Forbes
The Atlantic is assembling a “paid content SWAT team,” Atlantic President Scott Havens tells Jeff Bercovici. Does that mean a paywall’s coming?
“It’s not definitely happening, but it’s definitely part of the mix,” Havens tells the reporter. The company last played with a subscriber-only website in 2008, but Havens says the “conditions on the ground have changed.”
“We’re shooting ourselves in the foot a little by having the paid app in the iTunes store while offering ourselves for free in Safari.”
In a press release sent to Poynter Thursday, The Atlantic said revenue from digital ads was up 32 percent over 2011 and that “After posting its first profit in recent memory in 2010, the 155-year-old magazine brand was profitable for the third straight year as well.” Anne-Marie Slaughter’s piece “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” was the “most-read piece in the magazine’s history (1.9 million unique visitors and counting),” the release says. (Slaughter has since landed a book deal.)
In a further sign of the magazine’s health, Atlantic Senior Editor Alexis Madrigal published Thursday what he said was the “first in a series of responses” to an article in the magazine’s January/February edition.
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