When The Atlantic’s CEO Nick Thompson thinks about who the magazine is competing with, Substack is now on the list.
Media companies are increasingly putting writers front and center, as more people want to hear from—and trust—individuals rather than faceless institutions. But that strategy carries risk: those same writers can build big enough followings to go independent.
"We want Charlie [Warzel] and Will [Oremus] to write for The Atlantic and not to go to Substack," said Thompson, referring to two of the publication’s star tech reporters. “It’s a totally different competitive dynamic than we had 10 or 15 years ago.”
That means The Atlantic has to offer writers more than they’d get running their own newsletter. Those benefits include providing skilled editors, fact checkers, legal review and a built-in audience through the publisher’s website and social media footprint.
“We do occasionally lose people who go and become creators. But we don't lose a lot of them,” said Thompson, who was formerly editor-in-chief of Wired.
At the same time, The Atlantic is open to working with creators.
While Thompson doesn’t run editorial operations, he said he’d like to build a creator network on YouTube. This network could include creators who share The Atlantic’s standards and values, but who aren’t yet making a sustainable living on YouTube.
“Anybody who can bring their own audience is amazing. Particularly if they have an audience that’s different from The Atlantic,” he said. That includes younger consumers, since the average Atlantic subscribers is age 40 or older.
The publication has dabbled with creators before. In 2021, it hired a slate of writers to run newsletters, aiming to convert their followers into paid Atlantic subscribers.
But Thompson said it didn’t work out financially. “We weren’t able to generate enough subscriptions to justify the salaries,” he said.
In recent years, The Atlantic has gone from losing money to being profitable and expanding its newsroom. It has 1.5 million subscribers paying about $90 a year, plus advertising revenue. Thompson said total revenue is now "significantly more” than the $100 million The Wall Street Journal reported in 2024.
Thompson says AI is going to change “every single thing” about the media industry. That could include disrupting social media.
“Is it fun to go to TikTok when you have no idea if it’s real or not?” Thompson said. “I kinda think it might die. I kind of feel like Twitter, TikTok, social media might just be destroyed.”
Two years from now, he believes that it’s going to become even harder to tell what’s real and what’s not online. “Even if you see it’s a person you recognize, you won’t know it’s them,” he said, citing an example of a friend who uses an AI avatar sometimes in his videos.
As that happens—and AI content becomes more personalized on apps like TikTok—it could open opportunities for other platforms catering to people who want to “talk to real people.”
Part of The Atlantic’s response to the rise of AI has been leaning into strategies that won’t be disrupted by chatbots or algorithms, like adding more print editions and live events. It plans to host live events in all 50 states over three years.
Meanwhile, print magazines are sent through the US Postal Service. “Not a lot of AI there,” Thompson said.
On Thursday's episode of Scalable, we covered a lot more ground, including where Thompson sees the media industry heading, The Atlantic’s deal with OpenAI and whether AI chatbots owe publishers a cut.
Thompson has also become something of a creator himself. He's amassed more than 1.6 million LinkedIn followers thanks to posting near-daily videos for the past eight years. (Fun fact: he takes them all in one take!)
Tune into the full conversation below, or wherever you get your podcasts.
The Round Up
Spotify is moving deeper into fitness with a new feature called Running Mode, where premium users can create and select playlists customized by run type, length or music genre. It’s also added guided fitness classes from creators and Peloton.
LinkedIn says it’s continuing to crack down on AI-generated content, including automated comments and low-quality posts. “AI slop is a top priority for all of us. We really care about this,” wrote Hari Srinivasan, LinkedIn’s chief product officer.
BuzzFeed is laying off 35% of staff, or about 180 employees, at BuzzFeed, HuffPost and Tasty. The layoffs come after media entrepreneur Byron Allen acquired a majority stake in the company earlier this year.
Home Game Studios, a new venture helping creators develop and grow scripted and unscripted content for streaming and digital platforms, launched this week. Co-founded by Adam Wescott and Max Lubin, it also announced its first show, a comedy-driven game show called “This Is A Game Show?” hosted by creator and comedian Mitsy Sanderson. The show became available on Tubi on Thursday.
💡Pro tip from Instagram head Adam Mosseri on collab posts: the larger account should be the one to initially post and invite the smaller one to be a collaborator. “The post gets distributed to both audiences, but the initial push comes from the account that posts it,” he wrote. Noted!
By the Numbers
Over half of all recommended content on Instagram is now less than a day old, more than double what is was a year ago, Meta’s CFO Susan Li said on the company’s second-quarter earnings call on Wednesday.
Li credited improvements to the company’s ranking models, which can now identify “high-quality” new Reels even before users start engaging with the content.
Between the lines, Meta is trying to encourage its users to post more content. In turn, Meta gets more opportunities to serve ads and make money.
Despite reporting strong second-quarter revenue growth, Meta’s stock dropped due to an earnings miss and disappointing third-quarter guidance.
Still, the stat is another sign that Reels has become a formidable competitor to TikTok, as we wrote earlier this year.
We’ll have our full analysis from big tech earnings next week.
Soundbite
Mocking women when they become powerful in a new industry isn’t new.”
That was Paul’s response to a Nantucket shop called Four Winds Craft Guild hanging up a “No Influencers” sign, which sparked debate on social media this week.
One side saw it as a fair jab at influencers being a nuisance on the island. Other creators like Paul viewed it as a swipe at female creators, who often aren’t given enough credit for building successful businesses. One thing is for sure: the hoopla got the shop a whole lot of free publicity.
As for Paul, she didn’t just clap back online. She has her own Dairy Boy store in Nantucket and put up a sign of her own: “Everyone Welcome.”
Creator Moves
Fans are becoming a new type of creator. Kye O’Hagan, a superfan of the indie rock band Geese, is one of the faces of Spotify’s latest “Fan Life” campaign, which focuses on experiences at live concerts.
Fan content also stood out at the World Cup. And as F1 creator and commentator Toni Cowan-Brown told us last week: Everyone has a role to play, from journalists to influencers to fans.
Don Lemon announced a deal with podcasting company Libsyn to be his exclusive hosting and advertising partner for his independent media company Lemon Media Network. He also has ambitions to bring shows hosted by other creators onto his network. We spoke to the former CNN anchor about going independent on a recent episode of Scalable.
Alix Earle’s new reality show “Earle Meets World” will hit Netflix on September 4. The trailer for the eight-episode series suggests it'll offer some details about her feud with "Call Her Daddy" host Alex Cooper.
Amanda Kloots is launching a new podcast called “Good Grief” with Dear Media about her grief journey. The creator and TV host’s husband Nick Cordero died at age 41 in 2020 from Covid-related complications.
Henry Smith signed with CAA. The lifestyle creator’s content covers topics like fashion and he’s recently been reviewing the romantic-fantasy book series “A Court of Thorns and Roses” for his 1 million TikTok fans.
Microdrama Mania
Jimmy Fallon’s “The Tonight Show” is launching its own microdrama, though it's really a spoof of the genre. It stars Fallon, alongsideJohn Stamos, vertical drama star Kasey Esser, TikTok creator Delaney Rowe and “Tonight Show” writer Rose Kelso.
We went deeper on the explosion of microdramas in Tuesday’s newsletter.
Talent Tracker
Stephanie Kaplan Lewis is stepping down as CEO of Her Campus Media and becoming a board director. She helped start the media brand for college students more than 17 years ago.
Manychat is hiring a head of affiliate partnerships. The startup lets creators and brands auto-reply to comments with a DM containing a link or answer, such as outfit details.
