How the Atlantic Went from Broke to Profitable in Three Years

&gt; the magazine had a $20 million deficit and months earlier had laid off 17% of its newsroom... He ended up raising subscription prices by more than 50%, and made it harder for people to read stories without paying... Subscriptions now account for two-thirds of revenue, compared with a little less than half when Thompson took the helm... Thompson said plenty of challenges remain, including finding ways to sustain subscription growth and attracting young audiences.<p>I like The Atlantic well enough, and am glad it&#x27;s not circling the drain like so many others. However, nothing in this article makes me believe they did more than reduce costs (aka lay off people) and extract more money from their existing pool of committed subscribers. That may not be the case, but I see nothing here that argues against that hypothesis. And I think it&#x27;s safe to say that that would <i>not</i> be a good long-term strategy.<p>(I assume &#x27;subscription growth&#x27; is subscription revenue growth, not necessarily the number of subscriptions, based on its use in the article)

&gt; a successful turnaround that offers a glimmer of hope for the rest of the industry, which has laid off reams of journalists since the start of the year.<p>National- and international-focused journalism is <i>relatively healthy</i>. It’s also the least important part of the news media. Doing great? No. Still kickin’? Yes.<p>2nd-tier and lower city papers, and small town local papers (and tv journalism, too)… those are mostly <i>dead</i> already. Slowly strangled to death by technology, bought by private equity and gutted, or scooped up into giant propagandist media empires that don’t care about local issues and journalism, but about laundering their national agenda through “neutral” local outlets as a kind of astroturfing-adjacent activity.<p>Those were way more important, they’re already all but extinct, and there doesn’t seem to be a way to reverse the damage.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;YRUNj" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;YRUNj</a>

Mouthpieces for the reigning State Department ideology. Absolute shitrag. The fact that they raised prices and people were willing to pay tells me their audience is DC club regulars circulating the money pool. From our pockets to their cocktail lounges.

I think this highlights an actually disturbing trend of billionaire’s buying establish mass media.<p>Laurene Powell Jobs buying Atlantic, Jeff Bezos buying Washington Post, Elon Musk buying Twitter.

&quot;we make something worth buying.&quot; That is interesting. The &quot;buying&quot; ostensibly refers to journalism, which is where IMO the media has failed terribly in the past 2-3 decades. Most of it became too opinionated that the product being sold was no longer news and analysis, but opinions and echo chambers. I think over time people got tired of paying for opinions, but others were content to continue to do so.<p>A newspaper that read more like analytical research would be more appealing. The media would benefit as a whole, and prosper, if they strove to remove the personal opinions and beliefs from their reporting.

Interesting. Focus on the quality of the product and more people will want it and pay more for it. Someone should put this case study into a four sentence LinkedIn post so more startup CEOs will want to do it.

I noticed in the last few years that The Altantic&#x27;s front page was almost constant negativity, fear-mongering, click-bait. Surely there is much bad going on in the world but I just couldn&#x27;t handle their style. So I cut it completely out of my news. I wonder if it was tied to this.<p>For similar perspectives but more even coverage I&#x27;ve been preferring The Nation, New Republic, and, to a lesser degree, Jacobin.

From the article..<p>Atlantic annual revenue: $100 Million<p>For comparison..<p>NYT &amp; WSJ: ~$2.4 Billion

The pre condition seems to be getting bought out by a patron Billionaire (Laurene Powell Jobs).