Going Free

As you can read here in The New York Times, starting tomorrow articles from The Atlantic will all be available for free online. That'll be a boon to bloggers and the Web in general in at least two ways. First, it'll let us link to and discuss new magazine content as it comes out with a free and clear conscience. Second, and in some ways even more exciting, it means that I'll be able to mine the magazine's extensive 150+ years of archives willy-nilly for interesting tidbits and noteworthy perspectives on events.

That said, a subscription is still a great bargain at less than $25 a year. You can read it on a plane or a train, you can see the visual elements of the magazine in all their intended glory, and you can leave recent issues scattered about your house so as to suggest to your friends that you're the sort of intelligent person who reads highbrow magazines.

Comments

Wow. The NYTimes mentioned you by name, Matthew, just as long as you're willing to change your name to "several other bloggers".

Posted by Petey | January 21, 2008 10:11 AM

Oh fun! Now if I get a subscription I can act like a 19th century middle class English woman, leaving family literary magazines all over the place for the servants and children to read. Yay, Victorian values still live!

Posted by Jordan Lawrence | January 21, 2008 10:19 AM

Guess I can stop subscribing. And giving gift subscriptions.

Posted by crack | January 21, 2008 10:37 AM

Will the Cox & Rathvon 'Puzzler' be available?

Posted by MattF | January 21, 2008 10:45 AM

Actually, I have within the past few months cancelled my subscription to my local newspaper, and taken up a new subscription to Atlantic, returning after some years missing.

It's a perfect paper read, way better than online, and a great replacement for the maddeningly silly and over-cautious local rag.

Posted by drinkof | January 21, 2008 10:52 AM

OK -- So I read an some Atlantic atrticle for the first time in a long time. Goldberg's cover story.

It's crap. A warmed-over Ralph Peters scribble merged with (yet another) misguided paean to the Kurds (for fun, he throws in a backhanded swipe against Palestinians.)

And What the Hell is Goldberg doing joining Kurdish interrogators and witnessing the physical abuse of Arab prisoners? Isn't that the kind of crap he hated when he was in the Israeli army?

It's like an older version of Micheal Totten has got a cover story in your magazine. I'm really unimpressed. And I'm certainly not subscribing.

Posted by Ikram | January 21, 2008 11:05 AM

I guess it depends who your friends are, because "intelligent" and "highbrow" are not the first words that pop into my head when I think of the Atlantic.

Posted by tps12 | January 21, 2008 11:14 AM

'sfunny. I've long wished for an online-only sub (along the lines of the NYRB) so that I could read the longer articles but didn't get the damn magazine through the door. Life's too short to deal with fifteen subscription cards in a magazine you're already subscribed to.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | January 21, 2008 11:58 AM

RE "you can leave recent issues scattered about your house so as to suggest to your friends that you're the sort of intelligent person who reads highbrow magazines. "
======
How is it for wrapping up fish? Or catching parakeet droppings?

Posted by Don Williams | January 21, 2008 12:02 PM

No good for wrapping fish. have to worry about ink bleed. The Atlantic can transform mere parakeet droppings into glorious abstract art, however, if you lay it out the right way.

Posted by gerontion | January 21, 2008 1:20 PM

Actually, that's the wrong joke. What I meant to say was that I leave copies of the Atlantic strewn about my house, but it's because all my friends are parakeets.

Posted by gerontion | January 21, 2008 1:22 PM

Trolls bashing more free content online. Tough crowd.

I think The Atlantic should try to have one definitive piece in each issue. I don't have a subscription but I pick up the issues where James Fallows has major pieces on Iraq. Maybe The Atlantic can publish the definitive piece on Bill Clinton's life as a serial liar.

I'll bet THAT would sell some magazines. I'd know I'd buy it.

Posted by joejoejoe | January 21, 2008 4:12 PM

Me! Me! Now everyone will be able to look at my juvenilia-- specifically, the half-dozen illustrations I contributed to the magazine in the late 1990s:

http://www.theatlantic.com/fs/esearch.php?source=magazine&words=Marchesi

Me! Me! Me!

Posted by James Gary | January 21, 2008 5:42 PM

Very anoying news, as I just subscribed. Can I ask for my money back? Only one or two articles are worth reading, and I can now print & read them for free.

Posted by Fabius Maximus | January 21, 2008 9:33 PM

Frankly, this is a serious business mistake.

Posted by glasnost | January 22, 2008 7:26 AM

"As you can read here in The New York Times, starting tomorrow articles from The Atlantic will all be available for free online."

Again. It's not as if it was all that long ago that they stopped making it all available for free online.

But now there's a metric for how long it takes The Atlantic to reverse a stupid decision.

Fine news, regardless; there indeed are tons of fantastic articles in the archives, and the magazine does publish excellent articles most every month.

Posted by Gary Farber | January 22, 2008 2:27 PM