In 2005, the New York Times ran a front page story on Britney Spears. Prior and since then, Ms. Spears has appeared on hundreds, if not thousands, of tabloid magazine covers. And now, The Atlantic.

The high brow rag's cover story "The Britney Show" is getting plenty of flack – we're guessing most of it's from people who don't even read the magazine, but actual readers are apt to be pissed, too – for lowering its standards to include the decade's biggest celebrity trainwreck in its reportage.

Until this incident, it appeared owner David Bradley was New Yorker-ifying his magazine. Hiring The Week's Justin Smith to head things up, he put more focus on ad sales to boost the bottom line, ramped up its functionally terrible online presence by removing the pay wall (The New Yorker now posts most of its content on its website after posting almost zero), and learned about the fat margins of slapping its name on events like the Aspen Ideas Festival (The New Yorker Festival, anyone?). The only thing it had left to do was serialize its entire back catalogue on CD-ROM.

So why the about face? Though Smith would deny it has anything to do with a five-year plan to turn the magazine around into profitable territory, circulation and newsstand sales are down. And you know what can be a newsstand boon? A Britney Spears cover. (But not a Christina Aguilera one.)

To be sure, we're not looking at an Us Weekly Britney Spears cover story here; rather, The Atlantic's article goes inside The Britney Economy. Who are all those hangers-on? What's the role of the paparazzi? Is she going broke? are the questions we imagine they're trying to answer.

So if The Atlantic isn't a new People magazine, perhaps it's taking a page from the celebrity-meets-finance website MainStreet.com: Take elements of pop culture and use them as a newspeg for launching into your standard editorial voice.

And if we follow this strategy, the next issue will have a cover story on Emperor’s Club, Eliot Spitzer's agency of choice, and how its shuttering, along with all the unusable free publicity from cable news tlaking heads, will affect the global call girl economy. We'd read it.

Talk of a Harvard's "not in the traditional sense" alumni magazine 02138 surfaced back in December, during the same period that Atlantic staffers were leaving Boston for Washington D.C. With Atlantic President David Bradley backing the new little mag, 02138 staffers began taking over the Boston digs, even before the disgruntled Atlantics could be fully moved out.

As you can probably anticipate, tensions grew. Bom Kim, founder and president of 02138, alligned with Bradley to raise this new baby, and Bradley's first child quickly got jealous. Well, they did have good reason — they were forced to fight for what was left of their turf.

Supplies and paper were being divvied, Kim used Atlantic's fax number (which was intended to move to D.C. along with the staff) for 02138's letterhead, and furniture was being stolen from offices.

Later that month, Mr. Kim moved a gray couch that had been outside the office of The Atlantic’s then art director, Mary Parsons, into the office of his incoming managing editor.

“It was her personal couch,” a staffer said. “It wasn’t an Atlantic couch.”

This huge magazine office no-no caused Atlantic office manager Robert Moeller to stick “You Touch, You Die" labels to Atlantic staffers' stuff. Oh, dear. This is even more drama than we had in the entire last season of 90210. Can we a get a reality show crew in soon?

Harvard Prodigy Spends Bradley’s $4 Million;Alumni Await Magazine [Gabriel Sherman, New York Observer]

Who knew David Bradley's The Atlantic could be all things to all hired hands. For Judith Miller, it was a means for her resurrection. For new EIC James Bennett, it was a means to escape the persiflage of the Times. And for June issue writers Charles Mann and James Fallows, it was a means to plug their relatives.

From "How Not To Travel in Japan," by Charles C. Mann, June 2006:

Renting cars in Japan is "not recommended for novices," in the terse phrase of Gateway to Japan, which I would describe as the best guidebook to the country that I have encountered if it hadn't been written by my sister-in-law June, and her ex-boyfriend. (The book is actually very good, though all the prices and some of the hotel and restaurant recommendations are outdated because June has been too busy with other things to produce a recent version.)

From "E-mail out of Every Plug," by James Fallows, June 2006:

Meeting that small increase in demand is disproportionately expensive, because the extra generating capacity is usually more polluting and less efficient than normal plants. "If you can reduce the peak even a little bit, you can reduce costs a lot, especially in some regions of the country," says Susan Tierney, a former utility regularoty in Massachusetts (and my sister).

Next month, look forward to the ubiquitous Clive Thomson plugging wifey Emily Nussbaum's book reviews.

Oh, the masthead. It's the bizarre holy grail of magazine hierarchy. Editors, from the time they are mere interns, executive assistants, and EAs, dream that someday their names will loom over a sea of underthings.

The Atlantic, (formerly Atlantic Monthly) is, undoubtedly, no exception. Regarded by some as one of the top publications in the nation, working there is what young journos dream of their entire lives. Little boys reading the book reviews in Couriers and Heralds everywhere don't see their name in lights. They see their name in bold, on a masthead.

Recently, though, David Bradley decided to shake things up a bit. After his mag lost their EIC, Bradley pulled a Village Voice move, keeping the managing editor in an EIC role with no title change. Then that guy left, so … now they just don't have any masthead at all. (Except the one that's still online.)

The accompanying editorial changeover, however, is on a slower schedule. Rather than showcasing a rebuilt masthead, the current issue of The Atlantic includes no masthead at all.

The New Yorker doesn't have a masthead, which seems to work for them. But can you imagine if all the mastheads disappeared from Conde Nast magazines? Everyone would be, looking at people they weren't supposed to be looking at, answering e-mails from their senior editors, sitting at the wrong tables at lunch, eating omelets all over the place. It would just be utter, complete madness. And soo much fun to watch.

Atlantic Owner Hires New Team As If For Himself [Gabriel Sherman, NYO]