At Ebony, Mr. Crooks oversaw the 2011 redesign under new Johnson Publishing CEO Desiree Rogers and Ebony editor Amy DuBois Barnett. Before that, he was the art director of Esquire, helping design the magazine's iPad app. The design firm Pentagram had been handling The Atlantic's art direction while the magazine conducted its search.

"Darhil's imagination and passion for ideas-driven work make him the perfect creative force for The Atlantic," editor in chief James Bennet said in a press release. "It's asking a lot to hope for vision, exacting standards, a delight in taking risks, and a collaborative spirit all in one person, and we feel very lucky to have found that."

Unlike the ill-fated salons proposed by The Washington Post in 2009, lobbyists can’t buy a seat at these off-the-record dinners; The Atlantic picked up the tab. The aim of the series, which may move to Los Angeles, Chicago, Silicon Valley, or Washington, D.C., depending on the cover story’s content, appears more earnest.

“This developed as an extension of The Atlantic’s mission from its outset, to be a proponent of the American idea,” publisher Jay Lauf told Off The Record. “We’re trying to put our money where our mouth is, raising controversial questions and fostering conversations.”

Like a comments section, but better dressed.

Atlantic editor James Bennet and James Fallows, author of the March’s cover story, “Obama, Explained,” broke bread with their competitors from New York’s print political media, including The New Yorker’s Nicholas Lemann, New York’s John Heilemann, and Time’s Mark Halperin.

They were joined by Hollywood types Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky and actor Alec Baldwin; captains of industry like Mercedez Benz USA CEO Stephen Cannon and Eagle Capital managing director Boykin Curry; and the category-defying Arianna Huffington, who could only stay for cocktails.

“Some of the people we invite may change the way we look at those cover stories going forward on the web, or they may have more ideas on those cover stories that may be useful to the national dialogue,” Mr. Lauf explained.

Whom did Mr. Lauf look forward to exchanging American ideas with?

“I follow Alec Baldwin on Twitter,” Mr. Lauf said, “So he’s someone I think might always say something interesting.”

You may have noticed that her name is very similar to that of James Bennet, the magazine's editor in chief. Hijinks will ensue, according to the memo from deputy editor Scott Stossel, in full below:

All:

I’m pleased to announce that, as many of you already know, Jennifer Barnett will be joining the Atlantic staff as our new managing editor next week. Jennifer has more than a decade of experience as a managing editor. Having previously done stints inside both the Condé Nast and Hearst empires, where she served in various managing editor roles at Teen Vogue,  Elle, and Redbook respectively, Jennifer comes to us most recently from Parks & Recreation magazine, in Virginia. She’s also been an editor and contributor at Shape (where she wrote a health and wellness column—so hide those potato chips!) and Capitol File. She’s looking forward to bringing her managerial expertise to bear on our far-flung editorial staff. (And I look forward to the madcap hilarity that will ensue when the initials (JB) she shares with our editor-in-chief lead to mis-addressed e-mails and confused inter-office memos.) Jennifer will be situated in the office between James Gibney and myself. Please join me in welcoming her.

Scott

If I channel Bradley correctly, I think he hopes to make the Atlantic Monthly—make that the Decamonthly, as it only comes out 10 times a year—a luxury good that justifies its high price, like designer water. No thinking magazine on the newsstand occupies this niche. . . . If luxury idea magazine is the direction, the Atlantic should read like literature and look like art, making every issue an event.

But "luxury idea mag" no longer sounds like such a great plan, Bennet's success has taken a different form. The Atlantic's online ventures have been earning plenty of attention--Gawker calls the magazine is "as robust and thoughtful online as it is in print." Says Ad Age:

Back then, Mr. Bradley told the Times that he believed Mr. Bennet had a "selfless nature" which would make him a great steward of the now-152-year-old institution. He was right about his new hire, and prescient about a coming shift in the culture of magazines. Three years later, we're in a post-celebrity-editor moment; gilded-glossy chiefs -- those who are left, that is -- have become caricatures in all the wrong ways (suddenly their imperiousness seems more about desperation than entitlement) as they rule rapidly shrinking kingdoms.

Provocative though it was, that question was not what had brought Bonnie Fuller, John Stossel, Adam Moss, Nick Denton, Sigourney Weaver, Ira Glass, Judith Regan, Wendy Williams, and a smattering of semi-bold names—some clutching notebooks, many clutching drinks—to this event. They were here at the invitation of The Atlantic, where Mr. Smith is president and James Bennet is editor-in-chief, to enjoy some chili and margaritas and listen to Andrew Sullivan and Michael Hirschorn address the question asked on the invite sent out by the magazine's P.R. team: "What is the Future of Media?"

No answer was supplied during the 30 minute discussion which had Messrs. Sullivan and Hirschorn sitting on a small stage overlooking a rapt—occasionally twittering (and Twittering)—crowd. Mr. Bennet, who moderated the discussion, informed everyone that the two men were once housemates in Washington DC: "The pertinent fact is that I've known Andrew so long, I knew him when he was straight," Mr. Hirschorn joked. (Apparently Mr. Sullivan had "an unreasonably hot girlfriend" at the time.)

Mr. Bennet started the discussion by asking Mr. Hirschorn about that day's New York Times Company quarterly earnings report. "It was pretty dismal," Mr. Bennet, a former Timesman, offered.

"We're in kind of in remarkable, uncharted waters," Mr. Hirschorn said. "There are scenarios in which The Times does not go out of business, but becomes a very different entity."

Mr. Hirschorn, no idle observer, had wondered In the January/February issue of the magazine if The Times could cease printing in May.

