Media

Last year, Reader's Digest announced that it was partnering with Rick Warren "to produce an inspirational multimedia platform called The Purpose Driven Connection."  Just a few months later, the magazine announced that the effort had been such a success that it was going to become the model for the future as the magazine.

Well, now a few more months have passed and the project is shutting down:

The Reader's Digest Association is dropping its high-profile joint venture with TV evangelist Rick Warren, due to a lack of subscriptions to the Purpose Driven Connection, The Post has learned.

The magazine will cease publication after the Christmas issue due out in mid-November.

Warren, the pastor of Saddleback Church in California and author of the bestselling book "Purpose Driven Life" said that he and RDA will transition the project into a web only venture over the next few months.

RDA, which is operating in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, will cease funding the operation entirely in March 2010 and turn the project over to the Warren’s company.

UPDATE: Warren and Reader's Digest are claiming that they are shutting down the magazine because the website has been so successful:

"Impressive reader feedback has prompted us to focus all our energies on our digital format, so our content can be expanded, international, interactive and free," Warren explained. "The positive response from readers was so overwhelming we didn't want the content to be limited only to Americans who could afford a subscription to a magazine."

...

"Our biggest discovery was learning that people prefer reading our content online rather than in print, because it is more convenient and accessible," said Warren. "Cell phones now allow us to take content everywhere. And, from our viewpoint, an online magazine allows us to minister to people internationally; provide more content and features than we could fit in a print magazine; create interaction and two-way dialogue; and offer it for free.

"So when we heard the feedback and noticed subscriptions to the print magazine lagging behind Internet usage, in spite of strong retail newsstand sales, we jumped at the chance to go all digital," Warren concluded. "Thankfully, Reader's Digest was willing to help us make the transition."

I'm guessing that if, say, the Washington Post teamed up with a progressive group to create a new website called TheLiberals.com, right-wing activists and media critics would have a complete meltdown.

I'm likewise guessing that we will see no such meltdown about this:

Conservatives and citizen journalists have a new interactive community destination that showcases breaking news, opinion and culture with stunning technology, patriotic layout and ideological muscle.

TheConservatives.com -- a joint online media venture from The Washington Times and the Heritage Foundation -- is a tool to "reinvent the right" and steer the public discourse. It is up and running as of Tuesday and geared to those who are not content to sit on the sidelines.

"TheConservatives.com creates a cutting-edge new marriage between the social publishing world of bloggers and the social networking world of Twitter, Facebook and the like. Most opinion sites today enable thought-leaders to talk down to the masses. But TheConservatives.com empowers users to change the direction of that dialogue, allowing the Joe the Plumbers of the world to speak up to major thinkers, like Newt Gingrich," said John Solomon, executive editor and vice president for content of The Times.

"It is convenient. It is groundbreaking. And we believe it will transform grass-roots communications, enabling a two-way dialogue. The best ideas can grow up from the netroots, reaching like-minded opinion leaders. It is a technology and a concept that can be adapted by thinkers on the right, the left and the center," Mr. Solomon said.

The August 3 issue of the New Yorker includes an only-in-the-New-Yorker-length profile (seven full pages) of right-wing radio host Michael Savage. Savage’s fiercely ugly anti-gay and other extremist rhetoric has often been spotlighted by Media Matters, earning the group a special place in the pantheon of things Savage hates. Savage has called Media Matters “evil” and “Stalinists” and is currently engaged in a ludicrous campaign to challenge the group’s nonprofit status.

While Savage loves to hate the media and Media Matters, he’s found a friend in Kelefa Sanneh, author of the New Yorker profile (subscription required), which feels like a many-thousand word promo for Savage’s radio show. Sanneh is smitten with Savage, “more days than not, a marvelous storyteller, a quirky thinker, and an incorrigible free-associator.” He calls Savage’s show “one of the most addictive programs on radio, and one of the least predictable.”

Sanneh doesn’t ignore that Savage has a well-documented hatred of gays and that his central thesis is “that lefties are ruining the world, or trying to,” and quotes some of Savage’s memorable moments, such as the one that got him thrown off MSNBC, when he told a caller “Oh, you’re one of the sodomites. You should only get AIDS and die, you pig.”

But Sanneh finds Savage so weirdly charming and entertaining (he ruminates about death!) that he is quick to dismiss the host’s virulent rhetoric. Here’s Sanneh:

“The immoderate quotes meticulously catalogued by the liberal media-watchdog site mediamatters.org are accurate but misleading, insofar as they reduce a willfully erratic broadcast to a series of political brickbats.”

