The Atlantic is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1857 in Boston as The Atlantic Monthly, it began as a literary and cultural magazine that published leading writers' commentary on education, the abolition of slavery, and other major political issues of that time. Today it features articles on politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
The magazine was published monthly until 2001, when 11 issues were produced; since 2003, it has published 10 per year. It dropped "Monthly" from the cover with the January/February 2004 issue, and officially changed the name in 2007. In 2024, it announced that it would resume publishing monthly issues in 2025. As of 2024, the website's executive editor is Adrienne LaFrance, the editor-in-chief is Jeffrey Goldberg, and the CEO is Nicholas Thompson.
The magazine was purchased in 1999 by businessman David G. Bradley, who fashioned it into a general editorial magazine primarily aimed at serious national readers and "thought leaders"; in 2017, he sold a majority interest in the publication to Laurene Powell Jobs's Emerson Collective. In 2024, it was reported that the magazine had crossed one million subscribers and become profitable, three years after losing $20 million in a single year and laying off 17% of its staff.
History Founding and initial growth
In the autumn of 1857, Moses Dresser Phillips, a publisher from Boston, created The Atlantic Monthly. The plan for the magazine was launched at a dinner party at the Parker House Hotel in Boston, which was described in a letter by Phillips:
At that dinner he announced his idea for the magazine:
The magazine's founders included Francis H. Underwood and prominent writers W. E. B. Du Bois, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and John Greenleaf Whittier. "... owever, was the founding of the Atlantic Monthly in 1857. Initiated by Francis Underwood and with Lowell as its first editor, the magazine had been sponsored and organized by Lowell, Emerson, Holmes, and Longfellow." James Russell Lowell was its first editor. Stowe was invited to the dinner party but declined because it served alcohol; nevertheless she signed the manifesto that set out the goals of the paper along with Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and The Atlantic today credits her as one of its founders.
The Atlantics first issue was published in November 1857. By its third year, it was published by Boston publishing house Ticknor and Fields, which later became part of Houghton Mifflin. In 1878, the magazine absorbed The Galaxy, a competitor monthly magazine founded a dozen years previously by William Conant Church and his brother Francis P. Church; it had published works by Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Ion Hanford Perdicaris and Henry James. In 1879, The Atlantic had offices in Winthrop Square in Boston and at 21 Astor Place in New York City.The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 43 (1879) During the 19th and 20th centuries, the magazine also published the annual The Atlantic Monthly Almanac.
20th century The magazine was purchased in 1908 by then-editor Ellery Sedgwick and remained in Boston. The Atlantic Monthly Press was founded in 1917; for many years, it was operated in partnership with Little, Brown and Company. Its published books included Drums Along the Mohawk (1936) and Blue Highways (1982). The press was sold in 1986; today it is an imprint of Grove Atlantic.
In 1980, the magazine was acquired by Mortimer Zuckerman, property magnate and founder of Boston Properties, who became its chairman. On September 27, 1999, Zuckerman transferred ownership of the magazine to David G. Bradley, owner of the National Journal Group, which focused on Washington, D.C., and federal government news. Bradley had promised that the magazine would stay in Boston for the foreseeable future, as it did for the next five-and-a-half years.
21st century In April 2005, the publishers announced that the editorial offices would be moved from their longtime home at 77 North Washington Street in Boston to join the company's advertising and circulation divisions in Washington, D.C. Later in August, Bradley told The New York Observer that the move was not made to save money—near-term savings would be $200,000–$300,000, a relatively small amount that would be swallowed by severance-related spending—but instead would serve to create a hub in Washington, D.C., where the top minds from all of Bradley's publications could collaborate under the Atlantic Media Company umbrella. Few of the Boston staff agreed to move, and Bradley then commenced an open search for a new editorial staff.
In 2006, Bradley hired James Bennet, the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times, as editor-in-chief. Bradley also hired Jeffrey Goldberg and Andrew Sullivan as writers for the magazine. In 2008, Jay Lauf joined the organization as publisher and vice-president; as of 2017, he was publisher and president of Quartz. In early 2014, Bennet and Bob Cohn became co-presidents of The Atlantic, and Cohn became the publication's sole president in March 2016 when Bennet was tapped to lead The New York Timess editorial page. Jeffrey Goldberg was named editor-in-chief in October 2016.
On July 28, 2017, The Atlantic announced that Laurene Powell Jobs had acquired majority ownership through her Emerson Collective organization, with a staff member of Emerson Collective, Peter Lattman, being immediately named as vice chairman of The Atlantic. David G. Bradley and Atlantic Media retained a minority share position in this sale. In May 2019, technology journalist Adrienne LaFrance became executive editor. In December 2020, former Wired editor-in-chief Nicholas Thompson was named CEO.
In 2022, The Atlantic moved its offices to The Wharf in Washington, D.C.'s Southwest Waterfront neighborhood.
