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jeffrey goldbergThe editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine is not modest in his goals. “We want The Atlantic to be the greatest writers group on the planet,” he said in a recent interview.
To that end, he has added 50 new reporters to his staff this year, partly funded by circulation growth that accelerated after a scoop fell into his lap in March, when Goldberg was accidentally linked to a text chain. trump Administration officials are talking about an imminent military attack.
A publication started in 1857 is challenging the trends of the troubled media industry. The Atlantic is returning to monthly publication after two decades, while reducing the issue to 10 issues per year and experimenting with an online magazine-newspaper hybrid due to its competitive position of writers.
Ashley Parker, one of the new hires, said, “There are very few news organizations … that are profitable, that are growing, that are doing great journalism, that have scoops and long-form and podcasts and live events.” “To be at one of the places that is doing all this is awesome.”
initially a presidential member
The November issue of The Atlantic is a 148-page examination of the “unfinished revolution”, the timing of which coincides with ken burns, pbs Documentary on the American Revolution. The Atlantic’s origins may not be very old, but it was started by opponents of slavery before the Civil War. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne were among the famous writers who signed its mission statement. Abraham Lincoln subscribed.
Atlantic now has 1.4 million subscribers, just over half of which are digital only. This is up from approximately 400,000 print subscribers in late 2010, when the website was not behind a pay wall.
“The whole industry has been asking for two decades, ‘How do we survive, what do we do, how do we figure this out?'” Goldberg said. Have gone through.” “The answer is always there – it’s high-quality journalism and showing readers of that journalism why it’s worth paying for. Knock on wood, it’s working.”
If it were that easy, he would have a lot of company. It helped form the Emerson Collective, a dedicated ownership group led by billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs.
The magazine said Atlantic’s circulation is expected to increase by 14% in both 2023 and 2024. By mid-2025, readership had increased 20% over the previous year, and The Atlantic set records for single-day and one-week circulation a week after posting Goldberg’s piece about finding himself on a Signal group chat with the Secretary of Defense. pete hegseth And others.
“I have told this directly to Donald Trump,” Goldberg said. “You’re like our marketing director in some ways. Every time you attack me or The Atlantic, people subscribe.”
Two Pulitzers for his first articles in The Atlantic
The Atlantic’s writing staff includes Jennifer Senior and Caitlin Dickerson, each of whom won a Pulitzer Prize for their first magazine features — Senior on how the family of 26-year-old Bobby McIlvaine dealt with his death on September 11, 2001, Dickerson on the Trump administration’s first policy separating migrant children from their families.
Anne Applebaum, herself a Pulitzer-winning author, leads a national security team with Vivian Salama and Nancy Youssef. Mark Leibovich, Tim Alberta, Jonathan Chait and Jonathan Lemire write on politics. Van R. Newkirk II recently wrote a glowing review on the memorable third fight of Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.
The Atlantic took advantage of the turmoil at the Washington Post to poach about 20 of its journalists, including renowned sports writer Sally Jenkins, humorist Alexandra Petri, and political writers Michael Scherrer, Isaac Stanley-Baker and Parker.
Goldberg said, “I’m not happy with the difficulties of The Washington Post – I started at The Washington Post – but I’m happy to bring in excellent colleagues.”
Parker described The Atlantic as a dream job, and said she appreciated the opportunity to do magazine-style writing with more assertiveness. “Every single one of my colleagues at Atlantic, who also came from post, not one of them felt like running away,” he said. “It all felt like it was going somewhere that was positively exciting.”
Parker has collaborated with Shire on a cover piece about President Donald Trump’s return to power, and has written a personal essay about abortion. He has also written about the Trump family’s closeness to slain activist Charlie Kirk, Cabinet members’ obsession with how they look on TV, and Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Arts Center.
These last three reflect the hybrid the Atlantic is looking for online – stories that either make news or provide knowledge about people. “We’re not a newspaper, but we’re trying to be part of the conversation every day of the year,” Goldberg said.
Parker says the effort to bring magazine-style analysis and new ways of looking at breaking stories is still a work in progress. The most-read stories on the site Thursday included Helen Lewis’s piece on Saudi Arabia’s comedy festival, Idris Kahloon’s story on low education standards and David Brooks’s essay on the need for a mass movement against autocracy.
Reimagining the definition of a magazine for the modern age
While some online stories are “hot takes” that don’t necessarily work, Goldberg deserves credit for reimagining the definition of a magazine in a time of rapid change, said Jeff Jarvis, author of “Magazine,” a book about the genre’s history and decline in the Internet age.
He added, “I think he’s somewhat of a savior of this genre and the community of magazine writers.” Jarvis also credits Justin Smith, a former Atlantic executive and currently co-founder of Semaphore, for creating a series of new products that put The Atlantic on a more solid financial position prior to Goldberg’s acquisition as editor-in-chief in 2016.
Goldberg’s idea of the “perfect” Atlantic story is beautiful writing, energized by clear logic and deep reporting with an audible writer’s voice. He wants to entertain and educate, and he loves it when a reader becomes absorbed in a story on a topic he or she might not have otherwise explored.
“The goal is orchestration, if you like,” he said. “The goal is to have enough of a variety of stories on the site and in print so there is something for everyone.”
So does he believe he has reached his goal of assembling a collection of the world’s best writers?
“Of course I think so,” he said. “I can always add more, but pound for pound this is the best journalism staff in the world. We’re not the greatest. I can’t imagine being the greatest. But the goal is to be the best.”
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David Bauder writes for the AP about the intersection of media and entertainment. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social