If you’ve wondered how the Atlantic Monthly is recovering, seven months on, from the tragic death of its editor Michael Kelly in Iraq last spring, Dan Kennedy at the Boston Phoenix has a report you will want to read. It’s an absorbing look at the magazine’s past, present, and especially its future. According to Kennedy, although the Atlantic is now thriving under the interim editorial stewardship of former Managing Editor Cullen Murphy (whose surprising second job is revealed in the story), questions remain about personnel, direction, and even the magazine’s continued residence in Boston:
The question now is, where does the Atlantic go from here? Under Kelly and Murphy, the magazine has carved out a handful of areas of expertise–politics, foreign affairs, explanatory journalism, and books. (Literary editor Benjamin Schwartz is highly respected, if intimidating in his judgment–such as his recent pronouncement regarding the King James Bible that “no one who hasn’t read it thoroughly should be considered well educated.”) Indeed, one of the few differences Murphy admits to having with [former editor William] Whitworth is that he, like Kelly, believes the magazine should be more focused and less eclectic–although a long piece by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last January, arguing that his cousin Michael Skakel is innocent of murder, was as eclectic a piece as one can imagine.
The Atlantic is currently in the midst of an unusual project–downsizing its circulation by charging more and eliminating cut-rate subscriptions, a move that its executives hope will reduce costs and eventually allow the magazine to break even. According to an account in the New York Times, the magazine will guarantee advertisers a paid circulation of 325,000–down from the current guarantee of 450,000, and considerably below the actual circulation of more than 500,000. The magazine has also cut back over the past few years from 12 issues per year to 10.
Kennedy’s well reported piece happens to come just when the future of The Paris Review after Plimpton is a front burner subject (link via Maud Newton). If all of the parties interviewed by Kennedy are not on exactly the same page about the magazine’s future, they do seem to be well intentioned. Let’s hope this is so, and hope these intentions continue to be realized.