2012 was a milestone year for Scientology, with the religion expanding to more than 10,000 Churches, Missions and affiliated groups, spanning 167 nations–figures that represent a growth rate 20 times that of a decade ago.

The driving force behind this unparalleled era of growth is David Miscavige, ecclesiastical leader of the Scientology religion. Mr. Miscavige is unrelenting in his work for millions of parishioners and the cities served by Scientology Churches. He has led a renaissance for the religion itself, while driving worldwide programs to serve communities through Church-sponsored social and humanitarian initiatives.

Huh?

Further on, the piece begins to use Scientology lingo, like “Ideal Orgs” and “Ideal Churches”.

The lengthy article with its 13 glowingly beautiful photos is what the magazine calls “Sponsor Content”, which you can discover in pretty small box above what looks like a typical Atlantic article. If you hover over “What’s This?”, there’s an explanation:

Sponsor Content is created by The Atlanticâ€s Promotions Department in partnership with our advertisers. The Atlantic editorial team is not involved in the creation of this content. Email advertising@theatlantic.com to learn more.

At the end of the piece is an image with: “Sponsor content is presented by The Church of Scientology”.

The move by The Atlantic has already spawned a parody Twitter account (much deserved, imo):

Simmer down everyone, the Church of Scientology ran out of space on their website and we’re just helping out.

— Atlantic Sponsored (@TheAtlanticAds) January 15, 2013

Interestingly, in the last few half hour or so, The Atlantic has published a post by Jeffrey Goldberg about Lawrence Wright’s new book Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief, presumably a critical investigation of Scientology.

What’s going on with that? Is Goldberg trying to take a shot at Scientology to stem the tide of criticism of the magazine?

Apparently there are a few other Sponsor Content articles on The Atlantic site, but this is problematic on many levels, including the fact that even the “ads” and the links to other “stories” around the “sponsor content” direct to the Scientology homepage.

The Atlantic is going to have a tough time explaining the choice to run this massive ad in a way that looks so similar to the magazine’s widely respected content. In my ethical universe as a columnist and blogger, The Atlantic has crossed a serious line here — several lines in fact.

UPDATE:

The more I think about this the more irritated and disappointed I become. So let me add just two points:

1. If The Atlantic will allow a propagandistic ad like this from Scientology, what would they not allow? Sponsor content from BP about their fine work in the gulf? From the NRA about armed guards in schools? From Hamas about its peace initiatives? Publications obviously need to be careful denying ads to groups based upon their beliefs, but we’re not talking here about about a 300×250 pixel rectangle. This is an entire page that has, like it or not, the imprimatur of the publication itself.

2. Articles from The Onion periodically get believed — even in one case by a prominent Chinese news source. This big ad for Scientology will no doubt be linked to from around the world. Some percentage of the people who land on the page will have no idea what The Atlantic is. Some won’t see or understand “sponsor content”. Some will speak little or no English. Some will be psychologically vulnerable. Even if The Atlantic did not intend to do so, it just gave a stamp of legitimacy to the message and the hyperlinks.

UPDATE, 1/15, 8 a.m.:

Sometime overnight The Atlantic removed the “sponsor content”. I took screen caps of the page beforehand, so I might add one or two later to this post or a fresh one.

If you go to that original link, you’ll be redirected to this:

We have temporarily suspended this advertising campaign pending a review of our policies that govern sponsor content and subsequent comment threads.

The Atlantic could be wide open to lawsuits from Scientology over this, but the removal seems the right thing to do to me.

Update:

Since you can’t see the page for yourself, here’s a screencap of the top of it taken around 11 p.m. last night. Note that the ad slots above and to the right redirect to the Scientology homepage:

The “Sponsor Content” that was later removed from The Atlantic website.

Update:

Here’s the statement from The Atlantic:

We screwed up. It shouldn’t have taken a wave of constructive criticism — but it has — to alert us that we’ve made a mistake, possibly several mistakes. We now realize that as we explored new forms of digital advertising, we failed to update the policies that must govern the decisions we make along the way. It’s safe to say that we are thinking a lot more about these policies after running this ad than we did beforehand. In the meantime, we have decided to withdraw the ad until we figure all of this out. We remain committed to and enthusiastic about innovation in digital advertising, but acknowledge—sheepishly—that we got ahead of ourselves. We are sorry, and we’re working very hard to put things right.