The magazine editor-turned-producer foresees "profound changes and they're gonna be unpleasant." Later, he told the crowd of media workers, "I think it might be that there will be a time in the wilderness where there will be a huge and wrenching, horrible fallout... I mean, it sounds like Road Warrior or something. I don't mean to sound like people are eating out of dog food cans. It's really not that bad!"

Apocalypse, soon: Well, that's one plausible future of media.

Mr. Sullivan, pulling on a bottle of beer, wasn't so much concerned with dying newspapers as he was with the promise of blogging, something he'd written about before.

The writer described what attracted him to blogging in the first place: "The thrill was, for me—this was when Clinton was President—you could go on at night and be mean about [a] Maureen Dowd column before anyone had read it... So she would never even get the pleasure of the, like, twenty minutes of praise." This was met with a big laugh from the audience.

Later, Mr. Sullivan told The Observer he posts 300 items a week to his blog, The Daily Dish, calling it "an obsessive compulsion."

The blog, which he started as an independent venture in 2000 according to his bio, was hosted for a period on Time magazine's Web site, before it was brought to TheAtlantic.com in January 2007.

"I'd do it for nothing!," Mr. Sullivan said. "I used to be incentivized for traffic, but we changed that. And I realized, damn, I gave it away."

Working for free: A very plausible future for media as well.

In a statement, Atlantic editor James Bennet said:

According to the release, theatlantic.com had 36.8 million page views in October.

But it was an unseasonably warm autumn night, the moon was full, the Dow had recovered a historic 936 points the day before--and The Atlantic was super-excited about their new brand.

The re-branding campaign and redesign of the magazine and website had been six months and a $1.5 million campaign budget in the making, with the help of EuroRSCG and Michael Bierut of Pentagram. The result? Serious is hip! Thinking is cool! Headlines from the magazine's last two years were wrought in aggressive neon throughout Chelsea's Exit gallery, looming like Orwellian aphorisms: "THINK AGAIN."

"Smart is exciting, and questioning is profoundly cool and invigorating," said publisher Jay Lauf. "Let's get jazzed about thinking again!" (Well, we have to be jazzed about something these days! And, you know, thinking is free.)

A screening room showed a sleekly-produced film titled the Atlantic.project, (there's where some of that re-branding budget went!) in which the big neon questions were placed about the city. Passers-by were asked everything from "Should Women Settle?" and "Who Will Own Your Next Idea?" (Some answers: "Hopefully me, unless it's on MySpace," and "The Chinese.")

What about the more depressing questions about the future of the industry? Although The Atlantic recently increased its ad prices and rate base, Mr. Lauf said he'd been talking to a lot of clients that evening, many of whom were "retrenching."

"Anyone who says it's not going to be a rough year is lying," said Atlantic Media president Justin Smith. But! "Serious times call for serious brands and serious thinking-and I'd rather be the Atlantic than US Weekly right now." (This from the magazine whose attention-grabbing April cover featured a paparazzi shot of Britney Spears.)

Editor-in-chief James Bennet remained hopeful but self-deprecating: "We like the readers we already have, we just want more of them. We haven't always done a good job of getting [the magazine] in front of people. It's an exciting, perplexing, confounding time. Who knows if we can pull it off!" He waved his hand towards a neon sign that reading WHEN IS EVIL COOL? "But that's what we're hoping to do with all of this."

A post on Pentagram's blog reveals all: The Atlantic's new advice column will be called "What's Your Problem?" and be written by Jeffrey Goldberg. (Pentagram link comes via Kottke.)

The first edition will run on the back page in the Pentagram-redesigned magazine in November, has a letter that reads:

Mr. Goldberg answers by poking some fun at his former publication: "Dear James, I would suggest holding a cartoon-caption-writing contest."

In an essay in the November issue of the 151-year-old magazine, Mr. Beirut writes:

One possible solution: Andrew Sullivan. A lot of Andrew Sullivan. Like, full-page spreads of Andrew Sullivan's face, as the above layout shows.

As you may have already read elsewhere, Ms. Greenberg created controversy by posting unflattering and grotesquely retouched outtakes from her John McCain cover shoot for The Atlantic on her site, The Manipulator. Among the retouched photos is one showing the Republican Presidential nominee with bloody shark teeth beneath the headline "I Am A Bloodthirsty Warmonger" and another showing a primate defecating on Mr. McCain's head. (As far as choice of target and sharpness of message goes, Ms. Greenberg's photos were far from Heartfield-level attacks on the candidate.)

Ms. Greenberg also boasted to Photo District News' PDN Pulse blog that she tricked Mr. McCain into posing above a strobe light that created a horror movie shadow effect and served to dramatically emphasize his age. (Ms. Greenberg's images can be found here.)

James Bennet, The Atlantic's editor, has issued a statement that reads in part, "We stand by the respectful image of John McCain that we used on our cover, and we expect to be judged by it. We were not aware of the manipulated and dishonest images Jill Greenberg had taken until this past Friday." Mr. Bennet also told Fox News' Election HQ blog that the magazine will not be paying her for the photo it used on the cover.

Ms. Greenberg's highly stylized photos have appeared in magazines like New York (this week, she shot The Office's Ed Helms), Portfolio, Time, Wired, and numerous other publications and ad campaigns.

Mr. Goldberg, whose profile of John McCain the cover was meant to illustrate, has been one of Ms. Greenberg's strongest critics. In a post on Sunday, he said he was "appalled" by her actions and that the photographer "is quite obviously an indecent person who should not be working in magazine journalism." He also lamented "the blithe way in which she has tried to hurt this magazine."

Yesterday, Mr. Goldberg's Atlantic colleague Andrew Sullivan called Ms. Greenberg "eccentric in an unpleasant way" but asserted that "it's a free country and she can post whatever she wants on her own blog."