Celebrity Values and Aspirations Drive the Mass Media and Society

The Atlantic Monthly is a media entity that has a special niche in the media universe. It is a literary magazine who marketing base group is similar to Harper's--a small, but vocal and well place intellectual elite. Now that Mortimer Zuckerman a New York real estate baron has given up on making the Atlantic Monthly a solidly profitable entity, he decided to sell it to another blueblood compatriot, David Bradley. Bradley first got going by starting a "for profit think tank"--The Advisory Board--in 1979 in his mother's Watergate apartment, selling information to powerful economic and political interests.

Bradley by taking his company public, netted 148 million dollars, and thus was proclaimed by the establishment punditry to have achieved the covet status of media mogul. It is a status he wittily disputes by comparing himself to Henry Luce, who ran Time. Bradley says Luce got his empire started much earlier than he did, and therefore represents the true model for a media mogul. Luce was a pivotal figure in the construction of the mainstream media as it manifests today.

The essence of Bradley's success is his self-effacing leadership style where he speaks "in tones so dulcet he sounds more like a sympathetic psychotherapist"...rather than "the ferocious new media mogul on the block." Mr. Bradley is a smooth operator whose old fashioned innocence still is quite effective in swaying people towards his side. When he arrived at the Atlantic Monthly's headquarters Bradley artfully soothed an emotional staff, reassuring them that he has no intentions to change the editorial direction of the magazine and impressing the managing editor--Cullen Murphy to a significant degree (Robyn Meredith "Atlantic Monthly Staff Sizes Up New Owner" The New York Times 10/29/99 C1) .

However his task is daunting, since the world of modern mass media depends on advertising for most of its revenue. Advertising is an industry that Robin Meredith says is "known for its love of that mysterious blend of public relations and cocktail party chatter." You need some form of buzz says Alan Jurmain, a operative of Lowe and Partner/SMS, something that is authentic and is able to create a breezy alluring package that entices people to their "terrific product." Excitement is what they are looking for and a certain kind of excitement one which is non-critical to those who run the establishment.

Celebrity based sensationalism is the only way to create sales in a society whose leadership structure has through the years encouraged a superficially orientated civic orientation. The other is by way of muckraking investigative reporting and powerful inspiring and illuminative commentary, which Harper's, The Nation and the Atlantic Monthly are on occasion known to do. However the reason that they only do this on occasion is related to the fact that they do rely on advertising income, and have a liberal constitiency, that you can only go so far with.

Bradley himself says quite well that the Atlantic monthly is about "literature and and about journalism that aspires to the level of literature. It is abut serious untrendy, unbuzz driven discussion of ideas..." Thus there is appears to be an unbridgeable reality between the excitement of discussing provocative information that relates to our social conscience and our integrity, and the need to make money. This is the reason that magazines with an liberal, intellectual bent are having difficulty making ends meet. However what passes for the provocative in this marginal niche market is little more than curious contrivances designed to titillate its readers, who as liberals cannot be expected to make a clear break from mainstream thinking for their positional status in society would not allow it. Rather than speak of the need for serious socioeconomic change these magazines really speak for the high class, hedonistic aspirations of the Burgeoise, which congregate around the notion of high literature and art.