High Cost High Brow: The New (and Improved?) Atlantic Monthly

By Jonathan Berohn

When the powers that be at the Atlantic decided that they needed to be profitable as well as intellectual and literary, they took a surprising tack. First they decided to raise the subscription price.

Then they decided to cut back on the number of annual issues form 12 to 10. Yes-you've got that right. Their plan is to charge more money for less magazine. Even more radically, they fully anticipated and expected to lose subscribers. There is a method behind their madness, of course. In theory, the subscriber base that remains will be more committed to actually reading the Atlantic and-of course this is the kicker-more attractive to advertisers.

Looking at it from a subscriber's point of view, though, that's really not an interesting part of the equation. The main question is: what do I get-aside from 2 fewer magazines a year-for my higher subscription price? Well, you get plenty of ads packed into the 200-odd pages that the new format brings. So that aspect of the strategy seems to be working for the Atlantic. For the readers, things are actually pretty much the same. You still get the brief Agenda essays up front, longer articles in the middle, feature articles anchoring the issue, and reviews, fiction, poetry, and Pursuits & Retreats rounding things out.

What you do get, though, is more. For example, the December Issue offered 4 Agenda essays, 5 feature articles, and 7 reviews. The double January/February issue boasts 6 Agenda pieces, 6 features, a special 3 part series on the State of the Union, and 4 reviews. In short they try to do their best to give you 2 months worth of reading in the double issues. Most importantly, though, the quality is still there. The Atlantic remains the best mainstream-read not overtly biased-intellectual magazine in the country. If you want to delve deeper than the standard news magazines, the Atlantic is still the place to do it. Would it be great not to have to pay more and get fewer magazines? Of course. Is it worth the new $29.95 subscription rate? Look at your monthly cable TV bill and then ask yourself that again.