How David Bradley and Justin Smith Saved 'The Atlantic'

adweek reporting:
...The Atlantic’s change in fortune is impressive by today’s publishing industry standards, but it’s all the more so considering the periodical, a 154-year-old journal on politics, culture, science, tech, and world affairs, belongs to a small group of so-called “thought-leader” publications like The New Yorker and The New Republic that are better known for their intellectual contributions than their commercial value. By rethinking everything about the company, however, Smith found a way to make that pay. Think Silicon Valley, but without the free food and massages. (Smith did away with perks like free bagels in the mornings.) “We don’t have football machines, but we filter for entrepreneurial talent,” Smith says.
He wanted to make The Atlantic a place where the traditional wall between the editorial and business sides could be broken down, but in a way that would encourage innovation, not stifle journalistic independence. In a show of transparency, Smith, with Bradley, started giving employees financial information at quarterly town hall meetings. He created joint editorial and business groups to incubate new ideas that have spawned sites like The Atlantic Wire, a news and opinion aggregator; and the new Atlantic Cities, the brand’s first stand-alone, single-topic site, devoted to urban issues.
Pivotal to the turnaround was Smith’s decision to lure Jay Lauf from a plum job as publisher of Condé Nast’s Wired. Lauf told salespeople it didn’t matter how much they sold in print or online dollars, as long as they met an overall revenue target. Digital advertising went from contributing 9 percent of ad revenue to a projected 45 percent this year. Print ad revenue, meanwhile, grew 24 percent in 2010 and is projected to be up 7 to 10 percent this year. Lauf said while his salespeople lured digital-focused advertisers by emphasizing digital properties, clients still wanted print. “A lot of the conventional wisdom was, you’re going to take your eye off print and you’re going to trade dollars for dimes,” he said. “It hasn’t cannibalized the print; it’s actually bolstered the print.”
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