Last night The Atlantic posted a sponsored article on Scientology titled “David Miscavige Leads Scientology to Milestone Year.” It was exactly what it sounds like — an celebratory ad for Scientology, complete with overwhelmingly positive comments from readers.

The article was also formatted exactly like any other Atlantic piece — save “sponsor content” written at the top — so people started questioning the ethics of it. And just as soon as people started criticizing the article, the Atlantic yanked the piece (here is a Google cache version of it).

As Poynter notes, Jay Lauf, publisher of The Atlantic, recently spoke in a positive way about sponsored content. “A lot of people worry about crossing editorial and advertising lines, but I think it respects readers more… It’s saying, ‘You know what you’re interested in.’ It’s more respectful of the reader that way.”

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Quartz, the recently launched business site from The Atlantic, has hit a milestone. In December, the site registered over 1.4 million unique visitors, according to Omniture.

Quartz only launched at the end of September 2012, so the news that it has already grabbed one million visitors in a single month was naturally greeted with excitement by Jay Lauf, senior vice president and group publisher of the site and The Atlantic. “In just over three months, Quartz has reached beyond the benchmarks we set for ourselves,” said Lauf, in a statement. “Readers and advertisers are responding positively to the content, clean design, and the bold new ad formats.”

People obviously like what they see, but Kevin Delaney, Quartz’s editor-in-chief, said changes are coming. Changes for the better, that is. “We’re building on the success of our first three months by hiring more international journalists and readying a series of improvements to the site,” he explained.

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’s venture into global business coverage — Quartz — will launch on September 24. The site has been slowly accumulating talent over the past few months, and the latest addition to the staff is Jay Lauf, who was just promoted from vice president and publisher of The Atlantic, The Atlantic Wire, and The Atlantic Cities, to senior vice president/group publisher of Atlantic Media Company and publisher of Quartz.

Lauf, who has been with The Atlantic since 2008, believes company’s flagship brand built the foundation for Quartz.

“Our editorial and sales teams have done an amazing job bringing The Atlantic back to a place of both cultural importance and sustained profitability,” said Lauf in a statement. “Its success is the foundation for all we’ve been able to do with new product launches.”

“Quartz is our boldest launch to-date, one that, I think, is perfectly timed for the current business epoch. There is a wide-open space for a smart, mobile-first product to serve the needs of global business professionals, and our all-star editorial and dev teams have built that.”

Hayley Romer, a five year veteran of Condé Nast Media Group, is joining The Atlantic as Associate Publisher. Romer had been with Condé since 2007, most recently as its Executive Director of Corporate Sales.

“Hayley has a stellar reputation from all corners of the publishing landscape — from our peers, clients, and partners on the agency side, said Jay Lauf, Vice President and Publisher of The Atlantic.

Romer begins on May 30.

For the first time in its entire 154 years of existence, The Atlantic’s digital ad revenue has surpassed its print ad revenue. In October, digital accounted for 51 percent of ad sales; print accounted for 49 percent.

It’s quite an accomplishment, especially when you consider that the magazine had its best October since 1999 and the website posted an ad gain of 86 percent compared to last year.

Jay Lauf, Vice President and Publisher of The Atlantic, recognized the significance. “We’ve reached an exciting, new benchmark that, just four or five years ago, many in the industry thought would never come,” he said. “I’m happy to report this success didn’t come at the expense of print, which itself posted a record-setting month. Instead, it’s a testament to the strong demand we’re seeing across all Atlantic platforms. To me, it’s clear that we made the right strategic choice back in 2008 to focus on digital innovation and growth.”

With the third quarter over, The Atlantic is proving once again that it is a force to be reckoned with. The magazine has now posted revenue gains 12 straight times, according to a company press release. Most recently, there was a 41 percent jump for digital, a three percent increase for print, and total ad revenue grew 19 percent.

Jay Lauf, Vice President and Publisher of The Atlantic, is hopeful that the trend continues. “We have more than 40 different advertisers running on the site currently, a continuation of the strong demand we saw in the third quarter,” said Lauf. “Print outperformed an incredibly strong Q3 last year. And mobile — our phone and iPad app — is beginning to show up for us, too. It represented two percent of overall digital ad revenue in the third quarter, but I expect to report increasing percentages in 2012.”

The Atlantic is a reminder that if you make solid decisions, and grow a brand without sacrificing quality content, good things happen. We’ve watched it change over the years, and each shift — even those that seem like they will hurt the magazine — ends up being in the right direction.

The Atlantic’s digital network continues to reach new heights, this time setting a record in May with 10 million unique visitors. This is the third time in the past five months the sites have posted record high traffic: January’s mark was eclipsed by March’s, which was then topped by May.

As we all know, May was also the month that Osama bin Laden was killed (or was he???), so naturally traffic was boosted virtually everywhere, but it’s still a nice achievement for The Atlantic.

Jay Lauf, Vice President and Publisher of The Atlantic, expects the good news to continue, adding, “Each new quantum leap in traffic has tended to be a leading indicator for us on the selling side. We should be poised for a big second half again.”

Check out a fancy graph detailing The Atlantic’s digital growth after the jump.

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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:

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The Atlantic has been around for 153 years, and today they’ve announced that 2010 was one of the better ones. For the first time in many years, the magazine posted a profit, with advertising revenue jumping 27 percent for print and 70 percent online.

In print, The Atlantic added 38 new advertisers, including brands like Virgin Atlantic Airways and the Nissan Leaf. Digitally, things were even better for the magazine, as it added 67 new advertisers and traffic to TheAtlantic.com was up 34 percent.

Jay Lauf, Vice President and Publisher of the magazine, had this to say about the good news:

2010 was an amazing year for The Atlantic, demonstrating continued demand for explorations of ‘The American Idea’ across new platforms and channels. We look forward to building on this success with our readers and advertisers in 2011.

See? There is hope after all.

UPDATE:

We asked Lauf for a comment on what he thought was the biggest factor leading to the great year for The Atlantic, and he didn’t hesitate to point to the growth online. He explains, “There are multiple factors that have led to our profit-generating year, but the single largest would have to be our success in the digital arena.  The huge increases in digital ad revenue have made the difference in 2010 and are pointing the way forward in 2011.”