Michael Kinsley is going back to his roots. According to The Huffington Post, Kinsley is returning to The New Republic, where he once worked for 20 years, as an editor-at-large. Kinsley was most recently with Bloomberg View, but he will leave that position in March.

“Mike Kinsley is a legend in the world of journalism, and we are fortunate to be welcoming him back home to The New Republic,” Chris Hughes, publisher and editor-in-chief of TNR, told HuffPost in a written statement. “His writerly wit and editorial voice left an indelible mark on the place when he edited the magazine 25 years ago. Much has changed since then, but Mike’s talents are timeless. He will be an incredibly important resource as we reinvent the magazine for a new age.”

At TNR, Kinsley will focus on interviews.

Michael Kinsley, senior editorial adviser for Bloomberg View, posted a film review of Andrew Rossi‘s documentary  “Page One: Inside the New York Times” in the movie review section of the Times today, and it’s scathing, to say the least. He writes that the movie is “in a word, a mess.”

The documentary stars Times journalists Brian Stelter, David Carr, and other Times major players, and though there have been some mixed reactions from Times insiders, it’s still jarring to see such a takedown of the film. Kinsley begins by ostensibly explaining why he is writing the review, which is that even though the people who put out the newspaper “know far more than I do about The Times and are better positioned to judge the movie,” there is a “conflict of interest.” He however knows “almost nothing about how The New York Times works.”

But then he adds: “Having seen “Page One,” I don’t know much more than I did before… It flits from topic to topic, character to character, explaining almost nothing.”

Here are some choice quotes:

The movie’s main theme, no surprise, is the struggle of The Times to survive in the age of the Internet. But it does little to illuminate that struggle, preferring instead a constant parade of people telling the camera how dreadful it would be if The Times did not survive. True, of course, but boring to the point of irritation after five or six repetitions.

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Bloomberg View – Michael Bloomberg’s attempt to flex some opinionated muscle – is going to launch in late May. According to Keith Kelly, in anticiaption of that fast aprroaching date, the venture has added some new names.

In addition to the many recent hires that FishbowlNY has covered, Kelly says that Bloomberg View will bring the nomadic Michael Kinsley and the former Wall Street Journal News Editor George Anders on as Editorial Board members, as well as author William Cohan and Ron Klain, a man who served as Chief of Staff for both Al Gore and Joe Biden.

That’s some heavy lifting by Bloomberg. More evidence that he is going to make sure people pay attention to Bloomberg View one way or another.

Because the world of business news isn’t saturated enough, Atlantic Media announced a new business site in October to be launched sometime this spring (after an initial push-back from this winter’s original date).

Originally, Michael Kinsley of Slate had been…er…slated to lead the site, but, according to Jeff Bercovici at DailyFinance.com, the editor/developer is out.

Said Kinsley of the mutual decision to leave the position:

“I’m not obsessed with business…I sort of looked into my soul, and Justin Smith [president of Atlantic Media] looked into my soul, and we both sort of decided that I really didn’t want to do that.”

No one has been announced to fill Kinsley’s position yet, another sign that the release date of the new site may be pushed back even further.

Read More: Kinsley Out as Editor of Atlantic’s New Business Site –Daily Finance

Previously: Slate Founder Michael Kinsley To Lead New Digital Launch For Atlantic, Changes At Atlantic Media

Earlier this year, we learned of Atlantic Media‘s plans to launch a new digital property when it brought on Slate founder Michael Kinsley to oversee the mysterious project.

Today, the parent company of The Atlantic announced another new hire for the project, Adam Pasick, who will serve as managing editor. The new digital property is set to launch in early 2010 and we now know that whatever it is, it will target “global business executives.”

Previously, Pasick worked as an editor in the U.S. bureau of Reuters.com.
Atlantic Media (which also owns The National Journal Group and Government Executive magazine) has been focusing on its online presence since August of last year, when it hit a traffic peak and hired Felix DiFillipo and Bill McGarry from Forbes and CondeNet. In September, Atlantic Media launched The Atlantic Wire as a sister site to TheAtlantic.com. The Atlantic‘s most notorious columnist, Andrew Sullivan, blogs regularly, and we look forward to seeing what writers Atlantic Media scoops up for their new site.

