Talk:The Atlantic

Requested move 2008

The following discussion is archived. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Moved per consensus.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 08:05, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

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This page should be moved to The Atlantic to reflect the fact that the magazine's name has changed. Considering that The Atlantic is currently a redirect to The Atlantic Monthly, this should not be a huge issue. Skiasaurus (skē’ ə sôr’ əs) 01:35, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

The real interest here is in the historic magazine, not the modern one. A split may be better. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:52, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Huh? It's the same magazine; only the title has changed (and not for the first time). 121a0012 (talk) 04:56, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I disagree, Pmanderson. The magazine has had changes in format over the years, to be sure, but it is still the same publication. The fact that the article doesn't deal very much with the magazine as it exists today just means that it needs to be expanded, which is a separate issue. Skiasaurus (skē’ ə sôr’ əs) 05:14, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

No, it's a sign that the magaxine is much less important than it was in 1857, when it was virtually the only one of its kind in the United States. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:29, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

You have mistaken your interest with the general interest. With near half a million subscribers (and somewhat fewer scholars of 19th century literature) it's safe to say that numerically speaking the current magazine is of fairly dramatically more interest, especially since it has a prominent place near the top of the American media landscape and one can hardly turn on the news nor walk into a Borders without seeing The Atlantic discussing the issues of the day. The point remains it's the same magazine. We wouldn't fork an article on Western Union because the company in 2008 isn't as important relative to the rest of the 2008 economy, as the company in 1857 relative to the rest of the 1857 economy. Perhaps if the article was longer you'd fork the history section, but we're not running into length issues. --JayHenry (talk) 05:01, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Support move to current name of magazine. That's what matters the most. Joeldl (talk) 22:15, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

• Try The Atlantic (periodical), as to most people "the Atlantic" means the ocean; see Atlantic (disambiguation). Anthony Appleyard (talk) 23:32, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't think so. See The Matrix versus matrix. A hatnote at the top of The Atlantic should be good enough, like the one at the top of The Matrix - something to the effect of "for the ocean, see Atlantic; for other uses, see Atlantic (disambiguation)." Skiasaurus (skē’ ə sôr’ əs) 12:14, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Also, The Atlantic is already a redirect to the current page. Skiasaurus (skē’ ə sôr’ əs) 12:17, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I have to admit that when I voted in support, I hadn't thought about possible confusion with the Atlantic Ocean. Still, I think most people who type in "The Atlantic" are looking for the magazine. This is just a guess. Perhaps if the move goes forward, it should be without prejudice to revisiting the issue. That could be done by examining whether there's been a big jump in traffic to Atlantic (disambiguation). Joeldl (talk) 13:14, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I have no issue with that (no pun intended), but I don't see how we can examine the amount of traffic to a certain page... am I missing something really obvious here? Skiasaurus (skē’ ə sôr’ əs) 22:45, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

WP:MOSTRADE

I think this applies here: we don't lightly adopt changes of spelling or typography induced by marketing departments, especially for reasons like this: the issues are still being named by month, but the magazine is only publishing ten months of the year. This is a quite normal reaction to financial problems, and may be expected to end either with a return to monthly publication or closure, fairly soon. The question is, what do most English-speakers actually call the Atlantic Monthly, especially those unaffiliated with it? That's what our readers will call it. Evidence is welcome. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:29, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I've known it as The Atlantic for as long as I've been aware of it. But then, the Times has always referred for me to the paper in New York and not Los Angeles or London, so I don't think that your query is particularly meaningful. For a periodical, the only correct title to use is the one appearing on the masthead (or in the USPS annual ownership report, where applicable and different). 121a0012 (talk) 02:22, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Most Philadelphians call the Philadelphia Inquirer the "IN-kwy-er." Should we change the name of that article too? My guess is, probably not. Skiasaurus (skē’ ə sôr’ əs) 20:57, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I've subscribed to The Atlantic Monthly for the better part of a decade and it's always been ten issues a year. This is not unusual for monthly magazines or magazines in general. Many, if not all, "weekly" magazines don't publish 52 weeks a year either. The magazine is headed for neither closure nor 12 times a year publication. As for naming, the magazine itself prefers to be called "The Atlantic", although old media types still call it "The Atlantic Monthly".[1][2]. The magazine's marketing department however has been successful, and the monthly, long dropped from the cover, is now dropped by most observers as well. --JayHenry (talk) 04:47, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

