The Atlantic is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher based in Washington, D.C. It features articles on politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
It was founded in 1857 in Boston as The Atlantic Monthly, a literary and cultural magazine that published leading writers' commentary on education, the abolition of slavery, and other major political issues of that time. Its founders included Francis H. Underwood[3][4] and prominent writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and John Greenleaf Whittier.[5][6] James Russell Lowell was its first editor.[7] During the 19th and 20th centuries, the magazine also published the annual The Atlantic Monthly Almanac.[8] The magazine was purchased in 1999 by businessman David G. Bradley, who fashioned it into a general editorial magazine primarily aimed at serious national readers and "thought leaders"; in 2017, he sold a majority interest in the publication to Laurene Powell Jobs's Emerson Collective.[9][10][11]
The magazine was published monthly until 2001, when 11 issues were produced; since 2003, it has published 10 per year. It dropped "Monthly" from the cover with the January/February 2004 issue, and officially changed the name in 2007.[12]
In 2016, the periodical was named Magazine of the Year by the American Society of Magazine Editors.[13] In 2022, its writers won Pulitzer Prizes for feature writing and, in 2022, 2023, and 2024 The Atlantic won the award for general excellence by the American Society of Magazine Editors. In 2024, it was reported that the magazine had crossed one million subscribers and become profitable, three years after losing $20 million in a single year and laying off 17% of its staff.
As of 2024, the website's executive editor is Adrienne LaFrance, the editor-in-chief is Jeffrey Goldberg, and the CEO is Nicholas Thompson.
In the autumn of 1857, Moses Dresser Phillips, a publisher from Boston, created The Atlantic Monthly. The plan for the magazine was launched at a dinner party, which was described in a letter by Phillips:
I must tell you about a little dinner-party I gave about two weeks ago. It would be proper, perhaps, to state the origin of it was a desire to confer with my literary friends on a somewhat extensive literary project, the particulars of which I shall reserve till you come. But to the Party: My invitations included only R. W. Emerson, H. W. Longfellow, J. R. Lowell, Mr. Motley (the 'Dutch Republic' man), O. W. Holmes, Mr. Cabot, and Mr. Underwood, our literary man. Imagine your uncle as the head of such a table, with such guests. The above named were the only ones invited, and they were all present. We sat down at three P.M., and rose at eight. The time occupied was longer by about four hours and thirty minutes than I am in the habit of consuming in that kind of occupation, but it was the richest time intellectually by all odds that I have ever had. Leaving myself and 'literary man' out of the group, I think you will agree with me that it would be difficult to duplicate that number of such conceded scholarship in the whole country besides... Each one is known alike on both sides of the Atlantic, and is read beyond the limits of the English language.[14]
At that dinner he announced his idea for the magazine:
Mr. Cabot is much wiser than I am. Dr. Holmes can write funnier verses than I can. Mr. Motley can write history better than I. Mr. Emerson is a philosopher and I am not. Mr. Lowell knows more of the old poets than I. But none of you knows the American people as well as I do.[14]
The Atlantic's first issue was published in November 1857, and quickly gained notability as one of the finest magazines in the English-speaking world.
In 1878, the magazine absorbed The Galaxy, a competitor monthly magazine founded a dozen years previously by William Conant Church and his brother Francis P. Church; it had published works by Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Ion Hanford Perdicaris and Henry James.[15]
In 1879, The Atlantic had offices in Winthrop Square in Boston and at 21 Astor Place in New York City.[16]
A leading literary magazine, The Atlantic has published many significant works and authors. It was the first to publish pieces by the abolitionists Julia Ward Howe ("Battle Hymn of the Republic" on February 1, 1862), and William Parker, whose slave narrative, "The Freedman's Story" was published in February and March 1866. It also published Charles W. Eliot's "The New Education", a call for practical reform that led to his appointment to the presidency of Harvard University in 1869, works by Charles Chesnutt before he collected them in The Conjure Woman (1899), and poetry and short stories, and helped launch many national literary careers.[citation needed] In 2005, the magazine won a National Magazine Award for fiction.[18]
Editors have recognized major cultural changes and movements. For example, of the emerging writers of the 1920s, Ernest Hemingway had his short story "Fifty Grand" published in the July 1927 edition. Harking back to its abolitionist roots, in its August 1963 edition, at the height of the civil rights movement, the magazine published Martin Luther King Jr.'s defense of civil disobedience, "Letter from Birmingham Jail",[19] under the headline "The Negro Is Your Brother".[20]
The magazine has published speculative articles that inspired the development of new technologies. The classic example is Vannevar Bush's essay "As We May Think" (July 1945), which inspired Douglas Engelbart and later Ted Nelson to develop the modern workstation and hypertext technology.[21][22]
The Atlantic Monthly founded the Atlantic Monthly Press in 1917; for many years, it was operated in partnership with Little, Brown and Company. Its published books included Drums Along the Mohawk (1936) and Blue Highways (1982). The press was sold in 1986; today it is an imprint of Grove Atlantic.[23]
In addition to publishing notable fiction and poetry, The Atlantic has emerged in the 21st century as an influential platform for longform storytelling and newsmaker interviews. Influential cover stories have included Anne Marie Slaughter's "Why Women Still Can't Have It All" (2012) and Ta-Nehisi Coates's "A Case for Reparations" (2014).[24] In 2015, Jeffrey Goldberg's "Obama Doctrine" was widely discussed by American media and prompted response by many world leaders.[25]
As of 2022, writers and frequent contributors to the print magazine included James Fallows, Jeffrey Goldberg, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Caitlin Flanagan, Jonathan Rauch, McKay Coppins, Gillian White, Adrienne LaFrance, Vann R. Newkirk II, Derek Thompson, David Frum, Jennifer Senior, George Packer, Ed Yong, and James Parker.