Media Relations Contact:
Natalie Raabe
The Atlantic
(202) 266-7533
nraabe@theatlantic.com

Given the magazineâ€s mission, it seemed a no-brainer to me to run an interview and photo spread with actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers. He wasn’t yet on the radar screen of most American media consumers in 2000, but he seemed destined to be.

When I reached Rhys Meyers†publicist, she told me that the young Irish actor was in the U.S. at the time, so a phone interview would be easy to set up. But he never called me back, and the publicist – I have long forgotten her name – was obviously irritated when she found out that he had returned to the U.K. without contacting me. At some point, the actorâ€s friend Christopher Croft joined the conversation, and it became clear that Rhys Meyers just really didnâ€t want to do a phone interview – but would be willing to talk to me in person.

So I got an early sense of a certain guardedness and fragility – traits that seemed wildly different from JRMâ€s vigorous, breathtaking on-screen turns. So I proposed to Joseph that I would do the interview in London if I could simply get reimbursed for the flight there and back. Amazingly, the trip worked out, and about a week later – in early December of 2000 – I took an overnight flight to Heathrow and met up with Rhys Meyers late the next morning at The Groucho Club.

But things were a little unpredictable in the Contents office and the magazine was never published on a strict schedule; my interview never ran. We had even had some gorgeous photos taken in London.

Recently, that unpublished interview with Jonathan Rhys Meyers has come up, so I decided to locate the handwritten transcript of our long conversation on that chilly day in London.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers was just 23 when this interview was conducted, but he had already led a remarkable life. After a tough childhood that included a fractured family and permanent expulsion from school, Rhys Meyers had improbably ended up in the movies after being spotted at a pool hall by a casting agent. (Thereâ€s more background on his IMDB page.)

At the time of this interview, Rhys Meyers had landed some notable roles, including a small part in A Man of No Importance with Albert Finney, the assassin in Neil Jordanâ€s Michael Collins starring Liam Neeson, an American high school student in Tim Hunterâ€s The Maker, a passionate and desperate young man in the underrated The Governess with Minnie Driver and Tom Wilkinson, glam rocker Brian Slade alongside Ewan McGregor in Todd Haynes†Velvet Goldmine, a fairly small role as a psychopathic guerilla in Ang Leeâ€s Ride with the Devil, and as Chiron in Julie Taymorâ€s Titus, starring Anthony Hopkins.

Thatâ€s obviously an amazing list of directors and projects for such a young actor, especially one without any formal training.

At the time of this interview, Rhys Meyers had just finished playing Steerpike in the mini-series Gormenghast, but it had not aired in the States yet.

So this interview is long before Bend It Like Beckham, Match Point, and The Tudors. JRMâ€s full filmography is obviously on IMDB.

I remember the two folks at reception at The Groucho Club being a little taken aback when I told them why I was there. Maybe it was the fact that I wore casual clothes and carried a stuffed over-the-shoulder bag — or maybe that I just looked sketchier than usual after my overnight flight.

As I waited, I figured there was at best half a chance that Rhys Meyers would show, but he breezed in a few minutes later, looking pleasantly disheveled and a little wary, wearing a black jacket over a sleeveless t-shirt. Carrying a bag of his own, he likely looked at least as itinerant as I did.

In my notes, I later wrote: “Totally genuine. Easy to engage, hard to interview.”

Iâ€ve edited this to a degree, but far less than I did back in 2000. Itâ€s a blog post now, after all, not a magazine piece. And it’s long — no reason to edit for space — so I’m breaking it into three pages. As a result, it doesn’t have the same flow that a magazine edit would have.

**************************************

BD: The first movie I saw you in was The Maker.

JRM: Tim Hunterâ€s movie. I thought it was a really good script and was going to be a really good movie. I was really glad I did it because I was playing an American kid, and I was given maybe a week to learn an American accent. But it didnâ€t work unfortunately.

Whatâ€s difficult is not doing the American accent but doing the physicality that Americans have – a physicality with the way that they speak, an easiness with their bodies and their lips when theyâ€re speaking thatâ€s not the same with Europeans. Americans are comfortable when they do something.

Actors in the United States have this brilliant talent I canâ€t quite get my hands on – and not many Europeans can. Like [switching to an American accent] “get me a cup of coffee”. We find this very hard in Europe.

BD: Why do you think that is?

