Comments on: Now if they'd just move back to Boston

Now if they'd just move back to Boston

Horace Rumpole — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:36:07 -0800

Atlantic Magazine opens its archives. Atlantic Magazine announced today that they will drop subscriber-only access to the site, giving full access to every issue of the last 12 years. Where to start? Well, I particularly recommend David Foster Wallace's fascinating examination of right-wing talk radio (DFW trademark footnotes intact), Hitler's Forgotten Library, and Eric Schlosser's The Prison-Industrial Complex. (via)

By: jokeefe

jokeefe — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:43:03 -0800

*joy*

By: Abiezer

Abiezer — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:44:44 -0800

I would comment other than to thank you, Horace, but I'd like to R all TFA's first. Back in a while.

By: vito90

vito90 — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:45:58 -0800

This makes me so happy I could cry. I'll never be without reading material on the goddamned stairmaster again!

By: uaudio

uaudio — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:48:43 -0800

This is outstanding. Huzzah Horace!

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:49:16 -0800

Wow. And after all the fun I have had with the NY Times opening part of its archives.

By: bonecrusher

bonecrusher — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:49:54 -0800

Oh, and let's not forget the title article of the first issue in Michael Kelly's reign. The Atlantic is was the first member of the "highbrow press" to come out in favor of torture.

By: AwkwardPause

AwkwardPause — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:50:13 -0800

Yay! I've run my head against that wall so many times -- and when my employment at an educational institution ceases this will be golden.

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:51:05 -0800

YES!

By: boots77

boots77 — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:53:07 -0800

How can a magazine possibly make money this way? The internet must be killing Atlantic Magazine's revenue as it is, but for them to make everything available, cost-free seems ridiculous from a business standpoint. I really do wonder about how this can feasibly work. Maybe they really are interested in access for all? Hmmmm...I'm still a bit skeptical. Are paper texts in trouble because of this type of sharing? It's sad to think that paper texts might be falling out of favor with the public because they are free online...and yet, I must admit that it is definitely not stopping me from going for the freebies.

By: Busithoth

Busithoth — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:58:31 -0800

[this is good]

By: cog_nate

cog_nate — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:02:14 -0800

Fucking wow.

By: WPW

WPW — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:03:49 -0800

Brilliant stuff.

By: Johnny Assay

Johnny Assay — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:04:10 -0800

I've had a subscription for a while now (it comes free with the paper issues), but I'm ecstatic that I can now pester all my friends with links to the articles. I'm particularly a fan of William Langewische; see Columbia's Last Flight for a fine example of his writing.

By: briank

briank — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:05:07 -0800

FINALLY!

By: Cool Papa Bell

Cool Papa Bell — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:09:39 -0800

Awesome. How can a magazine possibly make money this way? Theories: * Expect to see ads such as those found in Slate and Salon. * Expect to see a division between print and online content, like Vanity Fair does with content exclusive to the print magazine and content exclusively online. * The Atlantic likely did marketing surveys that said they'd get X number of new subscribers if they could only market the online content to them as a loss leader. * The Atlantic is looking to buck up its brand in advance of a planned sale.

By: gaspode

gaspode — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:10:23 -0800

Awesome. I was trying to read the article on David Simon over a woman's shoulder in the subway yesterday. And now I can read it instead of working!

By: Armitage Shanks

Armitage Shanks — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:10:44 -0800

With magazine lead times being what they are, it's interesting to read the editorial from the October 2001 issue.

By: LordSludge

LordSludge — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:11:10 -0800

tl;dr

By: aramaic

aramaic — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:12:12 -0800

Well, I've learned at least one new thing in the last half hour thanks to this post. ...of course, my being bitter about aid agencies (USAID sucks) is probably not the best outcome, but even so...

By: smackfu

smackfu — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:17:35 -0800

David Foster Wallace's fascinating examination of right-wing talk radio (DFW trademark footnotes intact) It was really nice in the magazine. The collected version in Consider the Lobster is unfortunately a bit of a mess, since the pages are so small compared to a magazine and there's no color.

By: Keith Talent

Keith Talent — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:19:17 -0800

First NY Times, then The Atlantic, lets go with The New Yorker for the trinity.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:39:56 -0800

Excellent—thanks for the post!

By: mattbucher

mattbucher — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:46:59 -0800

I'm letting my Atlantic subscription lapse anyway. I haven't enjoyed reading it since they moved their HQ to Washington DC and became so committed to a political agenda. They desperately want to leave behind the label "literary" for "political" because that's what sells.

By: donpedro

donpedro — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:50:10 -0800

Thrilling news. My first destination: rereading Mark Bowden's fascinating profile of Saddam Hussein from several years ago.

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:06:34 -0800

Ahh so that's why they moved to DC, to be part of the 4th estate. But they are not mainstream, politically not very serious. Strange IMO, probably not a good move, alienate a lot of their readership.

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:16:22 -0800

A Reader's Manifesto

By: bl1nk

bl1nk — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:20:09 -0800

bonecrusher -- one of the more fascinating things about the Atlantic's editorial policy is that it does include voices across the political spectrum. So, yes, you'll get Bowden's well articulated but ultimately Pollyanna-ish support for ~~torture~~ interrogation and some of Robert Kaplan's hagiographic pieces about the US military, but you also get some James Fallows' excellent critiques of the myopic administration of Baghdad and also Josh Green's dissection of Rove's disastrous legacy. In a world of rabidly partisan journalism, it's refreshing in its attempts to display a diverse array of opinions.

