The National Journal, a wonky inside-the-beltway news magazine, offers regular email alerts of its political convention coverage. The reporting is very good – well, usually, but not always – and very thorough. But they may want to rethink how they do it in 2016.
The magazine has apparently sold a lot advertising space to the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s DC lobby. Nothing wrong with that. Magazines gotta sell advertising to pay the bills. But as part of the deal, API has gotten the Journal to include advertising in the subject line of their email news alerts.
This has resulted in in some hilariously awkward alerts from the National Journal, such as “Christie’s Prepared Remarks for Keynote – Brought to you by American Petroleum Institute” and “Romney Wins Votes for Nomination – Brought to you by American Petroleum Institute.”
But the topper came today with “Advice for Romney tonight — Brought to you by American Petroleum Institute.” Umm, gee, guys is this your advice or theirs?
My colleague Tim Carney has noted the energy industry‘s aggressive efforts to promote its interests at the convention.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post said Carney’s story was about API. In fact, it is about the energy industry in general and does not refer to any actions by API. The Examiner regrets the error.
