I like The Atlantic but they also got themselves banned from reddit for spamming their stories. (after people were already raving about the site regardless)

As with almost all publications, especially those with a deep print legacy, there is an old-biz back-slapper expectation that whatever you did last year that you copied makes you a genius. And you need to meet and beat at X% quarter over quarter. You'll have about a 6-month sliding window of wiggle room before you start notice the raised eyebrows of surprise when people see you in your cube.

After a few gimmicks run their course (e.g. using teams and friends of teams from The Atlantic to "digg" stories on HN for you to uptick visits while pages per visit plummet) in about 6 months the entire sales and/or product teams perform brutal "reshuffles".

For those in the vicious swirl, it is common practice to have a nicely fleshed out LinkedIn account at one's immediate disposal.

The sad irony is that it is the print medium and its advertising legacy (much like TV) brings in much larger sums of revenue overall. But the overhead costs overtake it dramatically. These days it feels very much like vinyl: better quality, but the law of diminishing returns is in full swing.

> The Atlantic supposedly became profitable couple of years ago

Things change fast.

Things change quickly.

[This message from the Adverb Defence League]

“Fast” has been used as an adverb since at least Old English…

http://i.imgur.com/GuFFX.png

Things have changed, gradually.

Wasn't their resurgence in large part due to Andrew Sullivan who then went to The Beast to their IMO mutual loss?