By: caddis

caddis — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:25:20 -0800

I expect we will be seeing links to many fine Atlantic articles here on MeFi. That is a good thing.

By: dejah420

dejah420 — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:40:50 -0800

I let my Atlantic subscription lapse, because I was a little dismayed about the political focus, when I had a ton of subscriptions to political publications. That said, the caliber of writers there is worth the fee, so I'll probably resubscribe, if only to reward this "all information wants to be free" action. This is fabulous, from a reader's standpoint. I'm not sure the business logic is there, but I'm really glad to see the content.

By: srboisvert

srboisvert — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:59:59 -0800

Their story on the last moments before the breakup of the shuttle is forever combined The Long Winter's The Commander Thinks Aloud for me. I hear a few notes of the song and every hair on my body stands on end because I think about the article's portrayal of the crew's last moments. I love the non-political coverage of the Atlantic. Their subscription wall pretty much stopped my reading of them because it isn't so easy to grab a copy in the UK. This makes me happy.

By: bz

bz — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:09:15 -0800

Fallows. Yum.

By: Maias

Maias — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:46:33 -0800

The business logic is that these magazines lose money anyway: what they want is *influence* You can't have influence these days if you aren't free on the web because no one will talk about articles most people can't read. So...

By: lukemeister

lukemeister — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:49:12 -0800

Johnny Assay, William Langewiesche left the Atlantic for Vanity Fair, so I let my Atlantic subscription lapse and started getting (Lord help me) VF. Still, the Atlantic archives are great, and some of their blogs, like James Fallows', are worth reading.

By: wintermute2_0

wintermute2_0 — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:54:02 -0800

And here I just renewed my subscription. Oh well. You're welcome, freeloaders.

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:58:57 -0800

Horace Rumpole intercepts the ball! He's going to go... all... the... way! The crowd goes nuts!!

By: milkrate

milkrate — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 16:02:59 -0800

Mark Bowden's "Jihadists in Paradise" - the cover from about a year ago. I was completely engrossed in that story on the bus, missed my stop and wound up about 90 minutes late for work.

By: RakDaddy

RakDaddy — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 16:58:29 -0800

Cool. Now I can read Fallows and not have to deal with Caitlin Flanagan's or Michael Hirschorn's bullshit.

By: LarryC

LarryC — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 17:48:16 -0800

Wonderful! I regularly use a couple of articles in my history classes--The Profits of Doom by William Langewiesche and 1491 by Charles Mann.

By: inoculatedcities

inoculatedcities — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 18:05:05 -0800

I don't agree with much of anything that's said in the article but one of the more infamous Atlantic essays in recent memory was B.R. Myers' screed "A Reader's Manifesto."

By: Rumple

Rumple — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 19:57:11 -0800

This is great, thanks. Yes, the William Langewische pieces are some of the best. The Atlantic has become ever more centre-right crusty over the years. This late 2001 Hitchens piece must be one of his earliest post-koolaid essays.

By: spacediver

spacediver — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:07:07 -0800

AWESOME - i've been trying to get my hands on this fantastic article for years - it inspired me to learn how to freedive: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97may/dive.htm

By: neuron

neuron — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:30:46 -0800

I'm eager to (re)read the stuff by Robert Kaplan. My favorite isn't there, since it's from 1994, but The Coming Anarchy: How scarcity, crime, overpopulation, tribalism, and disease are rapidly destroying the social fabric of our planet is available here.

By: Jahaza

Jahaza — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:46:15 -0800

The Atlantic has seemed to me (a right-winger) to move to the left since the editorship of Michael Kelly.

By: telstar

telstar — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 21:48:06 -0800

Yes, and to the left of "stodgy, Eurocentric xenophobia" is "slightly less stodgy Eurocentric xenophobia". The Kaplan piece had me thinking "alarmist racist claptrap."

By: octobersurprise

octobersurprise — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 05:54:57 -0800

My favorite Atlantic piece (past the current range of the archive, but still available) is still Hunter Thompson's obituary of Richard Nixon:

"If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin. These are harsh words for a man only recently canonized by President Clinton and my old friend George McGovern -- but I have written worse things about Nixon, many times, and the record will show that I kicked him repeatedly long before he went down. I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum."

By: languagehat

languagehat — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 07:25:04 -0800

God damn, I miss Hunter.

By: Alvy Ampersand

Alvy Ampersand — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 09:04:12 -0800

[You know.]

By: hell toupee

hell toupee — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:43:21 -0800

Yes, we need Hunter's nuanced perspective on the complexities of our ideological adversaries now more than ever!

By: languagehat

languagehat — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:56:45 -0800

Eh, there's plenty of "nuanced perspective" if that's what floats your boat—it's the professed aim of our entire media system. Me, I hated Nixon's guts and enjoyed a good blast of bile.

By: JHarris

JHarris — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 05:51:23 -0800

From Hunter Thomson's eulogy of Nixon: It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. Now there's a lesson that didn't get learned quickly enough....

By: longdaysjourney

longdaysjourney — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 07:55:18 -0800

Death of a Pig by E.B. White. (This article purportedly gave him the idea for Charlotte's Web.)