened to his own advice five-plus years later. Sample: "Look," he told me back then. "I can't run." As I said in the article, "In his tone he reminded me again of a champion athlete whose career had come to an unnaturally early end."

"If somebody needs me to go do something [for the party], and nobody else can do it, I'll go do it." He pointed out that he had appeared at more than a hundred fundraising events for the party and its candidates in 2002. 'I'd like for my direct political involvement to go way down ..."

Full transcript of the interview is here. Passages from the resulting cover story, "Post President for Life," come after the jump.

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On the actual, you know, "issues" the next President will face

Enough of this campaign hubbub! Whoever is left standing to be sworn in 377 days from now will suddenly have to worry about things like.... the Chinese government's enormous hoard of U.S. dollar assets.

My attempt to explain how exactly that pile of money was stacked up, and what the Chinese government has in mind for it, in this article from the Atlantic's new January-February issue. If you been yearning to know how the dollar you spend at Wal-Mart or CVS is eventually reincarnated as a Chinese-held Treasury note, or why Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone is about the most reviled foreigner in China at the moment, your dreams have come true.

Unlike most previous such announcements, I don't have to say "Subscribers Only" for this one. It's in the free section of our site. Nonetheless, as always, Subscribe! Among other reasons, you'll get to see the wonderful full-sized version of the wonderful Guy Billout's illustration for the piece, reproduced in miniature online and below.

Media watch: C-Span Sunday morning

You've heard about the gala feature-packed 150th Anniversary issue of the Atlantic Monthly! See it discussed, in real time and with exciting viewer call-ins, on C-Span's Washington Journal this coming Sunday morning, Oct 21, 9:15-10 am. (Assuming I can get up by then.)