On August 2, 2023, it was announced that Jeffrey Goldberg, who had served as editor-in-chief of The Atlantic since 2016, had been named as Washington Week's tenth moderator, and that the politics and culture publication would also enter into an editorial partnership with the television program – which was retitled accordingly as Washington Week with The Atlantic – similar to the earlier collaboration with the National Journal.[26][27] The first episode under the longer title, and with Goldberg as moderator, was the one broadcast on August 11, 2023.[28]
In 1860, three years into publication, The Atlantic's then-editor James Russell Lowell endorsed Republican Abraham Lincoln for his first run for president and also endorsed the abolition of slavery.[29]
In 1964, Edward Weeks wrote on behalf of the editorial board in endorsing Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson and rebuking Republican Barry Goldwater's candidacy.[30]
In 2016, during the 2016 presidential campaign, the editorial board endorsed a candidate for the third time in the magazine's history, urging readers to support Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in a rebuke of Republican Donald Trump's candidacy.[31]
After Trump prevailed in the November 2016 election, the magazine became a strong critic of him. In March 2019, a cover article by editor Yoni Appelbaum called for the impeachment of Donald Trump: "It's time for Congress to judge the president's fitness to serve."[32][33][34]
In September 2020, it published a story, citing several anonymous sources, reporting that Trump referred to dead American soldiers as "losers".[35] Trump called it a "fake story", and suggested the magazine would soon be out of business.[36][37]
In 2020, The Atlantic endorsed the Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, and urged its readers to oppose Trump's re-election bid.[38] The Atlantic published a special 24-article issue "If Trump Wins" in early 2024 in which they warn of a potential second term for Trump being worse than his first.[39][40]
In 2005, The Atlantic and the Aspen Institute launched the Aspen Ideas Festival, a ten-day event in and around the city of Aspen, Colorado.[41] The annual conference features 350 presenters, 200 sessions, and 3,000 attendees. The event has been called a "political who's who" as it often features policymakers, journalists, lobbyists, and think tank leaders.[42]
On January 22, 2008, TheAtlantic.com dropped its subscriber wall and allowed users to freely browse its site, including all past archives.[43] By 2011 The Atlantic's web properties included TheAtlanticWire.com, a news- and opinion-tracking site launched in 2009,[44] and TheAtlanticCities.com, a stand-alone website started in 2011 that was devoted to global cities and trends.[45] According to a Mashable profile in December 2011, "traffic to the three web properties recently surpassed 11 million uniques per month, up a staggering 2500% since The Atlantic brought down its paywall in early 2008."[46]
In 2009, the magazine launched The Atlantic Wire as a stand-alone news aggregator site. It was intended as a curated selection of news and opinions from online, print, radio, and television outlets.[47][48][49] At its launch, it published op-eds from across the media spectrum and summarized significant positions in each debate.[49] It later expanded to feature news and original reporting.
Regular features in the magazine included "What I Read", describing the media diets of people from entertainment, journalism, and politics; and "Trimming the Times", the feature editor's summary of the best content in The New York Times.[50] The Atlantic Wire rebranded itself as The Wire in November 2013,[51] and was folded back into The Atlantic the following year.[52]
In August 2011, it created its video channel.[53] Initially created as an aggregator, The Atlantic's video component, Atlantic Studios, has since evolved in an in-house production studio that creates custom video series and original documentaries.[54]
In September 2011, The Atlantic launched CityLab, a separate website. Its co-founders included Richard Florida, urban theorist and professor. The stand-alone site has been described as exploring and explaining "the most innovative ideas and pressing issues facing today's global cities and neighborhoods."[55] In 2014, it was rebranded as CityLab.com, and covers transportation, environment, equity, life, and design. Among its offerings are Navigator, "a guide to urban life"; and Solutions, which covers solutions to problems in a dozen topics.[56]
In December 2011, a new Health Channel launched on TheAtlantic.com, incorporating coverage of food, as well as topics related to the mind, body, sex, family, and public health. Its launch was overseen by Nicholas Jackson, who had previously been overseeing the Life channel and initially joined the website to cover technology.[57] TheAtlantic.com has also expanded to visual storytelling, with the addition of the "In Focus" photo blog, curated by Alan Taylor.[58]
In 2015, TheAtlantic.com launched a dedicated Science section[59] and in January 2016 it redesigned and expanded its politics section in conjunction with the 2016 U.S. presidential race.[60]
In 2015, CityLab and Univision launched CityLab Latino, which features original journalism in Spanish as well as translated reporting from the English language edition of CityLab.com.[61] The site has not been updated since 2018.
In early December 2019, Atlantic Media sold CityLab to Bloomberg Media,[62][63] which promptly laid off half the staff.[64] The site was relaunched on June 18, 2020, with few major changes other than new branding and linking the site with other Bloomberg verticals and its data terminal.[65]
In September 2019, TheAtlantic.com introduced a digital subscription model, restricting unsubscribed readers' access to five free articles per month.[66][67]
In June 2020, The Atlantic released its first full-length documentary, White Noise, a film about three alt-right activists.[68]