What’s This?
2013-06-14 18:11:41 UTC
For the first time in its 156-year history, The Atlantic is offering a weekly edition, an iPad-based iteration that will spotlight the best of its web-based content that week.
The Atlantic Weekly will be available in an iPad and iPhone app on Friday afternoon in iTunes. Single issues will go for $ 1.99 or you can get a monthly or annual subscription for $ 2.99 and $ 19.99, respectively. Stories from each issue will be cherry-picked for their quality, rather than the amount of hits they get, says Geoff Gagnon, senior editor at the title.
The premiere issue contains six stories culled from theatlantic.com, The Atlantic Wire and The Atlantic Cities plus a story from the archives from Henry David Thoreau plus some pics from In Focus , a photography blog that lives on theatlantic.com. There will be no content from other Atlantic Media blogs like Quartz , National Journal and Longreads .
The goal of the weekly publication – in addition to making money – is to provide a “lean back” experience for readers with pieces that “have stirred up a lot of conversation that week,” Gagnon says.
It’s unclear how large the demand is for such a product, particularly one that relies on an editor’s judgment rather than the sort of automated aggregation of a user’s social media preferences that Flipboard provides. However, the space has gotten a bit more competitive lately with the recent revamp of New York magazine’s iPad app, which, like The Atlantic Weekly , was created by Mag +. Other competitors on the weekly front include Esquire Time , Newsweek and Huffington an iPad-based offshoot of The Huffington Post that, unlike the others, is free. Other experiments in the medium include News Corp. ‘S The Daily , which fizzled out last December after 18 months.
The Atlantic Weekly is The Atlantic’s latest stab at expanding its digital footprint. Since 2009, the company has aggressively sought a larger online readership, an effort that seems to have paid off. At present, the company claims 20 million unique monthly visitors and a staff of 80, which is nearly double what it was in 2010.
Images courtesy of The Atlantic Monthly Group
Topics: Business, magazines, Media, the atlantic
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