The Atlantic is debuting its ebook initiative on Wednesday with “Denial” by Jonathan Rauch, a memoir of following the author’s unexpected trek to discovering at 25 that he is gay.

The Atlantic Books, the new imprint, will publish several long-form stories this year, the magazine said in a press release. Details of the next publication will be announced in the coming weeks.

“Over the two decades that Jonathan has been writing for The Atlantic, he’s produced revelatory articles on everything from politics to foreign policy to, in our current issue, end-of-life care.  But this book is his most powerful work,” James Bennet, editor in chief of The Atlantic, said in a statement. “We are honored to make it the debut title of The Atlantic Books.”

Rauch, a contributing editor at the magazine, chronicles his quarter-century of denial, living in an inverted world “where love is hate, attraction is envy, and childhood never ends. He comes to think of himself as a kind of monster—until one day, seemingly miraculously, the world turns itself upright and the possibility of love floods in.”

“Denial: My Twenty-Five Years Without a Soul” is available now exclusively onKindle Singles and soon via Nook, iBooks, and Kobo for $1.99. For more information, please visit www.theatlantic.com/denial.

Image: [OnBeing.org]

The New York Times editor Jill Abramson met with James Bennet, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, but he denied that she was trying to woo him back to the paper where he spent 15 years.

The Huffington Post’s Michael Calderone heard from unnamed sources that Abramson wanted to gauge Bennet’s interest in returning to the Times, possibly to replace Times Magazine editor Hugo Lindgren.

Bennet did not immediately respond to an email from FishbowlNY requesting comment.

But he did respond to Calderone, saying he’d rather be left “out of one of these toxic Times gossip stories.”

“You and your sources have me: I met with Jill! Who is an old friend, and a brilliant editor,” Bennet said in an email. “I hope someday to meet with her again. And I have met at times with other people at the NYT, as I meet with people in media all the time who are serious, like us, about doing and sustaining great journalism. It’s useful to compare notes. But they didn’t, and they haven’t, offered me any job. And now I’m going to get back to doing the job that I love.”

Image: [Business Insider]

The Atlantic has named Ann Hulbert its new books and culture editor. Hulbert is a published author and currently a Spencer Fellow at Columbia’s Journalism School. Hulbert wrote for The New Republic for over a decade and was a contributor to Slate when it launched. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, The New York Times Book Review and The New Yorker.

Read more

Nate Thayer, a veteran journalist, posted on his blog an email exchange between The Atlantic’s global editor — Olga Khazan — and himself, that is guaranteed to frustrate you if you’ve ever freelanced. Thankfully, Thayer deals with the emails in the best way possible.

It began with Khazan emailing Thayer to ask about republishing something he had written on The Atlantic. This part is great. Any freelancer would be ecstatic to have such a respected publication (or any publication, really) contact them. Typically freelancers are the ones doing the asking. But as the emails went back and forth, things quickly got depressing.

When Thayer asked for specifics about the piece, Khazan wrote that The Atlantic couldn’t pay Thayer for his work, “but we do reach 13 million readers a month.” Ah, the old, “We can’t pay you, but think of the exposure you’ll get as we make money off of your piece!” What a fantastic deal.

To his credit, Thayer shot back a brilliant response:

Read more

The winner’s of Adweek’s annual Hot List are now available online, but here’s a quick summary of the print category: Condé Nast and The Atlantic are doing good things.

Six Condé magazines took home awards — such as GQ getting the “Hottest Magazine for Men” nod and Bon Appétit taking the “Favorite Destination for Foodies” honor — the most of any big publishing house. Other Condé titles taking home Hot List awards include Condé Nast Traveler, Self, Golf Digest and Allure.

The Atlantic was the other big winner. It was named the “Best Magazine to be Seen Reading on The Subway” and Jay Lauf and James Bennet were named publisher and editor of the year, respectively.

For the complete Hot List winners, click through.

[Image: Nick Mrozowski/Alfred Maskeroni]

The Atlantic Media Company has promoted three of its top editors. James Bennet has been named Editor-in-Chief of The Atlantic, Scott Stossel has been tapped as Editor, Atlantic Magazine, and Bob Cohn has jumped to Editor, Atlantic Digital.

Bennet has been with the Atlantic since 2006, most recently as Editor of The Atlantic. Stossel started in 1992, left in 1996, and rejoined earlier this year. He was most recently Deputy Editor of The Atlantic. Cohn has been with the company since 2009, most recently Editorial Director of Atlantic Digital.

Justin Smith, President of The Atlantic Media Company, said the promotions were meant “to better position us for continued growth.” See the full memo after the jump.

Read more

Simon Dumenco, a Media Reporter for Ad Age, has come up with something called the Council on Ethical Blogging and Aggregation (CEBA). The group, according to David Carr in The New York Times, was founded in the hopes of developing a proper way for bloggers and aggregaters to credit others’ writing. Dumenco told Carr that bloggers should not see the group as the enemy:

‘This is not an anti-aggregation group, we are pro-aggregation,’ Mr. Dumenco told me. ‘We want some simple, common-sense rules. There should be some kind of variation of the Golden Rule here, which is that you should aggregate others as you would wish to be aggregated yourself.’

As aggregators ourselves, we completely agree that there should be some sort of standard. But there’s a couple problems with the CEBA. Maybe the most troubling thing is that for a group developing rules for bloggers, there aren’t many bloggers taking part. Here’s the rundown of who has signed up so far:

Read more

This is for all the history buffs out there: To honor the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, The Atlantic has released a special commerative issue, available today. There’s really no magazine more suited for this endeavor, since it began publishing before the war even started.

Inside the issue there is plenty to digest. President Barack Obama penned an introduction, and there are pieces from notable Atlantic contributors such as Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman, Louisa May Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

“When The Atlantic originally published many of these pieces, the most-consequential questions the country has faced were wide open: Would the Union survive? Would slavery? What did it mean to be an American?” said the magazine’s Editor-in-Chief, James Bennet. “And so The Atlantic’s writers not only bore witness but argued toward the answers. The result is a conversation about the American idea that, 150 years later, will strike readers as complex, provocative, and surprisingly resonant with our times.”

Atlantic Media Company president Justin Smith announced today that Steve Clemons has joined The Atlantic as Editor-in-Chief of AtlanticLIVE and Washington Editor-At-Large for The Atlantic.

Clemons, who comes to The Atlantic from the think tank New America Foundation, was one of Washington’s early political bloggers, publishing Washington Note, which will now be included in the family of blogs at TheAtlantic.com. Clemons will also write more broadly for the website and occasionally for the magazine.

“Both James Bennet and I are delighted to welcome Steve to our teams,” said Elizabeth Baker Keffer, vice president of The Atlantic and president of AtlanticLive, in a press release. “It is a rare opportunity to add such a senior talent and we know that Steve will lift our enterprise to a new level of ambition.”

Justin Smith, President of Atlantic Media Company, hosted a party at his home in New York last night in honor of Atlantic Senior Editor Alexis Madrigal, who recently published “Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology.”

The party was packed with New York media insiders. Here are some pictures from the evening:

Alex Madrigal and Chance:

Read more