Atlantic Monthly Changing Fiction

TEV points me to this NYTimes piece that says The Atlantic Monthly is will soon cease publishing fiction on a month-to-month basis. As long as the total amount of fiction published remains the same, or increases, I don't know that this change bothers me. This is because

The magazine, which now publishes 10 issues a year, down from 12 a few years ago, will add an annual fiction issue each August for sale on newsstands. Subscribers to the magazine will have access to its contents online but apparently will not receive a printed copy.

So in other words, The Atlantic will publish 1 collection of fiction per year. That's about as much as many literary journals do and, frankly, I think I'd rather have the short fiction all at once than to trickle it out month by month. I also think that if the editors get it in their mind that this issue is the fiction issue, they'll be more likely to try some interesting stuff than if they just jammed a short story in amongst everthing else in the magazine.

Also of note is The Atlantic's rationale for the change.

The change, the editors say, is to allow for more space to be devoted to "long-form narrative reporting. . . . Everyone knows that the surface features of the news are being reported faster all the time, in smaller and smaller bits," the editors write . . . But explaining the deeper features of the world requires a different and more expansive kind of reporting — one that has increasingly become the Atlantic's signature. That reporting consumes a lot of space."

I can't blame them for doing this. With the expanding dominion of 24-hour cable news and the surging popularity of blogs and online news (both updated many times per day), a monthly publication is beyond slow. The Atlantic obviously needs to justify why people should read its coverage of an event that was probably already reported to death weeks ago, and going in-depth is the obvious answer. (Actually, it's kind of refreshing, in this day and age, that The Atlantic is showing such deference to long-form reporting.) And, no, such reporting is not a short story, but it still can rise to that standards of literature, and I hope that The Atlantic will encourage this at least some of the time.

FWIW, I'll also note that this is the same direction Philip Gourevitch plans to take The Paris Review in--longer, more narrative journalistic pieces. I wouldn't be surprised if others do the same. As long as they keep the overall amount of fiction the same, I think I'm glad for the change. Maybe if enough magazines get on board the 1-fiction-issue-per-year deal, they can take care to coordinate their activities, so that just when I'm finishing up reading The New Yorker's fiction issue, The Atlantic's will be hitting newsstands.

Comments

[dave munger]

I generally skip the Atlantic's fiction, so this move is fine with me personally. I'm not a big reader of fiction, and I do find it a little troubling (from a writer's perspective) that there is such a small market for short fiction, but if I'm not inclined to read it, what can I say?

It's tough becoming a writer of fiction, and the lack of outlets for writing make it even tougher. But people who don't want it shouldn't have to pay for it in order to get the nonfiction writing they want.

[Pete]

Then again, as Maud reports:

I never got around to mentioning an observation from a regular correspondent (who shall remain anonymous): "Mark my words: When Mike Curtis retires, so will the new annual."

http://maudnewton.com/blog/index.php?p=4989

[Roberta Joseph]

Well, now that the issue has hit the stands (in some places, like Bronxville, NY), and has been up online for four or five days, does anyone have any response to the stories? Favorites? Non-favorites? Disappointments? Surprises?