Previously: Atlantic Shifts Tide With Hires, Atlantic Wire Launches With (Media) Star-Studded Fete

Atlantic Consumer Media has launched a new stand alone site The Atlantic Wire, to aggregate some of the best opinions and debates on the Web.

The Atlantic has long been a source for well-thought out opinions and discussions, and some of the voice from the magazine and its Web site, like columnist Andrew Sullivan, do make their way onto the Atlantic Wire’s homepage.

Along with tabs highlighting the biggest debates today — right now they’re “Health Care Reform,” “Joe Wilson Outburst” and “Reforming Wall Street” — that homepage also includes a link to The Atlantic 50, a ranking of the most influential pundits doing the job today. The Atlantic Wire ranks them, then features their most recent thoughts side-by-side. The New York Times‘ Paul Krugman tops the list, followed by Rush Limbaugh, George Will and Thomas Friedman and David Brooks, also of the Times.

Of the 50, 14 columnists hail from The Washington Post, eight from the Times, five from The Wall Street Journal and eight are primarily bloggers, including Arianna Huffington and Salon.com‘s Glenn Greenwald. There are also as well as three commentators from the Fox News, including Glenn Beck, and two from MSNBC — Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.

“Taking a systematic and data-driven editorial approach to the exploding universe of opinions, the Atlantic Wire helps readers engage with the most important political, business and social commentary,” said Bob Cohn, editorial director of TheAtlantic.com and the Atlantic Wire. “As readers face an overload of information and a deficit of free time, they can now visit one site to easily follow the topics they care about and the opinion-makers who fascinate them.”

The Atlantic Wire’s launch comes just days after its parent company announced that it had hired Slate founder and columnist Michael Kinsley as a columnist for The Atlantic. Kinsley was also brought on to launch a new digital project for the company early next year. We’re looking forward to seeing how that new project will complement TheAtlantic.com and Atlantic Wire.

Earlier: Slate Founder Michael Kinsley To Lead New Digital Launch For Atlantic

Atlantic Consumer Media, which publishes The Atlantic, has brought on Slate founder Michael Kinsley as a media columnist and the editor of an upcoming digital property that will launch early next year.

“As both an editor and a columnist, Michael has long been at the vanguard of publishing’s digital transformation,” said Atlantic Consumer Media President Justin B. Smith. “We are thrilled to welcome him and his considerable talents to the Atlantic Media family.”

A well-known media figure, Kinsley has been an editor at The New Republic and Harper’s and edited the opinion pages at The Los Angeles Times. He has also previously written regular columns for The Washington Post and Time magazine.

Atlantic Media didn’t provide any more detail about the upcoming digital project, but we’ll let you know if we find out any more details. The New York Times points out that Atlantic Media is also currently building Atlantic Wire, “a real-time sampling of opinion and commentary.”

Remember the controversy over that fabricated Slate article on monkeyfishing? No? Probably because it grabbed attention for a few short weeks in June 2001 before fading into the haze of media scandals past.

Well, Slate ran an article penned by James Forman about his excursion to an island in the Florida Keys where he casted for monkeys like fish, using fruit for bait. When bloggers and media outlets everywhere slammed the tale, Slate initially stood by Forman’s piece before setting the record straight and issuing an apology to readers for publishing the falsehoods.

Slate‘s initial response &#151 which, in fact, referenced a detailed report in the Times that said the practice of monkeyfishing did exist — admitted Forman “had fabricated the lurid parts about monkeys being caught with baited lines” but maintained that he had “visited the island and taunted the monkeys from offshore.” Slate then vowed to “get to the bottom of it, possibly with help from [their] readers.”

We are pleased to report that, nearly six years later, they have:

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