1927 letter by Al Smith

I found this interesting letter from Al Smith, in response to accusations by Charles C. Marshall that Smith would be against Church-State separation. It could perhaps be included in the history section of the article. Part of the dialogue mentions the encyclical Immortale Dei by Pope Leo XIII. [3] [4] ADM (talk) 23:36, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Mideast conflict

The Atlantic has published some valuable material on the Mideast conflict. Perhaps this could be noted in the entry. [5][6] [7] [8] ADM (talk) 19:46, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Proposed move 2011

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus to move. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:16, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

The Atlantic → The Atlantic (magazine) — And turn this into a dab between the magazine and the ocean, per Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2011_January_8#Category:The_Atlantic_.28magazine.29. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:26, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

• Support makes sense to me. Though, perhaps you don't need a separate disambiguation page, instead just use Atlantic (disambiguation). 65.93.14.196 (talk) 05:16, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose, per WP:TWODABS; there are only two items commonly known as just "The Atlantic", and one of them is at Atlantic Ocean. A hatnote is sufficient. Powers ^T 13:47, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. Atlantic already properly redirects to the ocean. Anyone taking the time to type "the" is more likely looking for the magazine, and a hatnote takes care of the exceptions. Station1 (talk) 19:16, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Superfluous disambiguation per wp:precise. "The" in the title and the hatnote in the article is sufficient to avoid confusion. An analog example: The Tattooist (not The Tattooist (film)) and Tattooist. ^walk victor falk ^talk 19:30, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

NPOV problems with sections "Atlantic Wire" and "Atlantic Cities"

Reading the last two sections of "The Atlantic," "Atlantic Wire" and "Atlantic Cities," it's difficult to not see those paragraphs as laudatory of the subject matter to the point that they are effectively unpaid advertisements for these features of "The Atlantic." They are definitely not NPOV. I'm going to change the paragraphs to make them less nakedly laudatory toward their subject matter.174.16.52.161 (talk) 08:51, 31 December 2012 (UTC) . — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.127.247.107 (talk) 05:01, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Image of Cover page

That Image of Cover page is not represents the magazine I guess.--Auto1080p (talk) 08:57, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Magazine of the year

No idea how to do it, but should this not be added?

References

--— Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.208.66.252 (talk • contribs) 17:57, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Monthly

The article talks about how "monthly" was dropped from its name, but it never says what the original name was or that it had "monthly" in it. This is confusing. -KaJunl (talk) 11:45, 5 March 2016 (UTC) KaJunl (talk) 11:45, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Allsides

Note about this edit and its reversion here. I had opened a discussion at RSN about that ref after it was added. See Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Allsides.com Jytdog (talk) 04:12, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Political stance

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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What about some information on the magazine's political stance? Probably legit to offer some kind of information along those lines. The Atlantic is usually regarded as a little left of center -- it has certainly featured works deeply critical of the Bush administration -- but with regular contributions by Robert Kaplan, P. J. O'Rourke, and David Brooks, I wonder whether it would be safer to classify this magazine as right-of-center?

I know this might raise POV issues, but nobody would object to writing that The Nation is a left-leaning publication, the New Republic is hawkish, and the American Spectator right-leaning. Anyway, thought I'd ask. Bds yahoo 02:55, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The fair thing would be to note that it is dependably pro-Left in its ideology. Calling it "moderate" is just not accurate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.152.216.213 (talk) 22:34, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

I don't think any one political label fairly describes the Atlantic. One reason is that it is not really a political magazine like the New Republic or American Spectator, though it does a number of stories with political angles. It does tend to cater to East Coast sensibilities, so in that sense one could say it leans left, but they're not reluctant to publish articles by conservative writers like the ones you mentioned. I'd call it politically ecumenical. --Polynova 22:00, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

One fairly neutral thing to do is to make mention of the ownership and funding of the magazine. ISTR that THE ATLANTIC switched to a not-for-profit status awhile back, but I'm not sure about the particulars.

I think it's important to mention the class component of the magazine and it's audience explicitly as it is characteristic of the publication.