“Immoderate” is an extraordinarily moderate word to apply to Savage’s serial attacks on gay people, which includes such charges as "[t]he radical homosexual agenda will not stop until religion is outlawed in this county," and that gay people "threaten your very survival." Gays, he says, “want full and total subjugation of this society to their agenda.” Savage has also promoted right-wing lies about Obama being born in Kenya and being a Muslim, and said during the campaign:

"I think he was hand-picked by some very powerful forces both within and outside the United State of America to drag this country into a hell that it has not seen since the Civil War of the middle of the 19th century.”

In a podcast interview posted on the New Yorker site, Sanneh said that people from the left and right do “a pretty good job of getting offended at the other people’s pundits.” Sanneh draws a stunning sort of moral equivalence between Savage, the kind of guy liberals “get all worked up about,” and Al Franken , who some conservatives would consider “an angry, hateful guy.”

Sanneh seems uninterested in considering whether the kind of political rhetoric Savage specializes in has the potential to fuel hatred and violence. Savage’s liberal-hating books were among those found on the shelves of the Tennessee man who opened fire in a Unitarian Universalist church last year to vent his hatred of liberals who he said were destroying the country. Sanneh says that Savage’s best-selling books are “political polemics” but says “none capture the freewheeling sensibility of the show or the complicated personality of the man.”

I’m just going to flat-out steal this great post from Eric Boehlert at Media Matters on this insane Washington Times editorial, which declares President Obama to be historically unpopular:  

President Obama's media cheerleaders are hailing how loved he is. But at the 100-day mark of his presidency, Mr. Obama is the second-least-popular president in 40 years.

According to Gallup's April survey, Americans have a lower approval of Mr. Obama at this point than all but one president since Gallup began tracking this in 1969. The only new president less popular was Bill Clinton, who got off to a notoriously bad start after trying to force homosexuals on the military and a federal raid in Waco, Texas, that killed 86. Mr. Obama's current approval rating of 56 percent is only one tick higher than the 55-percent approval Mr. Clinton had during those crises.

As the attached chart shows, five presidents rated higher than Mr. Obama after 100 days in office. Ronald Reagan topped the charts in April 1981 with 67 percent approval. Following the Gipper, in order of popularity, were: Jimmy Carter with 63 percent in 1977; George W. Bush with 62 percent in 2001; Richard Nixon with 61 percent in 1969; and George H.W. Bush with 58 percent in 1989.

As Boehlert points out, this would be true if it were, you know, true … which it isn’t, since Obama’s approval rating is actually 65%, not 56% as the Washington Times claims.  Thus:

Compared to previous presidents at the 100 day mark, Obama is more popular than Bush, Clinton, and Bush. Only Reagan polled better, and that was right after he survived an assassination attempt in March of his first year in office. So if you set aside Reagan's rather extraordinary circumstances, Obama is more popular at the 100 day mark than any president since Lyndon Johnson.  

Here is what Gallup itself says:

As President Barack Obama concludes his first 100 days on the job, Gallup Poll Daily tracking for the week of April 20-26 finds 65% of Americans approving of how he is doing and only 29% disapproving. Obama's average weekly job ratings have varied only slightly thus far, ranging from 61% to 67%.

The new president's approval rating at the 100-day mark is notable in that nearly all major demographic categories of Americans are pleased with his job performance, as evidenced by approval ratings above the majority level. Only in terms of political and ideological categories does Obama have a significant proportion of detractors; a majority of Republicans and self-described "conservatives" disapprove of his job performance.

…

Bottom Line

Obama's weekly job approval ratings in the Gallup Poll have been running at 61% or better since he took office, and register 65% at the conclusion of his first 100 days. According to a recent Gallup review of the average first-quarter approval ratings of all elected presidents since Dwight Eisenhower in 1953, Obama's mid-60s approval level is solidly positive, although not extraordinary in historical terms.

And if you follow the “recent Gallup review” link, here is what you find:

Obama's 63% first-quarter average matches the historical average of 63% for elected presidents' first quarters since 1953. However, it is the fourth highest for a newly elected president since that time, and the highest since Jimmy Carter's 69% in 1977. The historical first-quarter average includes two presidents whose scores exceeded 70% (John Kennedy's 74% and Dwight Eisenhower's 71%).

From a broader historical perspective, Obama's 63% quarterly average is well above the historical norm for all approval ratings, regardless of presidential quarter. It ranks in the 74th percentile of all presidential quarters since 1945, and is significantly better than the 54% average rating for all presidential quarters.

So Gallup itself says that Obama’s approval rating “is well above the historical norm for all approval ratings,” but the Washington Times, citing Gallup’s poll, declares Obama to be “the second-least-popular president in 40 years.”

Allow me to second Boehlert’s amazement at this editorial and his declaration that “I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't read it with my own eyes” because I honestly didn’t believe it until I clicked through his post and read it with my own eyes.