Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Atlantic Monthly was founded in November 1857 following a dinner party at the Parker House Hotel in Boston. The founding circle included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, while Harriet Beecher Stowe signed the manifesto despite declining to attend the event.
The magazine moved its editorial offices from Boston to Washington, D.C. in April 2005 to create a hub for collaboration among top minds. The publication officially changed its name from The Atlantic Monthly to The Atlantic in 2007 and adjusted its frequency from monthly to ten issues per year.
The magazine dropped its paywall in January 2008, which led to a 2500% increase in unique monthly traffic by 2011, before implementing a hard paywall in September 2019. The publication achieved profitability in 2024 after crossing one million subscribers and laying off 17% of its staff.
The magazine has endorsed Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Joe Biden in 2020. The editorial board also published a special issue in early 2024 warning about a potential second term for Donald Trump.
Jeffrey Goldberg has served as editor-in-chief since 2016, and Nicholas Thompson became CEO in 2020. Adrienne LaFrance joined as executive editor in 2019, and the magazine sold a majority interest to Laurene Powell Jobs's Emerson Collective in 2017.