Hi, I'm a subscriber to the Atlantic and I don't think it is left or right, and I think saying "While many of The Atlantic's articles are nonpolitical or written from a moderate stance, the magazine is generally considered to have a liberal slant" still goes too far. I vote for Democrats and Republicans. If the National Journal qualifies as "nonpartisan", why shouldn't the Atlantic? True, the Atlantic is edgier than National Journal, but publishing "works deeply critical of the Bush administration" should not earn a magazine a liberal or left-of-center label. (If it does, I fear for US journalism.) For example, George Will is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative but he's written very critical opinion pieces about the Bush administration's poor fiscal discipline, curtailment of civil liberties, etc. So have "arch conservatives" Robert Novak and Charles Krauthammer. Are they left-of-center? No way. I recall an insightful article in the Atlantic about Roe v. Wade where the (staff?) author wrote that Roe was unconstitutional and abortion should be decided by legislatures. I don't think that's a liberal position. Anyway, I think the Atlantic should be called "nonpartisan," or at least that it presents both liberal and conservative authors and perspectives, and in sum, plays it straight. Honestly, I would actually argue that the Atlantic is a "progressive" publication. And I still consider the term "progressive" neither liberal nor conservative (i.e. the meaning it used to have before liberals started trying to rebrand themselves as "progressives.") Just my 2¢. 151.200.30.69 (talk) 22:55, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I imagine if you did a survey of Atlantic journalists, most would vote Democrat. It's notable only one of their bloggers is Republican (though McArdle, Sullivan and Crook are all arguably right-of-center, to some degree, they're backing Obama this cycle at least). This is liberal bias of a cultural East Coast type, mainly, I think. 77.100.109.206 (talk) 19:43, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

This article is self-contradicting. It describes the magazine as "center-right", but yet places it in the "Modern American Liberal Magazines" group —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.87.28.36 (talk) 16:54, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Is it really necessary to ascribe a political leaning to this magazine? A few things to consider. First, unlike other periodicals, The Atlantic never (so far as I have seen) publishes anything resembling a staff editorial. Everything is signed. It is not possible to apply the same rules by which we would describe the New York Times as having a liberal editorial slant or the Wall Street Journal as having a conservative slant. Similarly, the variety of content on the Atlantic's pages suggests that they are not at all trying to advance a specific political agenda. Second, the argument that the because its readership is probably skewed toward East Coast liberals is entirely specious. This is like saying the Washington Post is pro-Administration (Republican or Democrat) because so many of its readers are federal employees. Moreover, we shouldn't be commenting on the economic or social makeup of the magazines audience without, you know, facts. As for the idea that it should be called "progressive," that doesn't work either. Unless applied to the Progressive movement of the early 20th century, this term is to vague and frankly too normatively charged to be used in any objective way. "Progress" is like motherhood and apple pie, but reasonable people differ on what actually constitutes progress. So let's banish that term altogether —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jcmitch96 (talk • contribs) 18:02, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Apart from Left-Right issues, it would be interesting to inquire on The Atlantic's positions on the Mideast conflict, as would be the case for many notable publications. ADM (talk) 11:28, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

This story may shed some light on The Atlantic's political leanings, or lack there of. A spokeswoman is quoted as stating that "as an institution, The Atlantic is part of ‘no party or clique,’ as our founders put it." Might be worth noting this in the article and stating that as a journal, The Atlantic has no notable political leanings. Individual authors of stories published there might vary in their personal views, but on the whole, the publication does not have a strong conservative or liberal bias. SteveChervitzTrutane (talk) 08:23, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Funny, I came to this article specifically to see if there was mention of any political bias in the publication. I was citing it on a controversial and wanted to know whether I should expect responses like "That proves nothing! What do you expect from a liberal (or conservative?) rag like that." Rather than debating which of two terms to apply, and given how polarized and partisan so much mainstream media is, it seems it would be a good idea to point out that it is in fact neither (or both). To think that there is still a place where liberals and conservatives can both speak to the same audience! What a relief. If you need a label for that, how about "sanity." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.72.175.79 (talk) 03:16, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Someone labeled it as liberal. I dont think its liberal at all. its mostly pragmatic. It does have liberal commentators. Its online blogs tend to lean liberal. But its overall theme, and main articles are not liberal. Please refrain from labeling it conservative or liberal until you have discussed it here! Surag (talk) 03:50, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

