
The Atlantic: How One Magazine Became Profitable by Going 'Digital First' - antr
http://mashable.com/2011/12/19/the-atlantic-digital-first/
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xer0
If UPS existed 110 years ago: "After years of horse drawn cartage, we're going
petroleum first, and we're very excited about it."

Of course digital first should be the first inclination. Succeed where the
success is, not where the past has died.

Good for the Atlantic.

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erickhill
Many pubs claimed to go 'digital first' in the mid-2000s (e.g. InfoWorld, a 25
year old publication even dumped print entirely). But the cost of unique
content creation often still far outweighed the cost of production. And
online, it's still easier to run a "story" about an iPhone rumor to generate
traffic than real hard news or investigative journalism. Soon, all pubs start
to re-publish the same tired crap in the race for pageviews and everything
gets watered down.

Content _can_ be a lot cheaper to produce and promote if you aren't the
content originator (e.g. Associated Press is literally everywhere now) but
it's death by a thousand cuts more often than not for publishers that go this
route.

Unless one has simply massive online traffic, the advertising model that
propped up print for so long is broken online. Print is mostly free from
delivering hard metrics with the exception of circulation numbers. Online,
pure visits and ad impressions are never enough. Thus, an impossible slippery
slope forms creating a paradox of expectations between "engagement" with
vendor content and "real content."

In all reality, the "digital first" strategy is impossible for many publishers
as the subscription dollars are almost free money for them. The lure of
another $20 annual subscription is too great. And the growth necessary to
survive, so hard.

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v21
I bet The Guardian is looking very closely at this - they have been losing
money for years, and they're going "digital first" too. Let's hope it works
out as well for them.

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anothermachine
The Atlantic has certainly been promoting itself heavily here and on reddit
this past years, and catering its content to interests of the net-savvy
reader:

[https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=url%3Aycombinator.com+...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=url%3Aycombinator.com+theatlantic.com#q=site:news.ycombinator.com+%22%28theatlantic.com%29%22&fp=1)

<http://www.reddit.com/domain/theatlantic.com/>

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nodata
Where does it say that the "digital first" part led to profit?

From my point of view the quality of the journalism online made me fork over
money, but I don't see how "digital first" comes into this.

~~~
podperson
There's a bunch of stuff about the huge increase in online ad revenue. I think
it's a reasonable to assume that this was driven by their "digital first"
approach.

Personally, having been a past subscriber to the Atlantic but given up on it
owing to never having time to read magazines and only being interested in a
subset of the articles in a typical issue, I like being able to read
interesting stories when the mood takes me rather than piling the magazines up
in the unread pile and then feeling stupid when I realize I missed a really
compelling article. (I often found out about articles in my unread magazines
on NPR or online.)

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rbranson
Glad to hear! The Atlantic Monthly is the only magazine I subscribe to. The
content is absolutely worth it, and I feel like I'm supporting something truly
needed in society today.

