Why The Atlantic’s Scientology Advertorial Was Bad

The Atlantic has apologised for the way they handled a sponsored article about Scientology on their website last night. That’s good, and necessary. (It belongs on their actual website, rather than in an email campaign, but whatever.)

The magazine would doubtless like for this to be the end of the discussion, and it probably will be. Most readers will forget it happened, except the ones who already hated the magazine. But the thing that happened last night is interesting for a couple of reasons, and I think it’s worth actually laying them out before we all agree to drop it and hope it never happens again. Specifically, there are two kinds of <>bad to talk about, here, and it’s very hard to talk about them at the same time, so I won’t — via redwolf.newsvine.com