Content area
Full Text
By Steve Smith
At THEATLANTIC.COM, which has been on an aggressive push in the last year, print, ironically, converts very well. Demonstrating the more traditional viral power of newsstand covers plus word of mouth, two of the site's most popular recent wins are cover stories: (1) Richard Florida's How the Crash Will Reshape America (March), and (2) Simon Johnson's The Quiet Coup cautionary tale about the world of finance taking over U.S. policy (May). The ballyhooed "100 Days" of the Obama Administration have been very good for THEATLANTIC.COM, as its traffic kept rising (2.5 million uniques in March and 15 million page views).
But The Atlantic vp/publisher (since March 2008) Jay Lauf says it is about the "voices and the bloggers driving traffic in addition to a great magazine." Often, users find THEATLANTIC.COM via bloggers Andrew Sullivan and Marc Ambinder in the Politics channel, or Megan McArdle in the Business channel, or culinary critic Corby Kummer in the new Food channel. "They come in to...