The Atlantic Plans To Use Acquisitions To Build Web Traffic

imageA year after The Atlantic.com completed its print and digital makeover, the online news mag is considering some acquisitions to spur growth. I spoke with Justin Smith, president Atlantic Consumer Media, who said that there are no active deals in the works, but confirmed tips we’ve heard that David Bradley, the owner of the Atlantic Media Company, is planning to buy or invest in content sites that can complement TheAtlantic.com’s coverage.

“We’ve moved away from the general nature of commentary on the site and have been looking to do more breaking news, like the item we ran on Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff e-mails,” Smith told me. “And we’ve been able to prove that long-form journalism can work on the web, as long as you have a blockbuster piece. For example, Nicholas Carr’s cover story, Is Google Making Us Stupid?, from last July, got 1 million pageviews. More recently, a piece on the economic collapse, The Quiet Coup, got 1.5 million pageviews in just five days.” More after the jump.

Branching out verticals: When it comes to fitting in new sites, whether through acquisitions, partnerships or creating new verticals in-house, Smith said that the content will revolve around “individual voices.” The site recently expanded its food coverage into a vertical surrounding the writing of Atlantic Monthly epicurean Corby Kummer. It also launched two verticals this year: In January the site started its Politics channel around Marc Ambinder, and TheAtlantic.com just unveiled <a href="http://business.theatlantic.com/&quot; title="The Atlantic

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