Magazine Marketplace: A highly selective industry chronicle

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, June 1, 2003

We're doing a lot more narrative reporting, a lot more profiles, and we're giving a lot more attention to books. And those are some of the items that got attention in terms of nominations as finalists.

Is The Atlantic 's recent success proof that there's still a market for long, complicated stories?

People do have shorter attention spans, and if you can find ways to get people smart-thinking - quickly - that can be a very good thing to do. But if you can provide high-quality narrative reporting, people will give it the time that it requires.

The awards must be bittersweet, coming after Michael Kelly's death in Iraq.

It's more than bittersweet - it's plain tragic. I remember when I told him that a lot of our writers had been named as finalists, how proud he was of them. Mike was a friend and an extraordinary editor here, who was an endless source of ideas and energy, and he gave his all to the magazine. - GV