By Janinne Brunyee
As the publishing industry continues to face the impact of the unstoppable digital transformation, one organization has found a formula for success that allows them to pursue their passion for long-form narrative content.
Brooklyn-based Atavist is in fact two companies in one. The first is The Atavist Magazine, an eight-time finalist for the National Magazine Awards and the first digital-only magazine to win for feature writing. The second is the Atavist self-publishing platform. This enables creative individuals and organizations to produce beautiful and shareable stories, attract new audiences and build business around their work—all without knowing a line of code.
Together with Nicholas Thompson, a Senior Editor at The New Yorker and Jefferson Rabb, Atavist’s CTO, co-founder Evan Ratliff put his experience at National Geographic, Wired Magazine and The New Yorker to work to sketch out a new approach to long-form narrative content that is based on an innovative take on design and storytelling. The result: The Atavist Magazine.
Design + Storytelling
“Each story is a creation of its own and is meant to be an experience. We have pioneered this form of long-form content where each story includes video, GIFs and big imagery.”
The magazine covers topics of general interest ranging from “Zombie King”, Emily Matchar’s exploration of author William Seabrook who introduced the zombie cadaver—the walking dead—to the American imagination before sinking into obscurity to “Whatsoever Things Are True”, the result of Matthew Shaer’s ten-month long investigation into the aftermath of a crime that happened 39 years ago in Chicago.
The team publishes one story each month, attracting between 10,000 and 20,000 readers. “We are known for long stories that are hard to do and that is why we have won awards and have been nominated for Emmys for our video-based work,” Ratliff said.
Advertising free zone
The magazine does not carry advertising and according to Ratliff, this is the reason that their stories enjoy higher than average reader engagement. “If you tell an engaging story, people will read it on their phones and their laptops. Everything does not have to be shorter and faster,” he said.
“We have stories pitched to us or we will go and find them. Either way, we spend months with the writer to make sure they can get inside the story.” Ratliff says sometimes there are stories that the team just wants to do – especially international stories. “It is a very purpose-driven organization. Even so, we have to lure our readers in and our stories have to feel like movies,” he said.
Earlier this year, The Atavist Magazine carried a serialized story about an international drug dealer which was the result of two years of investigation. Penned by Ratliff with help from Aurora Almendral and Natalie Lampert, “The Mastermind” chronicles the story of Paul Calder Le Roux, an international crime kingpin turned government informant who was apprehended in Liberia in 2012 after a six-year investigation by DEA agents. “The Mastermind” was released shortly after Le Roux’s dramatic appearance in a Minneapolis courtroom on March 2, 2016.
“This time, we released this story in serialized form with one installment released each week.” Ratliff says it took a week to produce each installment. “We are much more akin to a production company in some ways—but we meet a monthly deadline,” he said.
A self-publishing platform for long-form narrative content
What makes this magazine possible without having to turn a profit is the income generated by the Atavist self-publishing content platform.
Ratliff said that the impetus for creating a publishing platform was born out of the absence of commercially available solutions capable of producing the kind of rich experience the team wanted to deliver. “When we launched, there wasn’t software that would allow us to do the type of design we wanted to do. So, we built a CMS and started selling it to others.”
In essence, the Atavist platform allows someone who is not a designer to create something that looks professionally designed. This includes easily adding multimedia to projects by dragging and dropping blocks of video, sound, slideshows, charts, maps and Instagram and Soundcloud embeds to really show the whole story.
Today, a number of organizations are using the platform for a variety of reasons. United Airlines, for example is using it to build and publish Hemispheres, the online version of their inflight magazine. Stanford University’s Engineering school is using it to create a magazine-like version of their prospectus.
“Our clients are often at the intersection of journalism and activism,” said Ratliff. Most clients are using it for long-form content, whether that is for corporate reports or journalism.
Revenue model for long-form narrative content
As far as the business model is concerned, The Atavist Magazine is available via a subscription. A metered paywall allows readers to access three stories for free before a subscription is needed to gain more content. “We option a lot of our stories for movies, which provides another revenue stream,” said Ratliff.
And finally, there is the software platform that provides the main funding for the magazine. The Atavist self-publishing platform offers a variety of paid subscription options ranging from $8 a month, for small users, to $250 per month for larger organizations.
The idea of a self-funding magazine supplemented by its own publishing software is one innovative way that publishers can support their passions for narrative journalism while not being reliant on traditional ad revenues to succeed.
Atavist is one of the companies that participants of the 2016 VDZ Akademie Digital Publisher’s Tour visited in New York City this June. The Tour was co-organized by Boost! Collective.
Boost! Collective is a strategic messaging and story-driven communications firm. We help clients discover, write and tell powerful stories which drive engagement.
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