What can magazines do, in this age of soundbites, to restore depth and complexity to our understanding of the contemporary situation? Cut fiction, of course:
“Everyone knows that the surface features of the news are being reported faster all the time, in smaller and smaller bits,” the editors write in their usual monthly letter to readers […] “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.”
Fiction won’t be cut entirely, though; instead of appearing alongside nonfiction in the Atlantic Monthly‘s ten annual issues, it will appear in an annual fiction issue each August. Bizarrely, Atlantic subscribers will not receive a copy of that issue, but will have access to the stories at the magazine’s website (– which we imagine means few readers checked the box by “fiction” in the mag’s last reader survey. Then again, given Atlantic fiction editor C. Michael Curtis’s taste, I wouldn’t select “fiction” as a good reason to subscribe to the Atlantic, either. )