Literary and editorial legacy
Landmark publications A leading literary magazine, The Atlantic has published many significant works and authors. It was the first to publish pieces by the abolitionists Julia Ward Howe ("Battle Hymn of the Republic" on February 1, 1862), and William Parker, whose slave narrative "The Freedman's Story" was published in February and March 1866. It also published Charles W. Eliot's "The New Education", a call for practical reform that led to his appointment to the presidency of Harvard University in 1869. The magazine published works by Charles Chesnutt before he collected them in The Conjure Woman (1899).
The magazine has published speculative articles that inspired the development of new technologies. The classic example is Vannevar Bush's essay "As We May Think" (July 1945), which inspired Douglas Engelbart and later Ted Nelson to develop the modern workstation and hypertext technology.
Editors have recognized major cultural changes and movements. For example, of the emerging writers of the 1920s, Ernest Hemingway had his short story "Fifty Grand" published in the July 1927 edition. Harking back to its abolitionist roots, in its August 1963 edition, at the height of the civil rights movement, the magazine published Martin Luther King Jr.'s defense of civil disobedience, "Letter from Birmingham Jail", under the headline "The Negro Is Your Brother".
21st century influence The Atlantic has emerged in the 21st century as an influential platform for longform storytelling and newsmaker interviews. Influential cover stories have included Anne Marie Slaughter's "Why Women Still Can't Have It All" (2012) and Ta-Nehisi Coates's "A Case for Reparations" (2014). In 2015, Jeffrey Goldberg's "Obama Doctrine" was widely discussed by American media and prompted response by many world leaders.
On August 2, 2023, it was announced that Jeffrey Goldberg, who had served as editor-in-chief of The Atlantic since 2016, had been named as the tenth moderator of the PBS news program, Washington Week, and that the politics and culture publication would also enter into an editorial partnership with the television program – which was retitled accordingly as Washington Week with The Atlantic – similar to the earlier collaboration with the National Journal. The first episode under the longer title, with Goldberg as moderator, was broadcast on August 11, 2023.
As of 2022, writers and frequent contributors to the print magazine included James Fallows, Jeffrey Goldberg, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Caitlin Flanagan, Jonathan Rauch, McKay Coppins, Gillian White, Adrienne LaFrance, Vann R. Newkirk II, Derek Thompson, David Frum, Jennifer Senior, George Packer, Ed Yong, and James Parker.
U.S. presidential endorsements The Atlantic has rarely endorsed presidential candidates, doing so only five times in its history:
In 1860, three years into publication, The Atlantics then-editor James Russell Lowell endorsed Republican Abraham Lincoln for his first run for president and also endorsed the abolition of slavery.Lowell, James Russell, "The Election in November" , The Atlantic, November 1860. In 1964, Edward Weeks wrote on behalf of the editorial board in endorsing Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson and rebuking Republican Barry Goldwater's candidacy.Weeks, Edward, "The 1964 Election" , The Atlantic, November 1964. In 2016, the editorial board urged readers to support Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in a rebuke of Republican Donald Trump's candidacy."Against Donald Trump" , The Atlantic, November 2016. In 2020, The Atlantic endorsed the Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, and urged its readers to oppose Trump's re-election bid. In early 2024, The Atlantic published a special 24-article issue titled "If Trump Wins," warning about a potential second term for Trump being worse than his first. In October, the publication endorsed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in her presidential bid against Trump in the 2024 election.
After Trump prevailed in the November 2016 election, the magazine became a strong critic of his. In March 2019, a cover article by editor Yoni Appelbaum called for the impeachment of Donald Trump: "It's time for Congress to judge the president's fitness to serve." In September 2020, it published a story, citing several anonymous sources, reporting that Trump referred to dead American soldiers as "losers". Trump called it a "fake story", and suggested the magazine would soon be out of business.
Reception Audience According to a 2025 Pew Research Center study on educational differences among audiences of 30 major U.S. news outlets, The Atlantic had the highest proportion of college-educated readers, with 62% of its audience holding at least a bachelor's degree.
Awards and recognition In 2005, the magazine won a National Magazine Award for fiction.
In June 2006, the Chicago Tribune named The Atlantic one of the top ten English-language magazines, describing it as the "150-year-old granddaddy of periodicals" because "it keeps us smart and in the know" with cover stories on the then-forthcoming fight over Roe v. Wade. It also lauded regular features such as "Word Fugitives" and "Primary Sources" as "cultural barometers".
In 2016, the periodical was named Magazine of the Year by the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME). In 2022, its writers won Pulitzer Prizes for feature writing. in 2022, 2023, and 2024 The Atlantic won the ASME award for general excellence.
Digital presence and other ventures Web presence Content The Atlantic went online with AOL in 1993. They created an independent website The Atlantic Monthly on the Web in 1995, becoming "Atlantic Unbound" in 1997.
By 2011 The Atlantics web properties included TheAtlanticWire.com, a news- and opinion-tracking site launched in 2009, and TheAtlanticCities.com, a stand-alone website started in 2011 that was devoted to global cities and trends.