JRM: I donâ€t know. Americans can find it very difficult to come here and do intense Shakespeare.

BD: I know youâ€ve been interviewed a lot about your youthful truancy –

JRM: Yes –

BD: Was it simply truancy that got you expelled?

JRM: No. Whatâ€s very difficult to understand as a child is sharing and not having. Not having a lot of things, I couldnâ€t learn, I couldnâ€t listen. I was so smothered by poverty and at that point there was no hope of being any other way either. I thought that this was what I would do for the rest of my life, so my truancy was fear more than anything else, fear of the future, fear of living. I know people that are given life, but theyâ€re given life with special circumstances.

As a kid, material things make you feel very safe. If you donâ€t just have these shoes or this toy or that jacket, you feel very deprived – and I think material things have a huge emotional importance at a certain age. For me that emotional importance was seen as truancy.

Listen, if Iâ€d been a rich kid and I was just fucking around, well thatâ€s pure truancy. But truancy when itâ€s sparked by an emotion – there must be another word for it. Iâ€m not sure what it is. People would like to call it truancy – it looks cool: “He wasn’t in school, he must have been fucking. He was kicked out of school, isn’t he hot?”

BD: What about your peers, your friends?

JRM: I was a loner as a child and I was a particularly ugly child.

BD: I find that hard to believe.

JRM: No, I was a particularly ugly child. I was sort of the ugly duckling. There was something about the way that I looked that was slightly off. It made people not like me as much.

BD: When did that image of yourself begin to change?

JRM: It never has really. Other people can tell you what you look like, but no, I always think I look ugly, but there are other people who see differently and thatâ€s very well and good.

BD: When you look in the mirror, you donâ€t see someone whoâ€s even moderately attractive?

JRM: Not really. When I was in Velvet Goldmine and everyone was like “wow, such a beautiful boy”, I became self-conscious about it. Now I try to take advantage of it as little as possible. The whole thing about acting is keeping your interest all the time. I find it very difficult. You know, when youâ€re doing a film for 11 weeks, youâ€re just waiting, youâ€re sitting around all the time, and I think thatâ€s the most difficult thing.

Iâ€d like acting to completely cover me so that itâ€s the only thing that I need. But because of living, because of things that I need in my life as well — I ‘d love to eliminate every other want and desire. It would be very difficult to achieve.

BD: It sounds more like a spiritual quest than a professional one.

JRM: Yeah, well, I suppose it is. Iâ€m trying to live a life thatâ€s extraordinary, thatâ€s unique in a way that no other life has been and to retain the intelligence of it, and the understanding of living, the understanding of humanity. Plus itâ€s an emotional job. Iâ€m using my emotion most of the time in conjunction with my physicality. Itâ€s coming from in here [touching his chest], so it must be spiritual in some way or another. For some section of actors, itâ€s a professional job. Iâ€d love be able to think of it as a professional job, Iâ€d love to be able to go into the set and come home in the evening and forget I was ever there. Iâ€d quite like that, I just canâ€t.

Click here to continue reading.

But Merry Christmas to those who do.

I know it’s not the end of the year, but today feels pretty nostalgic anyway.

In my teaching, thinking, and blogging over the past couple of years, I’ve been trying to keep a handle on the evolution of media — on the changing ways that we’re finding and sharing news.

Some of the old models are going to be with us for a long time, I suspect, but the newsmagazine might be gone pretty soon.

From the BBC’s Newsweek unveils final print edition:

A black and white photo of the publication’s Manhattan headquarters takes pride of place, with the strapline #lastprintissue.

The nod to Twitter is regarded as a backhanded compliment.

The death of the print edition was caused by falling advertising revenues, as audiences moved online.

From the new year, Newsweek will be a digital-only publication. Editor Tina Brown described it as “a new chapter” for the magazine.

In a defiant editor’s letter, she wrote: “This is not a conventional magazine, or a hidebound place.

“It is in that spirit that we’re making our latest, momentous change, embracing a digital medium that all our competitors will one day need to embrace with the same fervor.

“We are ahead of the curve.”

We’ll see how it works out.

Here’s the tweet — embedded — from Sunday’s announcement of the new cover, so you can see it for yourself. I find it a little formulaic, but any choice would draw criticism.

COVER: Newsweek’s last print issue before we go all-digital features a hashtag on the cover: #LastPrintIssue! twitter.com/Newsweek/statu…

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) December 23, 2012