After Morgan Entrekin left, so did P.J. O'Rourke. Anyone visiting the blog pages of the Atlantic ("Atlantic Wire") will notice a strong liberal tilt to the features there, to the point that they were slinging mud at the Blue Dog Democrats during the early budget debates in Obama's first term (and by that, I mean rumors about some of these guys' personal lives). And the commenters definitely lean left and rather vulgar. So the print edition of Atlantic may still be balanced, politically, but its blog is way off to the left.174.16.52.161 (talk) 08:42, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, whenever a media organisation and its patrons protest that it's neutral be on your guard - it should be obvious. From what I can see of the ideas promoted in their content I have no hesitation in describing them as left-wing with pro-socialism leanings. Their small percentage of token right of centre contributions don't fool most readers. Matthew 06:16, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

As a solid but not extreme conservative, I would say that as of March 2018 The Atlantic is still pretty balanced between left and right. But I've noticed that the CityLab website owned by The Atlantic is decidedly hard left. Why the disparity in outlook? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.46.251.153 (talk) 19:53, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

The magazine is liberal --Mccommas (talk) 17:51, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Move CityLab section

As The Atlantic has sold the CityLab site to Bloomberg, I believe CityLab should become a standalone stub or move to the Bloomberg page.Jojuj (talk) 01:53, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

+1 Qzekrom (she/they • talk) 03:55, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia locked article with false info?

Why lock the article for vandalism when you could halt anonymous edits removing factual info? Such as the anonymous edits that removed my entry that included citation! Darksurf (talk) 13:40, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

The article was locked to IP edits and non-autoconfirmed users. Your edit may have been removed due to its Twitter citation, which is not a reliable source except for very narrow instances. See WP:TWITTER. WP:RELIABLE can help you identify reliable sources. Paisarepa (talk) 14:44, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

The tweet had the FOIA requested documents attached. So basically, someone is claiming documents from the government itself are not reliable? Did they removed it without actually checking the reference? Darksurf (talk) 16:50, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

The reference provided in this article was not the government documents, it was the tweet. Even if the documents had been listed as the source, the Wikipedia policy on primary sources is "primary sources may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements that any educated person—with access to the source but without specialist knowledge—will be able to verify are directly supported by the source" (see WP:PRIMARYCARE). Those documents never talk about Trump's alleged statement, therefore they are not a reliable source to use in refuting the statement. Paisarepa (talk) 19:15, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 September 2020

Change editor from 1980-1999 to William Whitworth, NOT Maxine Trottier 97.101.130.5 (talk) 00:08, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for the heads-up. Paisarepa (talk) 00:40, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Edit request

Could someone please restore Special:Permalink/1026526260 as the last good revision? Dwightny7 (talk · contribs)'s edits introduced an error (verifiable here), which 173.49.159.165 (talk) corrected, but 173.49's corrections didn't fully revert the issues (a source is still missing, and a spelling error was introduced). See Special:Diff/1027473753/1026526260 for the net effect of the two edits. -- Tamzin (she/they) | o toki tawa mi. 05:00, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Done. Thank you. 173.49.159.165 (talk) 15:34, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! Funny... How often does an IP action an edit request by an account, rather than the other way around? :) -- Tamzin (she/they) | o toki tawa mi. 15:55, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

'nother one. The most recent edit introduced a statement that goes against both the rest of the article and past consensus. Arguably crosses over into WP:COIU territory, but out of an abundance of caution I'll leave it to someone else. -- Tamzin (she/they) | o toki tawa mi. 22:53, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

This has been resolved. Thanks. -- Tamzin (she/they) | o toki tawa mi. 20:01, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Deleted claim about Dickinson asking Higginson to become her mentor

I deleted the statement "For example, Emily Dickinson, after reading an article in The Atlantic by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, asked him to become her mentor" because I could not find a reliable source to back this up. It is true that she asked him to be her mentor -- there is ample evidence of the letters she sent asking him this -- but I could not find any credible sources to support the claim that this happened "after reading an article in The Atlantic." The best I could find was this article which mentions the fact that he wrote an Atlantic article but makes no reference to Dickinson reading that article before asking him for guidance. I think deleting the sentence is the best course of action because it might lead to the impression that she asked him to be her mentor because of his writings in the Atlantic, a claim that I cannot find any sources to support (and because it was left uncited for over seven years I'm choosing to assume that there are no credible sources that support this -- although I may be wrong about that). Since there doesn't seem to be a source to support the idea that this Atlantic article had anything to do with her choice to ask him to be his mentor, it doesn't seem fit to be in a wiki page about The Atlantic and so I deleted it. Kduggirala (talk) 22:20, 8 June 2021 (UTC)