The Atlantic lays off almost 20% of staff

85 comments and not one seems to have read past the headline here.<p>&quot;The 68 staff cuts are mostly attributable to the collapse of the company&#x27;s events business.&quot;<p>Reporters aren&#x27;t losing their jobs here. Events staff with no events to run are.

The sum of annual subscriptions across all newspapers I&#x27;m interested in is exorbitant.<p>What if I could pay on a per-article basis? I wouldn&#x27;t have a problem paying 50¢ or $1.00 for an article I was interested in. It&#x27;s not practical for each publisher to set up micro-payments. But, if there were an intermediate agent that accepted and managed payments for individual random articles, the money could be aggregated and remitted in a lump sum to the publishers. Sort of like an old-fashioned news stand.<p>What the newspaper business needs is a middleman who will collect micro-payments from me and millions of others, aggregate the money, charge my credit card once a month, and pay each publication weekly or monthly for the collective readers who have selected articles.<p>The middleman could accept PayPal payments, or I could open an account with my credit card, and pay once a month for all the individual articles I have read.<p>There is a Website called Blendle that proposes to do this. However, only a subset of articles are available. Publishers are reserving the prime content for full subscribers, and leaving Blendle with the crumbs. That&#x27;s not going to work.

&gt; Between the lines: The Atlantic&#x27;s new majority ownership stake from Emerson Collective, the impact investment vehicle owned by Laurene Powell Jobs, has allowed the company to accelerate its growth in recent years, including a major staff increase and expansion that began in 2018.<p>&quot;Emerson Collective is a social change organization that uses a broad range of tools including philanthropy, impact investing, and policy solutions to create the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Established and led by Laurene Powell Jobs, Emerson Collective is working to renew some of society’s most calcified systems, creating new possibilities for individuals, families, and communities.&quot;<p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.emersoncollective.com&#x2F;about-us&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.emersoncollective.com&#x2F;about-us&#x2F;</a><p>Laurene Powell Jobs has ~$22 billion. She could pay the salaries of these 68 employees for the next 10 years if she felt like it without noticing a change in her bank account.<p>Obviously she is not obligated to do anything, but if employees of my &quot;social change organization&quot; that were hired under my watch, with my encouragement, were impacted by a possibly temporary economic downturn in the middle of a global pandemic and I could help them without sacrificing anything, I hope I would.

As noted in the Vice layoffs thread a week ago (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23193140" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23193140</a>), these industry layoffs are a function of revenue pipelines, and it is 100% not related to the type of content or political leanings.

This sucks. The Atlantic was doing great reporting in the beginning of corona, pointing out how few tests were.being done. It was necessary work that reminded me how important real journalism is.

Their subscription model is strange—it’s $49 per year, which isn’t a lot, but it FEELS like a lot because there is no monthly option like most publications.<p>But events are a huge portion of business for pubs like The Atlantic. It is sad to see these cuts though because they are really putting out some of the most important thinking around this crisis right now, cutting stuff that digs beneath the surface and highlights the broader trends at play.

Real Journalism is very expensive.<p>I fear the day when all the financially viable &quot;news&quot; is some YouTube channel with no investigative staff powering it, but caters to a niche that doesn&#x27;t care about accuracy or integrity to sustain itself.

Events? I would have guesses ad revenue -- it&#x27;s tanking most places.

Why don&#x27;t the magazines get together and offer a package deal? Kind of like cable but for print media. I know Apple has something like that but I&#x27;m not an Appostle. If I could pick the publications I want I would be on that in a heartbeat.

It&#x27;s my fault - I let my print subscription lapse because someone gave me their free New Yorker gift subscription. I didn&#x27;t feel like I could keep up with both plus the Atlantic RSS feed still has a lot of good stuff for free.

what is really the minimally-functional enterprise size for a journalistic organization? you need reporters, editors and fact-checkers. that is the atlantic model. or, if you want just reporters, we can have pure indy reporting on massive platforms where it is a pure marketplace of ideas. the future does not appear to favor the atlantic model.

I guess I would have assumed that these positions would all have been furloughed months ago since I don&#x27;t imagine very many of them fit the qualification of &quot;essential&quot;

I hope this isn&#x27;t indicative of larger business troubles.<p>They&#x27;ve provided some of the most quality editorial over the years.<p>Thankfully John Oliver, podcasts, paid individual-contributor newsletters, and documentaries are taking over long-form investigative journalism and news-aggregator sites and social media are increasing their reach, but I still feel there&#x27;s value in &quot;traditional&quot; editorial institutions.

I cant view the article, is there a way around the paywall?

I&#x27;m surprised how much rationalization towards the billionaire class is being employed to reason against sympathy and sustenance for the working class individuals impacted by this.<p>The billionaires have all the advantages, and often hold a moral and political posture that they promote socially that are at odds with these actions.

As long as they follow the guidelines of the medical experts, everything should work out in the end. We are all in this together.