The New Republic

In the middle of last summer, as the presidential race was heading into its home stretch, there was a flurry of news about layoffs at Ohio coal mines owned by Murray Energy, whose more than 3,000 employees make it the largest privately-headed coal-mining concern in the country. Murray announced that it was going to shut down one mine entirely in September or October -- the Red Bird West mine, a surface-mining operation in Brilliant, Ohio that employed 56 people under the subsidiary name OhioAmerican Energy. READ MORE >>

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Yesterday, an article appeared on The Atlantic’s website headlined, “David Miscavige Leads Scientology to Milestone Year.” At the top, clearly if not ostentatiously, it was marked, “Sponsor Content.” In prose borrowed from the second-best writer in your tenth grade English class, it described how Scientology chief Miscavige had opened an “unprecedented” 12 “ideal churches” around the world (though mainly in the United States) in 2012, with a photograph and a short paragraph devoted to each one. “This new breed of Church is ideal in location, design, quality of religious services and social betterment programs,” it explained. You can download a screengrab that Gawker grabbed here. The advertorial was the sort of thing that connoisseurs of Scientology agitprop would be used to. Here, for example, is Scientology’s official explanation of these so-called Ideal Orgs. It’s also the sort of thing readers of the Atlantic’s website would be used to: companies like Credit Suisse, Shell, and Mercedes-Benz have all purchased advertorials—“Custom Programs,” in Atlantic Media parlance. An Ad Age article about “custom advertising” reports that an IBM campaign with Atlantic Media received more than one million user interactions and likely cost as much as $200,000 for IBM. (An Atlantic Media spokesperson declined to comment on how much these advertorials cost, or how large a part of its digital advertising revenue they comprise.) Nor is Atlantic Media remarkable in this regard. State-run Chinese and Russian publications buy space in the Washington Post. BuzzFeed runs no banner ads, only branded content. You would probably be hard-pressed to find a major media outlet that wouldn’t publish an advertorial. What was different about this, apparently, is that this time, it was Scientology. And Scientology, we all know, is ridiculous, and worse. Right? READ MORE >>

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OFFICIAL RULES NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A PURCHASE OR PAYMENT OF ANY KIND WILL NOT IMPROVE YOUR CHANCE OF WINNING.   READ MORE >>

In 2006, the Israeli Defense Forces made a relatively simple policy change that required soldiers to leave their weapons at their bases when they headed home for the weekend.  The result: a staggering 40 percent drop in the suicide rate among soldiers aged 18-21, according to a November 2010 study. READ MORE >>

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In a belated but marvelous Christmas present to Roger Ailes, pan-Arab news broadcaster Al Jazeera on Wednesday announced its purchase of Current TV, the cable news network founded by Al Gore. The result—technically called “Al Jazeera America” but instantly dubbed “Al GoreZEERA” by the Internet—stands to revolutionize cable news programming, fusing the massive wealth and global orientation of Al Jazeera with the spunky, left-wing politics of Current. READ MORE >>

President Obama's decision to agree to a "fiscal cliff" deal that doesn't address the debt ceiling was premised on the thinking that congressional Republicans will not be as successful at holding the economy hostage in the coming months as they were in the summer of 2011. For one thing, the administration believes the business community, and elite opinion more broadly, will be much more vocal than they were last time around in cautioning Republicans against debt-ceiling hijinx. READ MORE >>