The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Scientology ‘Advertorial’ Scandal Exposes Atlantic Executive as Truthless Swine

If nothing else, the past week has made clear that The Atlantic‘s president, M. Scott Havens, is an unethical scoundrel who cannot be trusted in the vicinity of anything purporting to be “journalism.” Monday, The Atlantic embarrassed itself by publishing a glowing “sponsored content” article that heaped praise on the leadership of the Scientology cult. […]

#LennayKekuaFacts: What You Don’t Know About Manti Te’o’s Fake Girlfriend

Shortly before she died, Lennay gave an exclusive interview to Jayson Blair of the New York Times. #LennayKekuaFacts — Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) January 18, 2013 From the “Too Good to Check” file: The Times was not among the most prominent offenders in taking at face value what turned out to be a hoax, as […]

Five Years Ago Today …

. . . I tendered my resignation at The Washington Times: You may recall that I attempted to quit The Washington Times in August 2007, and was persuaded not to do so by Wes Pruden and Fran Coombs. Well, Wes and Fran are leaving now, so I suppose now is as good a time as any […]

‘Streisand Effect’: Scientology Imploding?

One of the principles of the New Media age is that attempts to suppress the truth tend to backfire, generating greater interest in the hidden truth. The so-called “Streisand Effect” may now be invoked in the wake of Monday’s debacle in which The Atlantic published a ludicrously over-the-top “advertorial” for Scientology and was forced to […]

The Problem With ‘Sponsored Content’: Atlantic Unpublishes Scientology Article

How do you turn pixels into profits? This is an industry-wide issue for journalism in the digital New Media age, and the “sponsored content” approach — selling ads that look like articles — is supposed to be the wave of the future. Well . . . The Atlantic apparently sold space to the Church Creepy Ripoff […]

‘It’s Not About Politics, It’s About News’

That, in seven simple words, is what Ali Akbar has been thinking about for the past month. He and I have had several long conversations about what an effective, innovative New Media operation would look like and, by the end of this month, he plans to start rolling it out at Viral Read. Not much […]

News From the People’s Democratic Republic of 3600 New York Avenue

The paranoid managerial regime now in charge of The Washington Times has announced a successful further liquidation of the kulaks: The Washington Times summoned several staff members to the auditorium this morning. Inside sources say management has laid off approximately 25 employees in a newsroom of 90 . . . Several employees who were not invited to this […]

Memoir, Narcissism and the Problem of the Unreliable First-Person Narrator

In addition to its advice about “Crazy Hot Sex” (“10 Secrets to Intense Action”), the February issue of Cosmo features an interview with an actress you probably never heard of before. Julianne Hough tells Cosmo that when she was studying dance in London as a girl, she “was abused, mentally, physically, everything. . . . […]

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