In 1999, Mort Zuckerman sold the staid monthly to David Bradley, who replaced longtime editor William Whitworth with Michael Kelly, editor of the National Journal. Kelly, known as a tough critic of Clinton and Gore and who had also served as the editor of The New Republic and as an editorial writer at The Washington Post, recently redesigned the magazine. The new look debuts with the February 2001 issue, just out on newsstands. It’s a streamlined design, forward-looking—though drawn from its own history—for people “who like to read as much as anything in their lives,” says the editor.
NEWSWEEK’s Michael J. Agovino spoke with Kelly about the new aesthetic, the future of literary magazines and of course, politics.
NEWSWEEK: Why the redesign?
Michael Kelly: Well, the magazine’s been around for a long time, 143 years, and we want it to be around for another 143. It has a very clear and successful identity. The question is how do you stay true to that and move it forward? Staying true to the original idea, in our case, was pretty straightforward, because this is a magazine with a very clear idea of itself. This is a magazine about the exploration of the American idea. Which means two things: that it’s [concerned with] the serious exploration of big stuff. And that it’s a magazine of words.
We had a very good design. But it had been there for some time….And there was confusion that got in the way of the thing that I like in all magazines: clarity and cohesion. In a lot of magazine designs, there’s almost a sense of worry: that in this frantic age if we’re not frantic ourselves no one will even pay attention to us. Well, I just don’t think it’s true. I think that the reading experience is different from that. Not that many people read. But our readers do. They’re people who get a deep, tactile, sensible pleasure out of reading. And if you have a design that makes that work for them, then they can get an intimate relationship with the magazine. And if you have a design where they have to battle to get to it, they can’t.
Were you influenced by any other magazines in terms of design?
Not so much. The chief design influence here was some months spent in going over back issues of The Atlantic, going back actually to the beginning, 1857, and sort of working forward.
What’s the future of the literary magazine? Unfortunately, there’s the question of money.
This is a business proposition for the man who owns this magazine. And the goal here is to take a great magazine and reinvigorate it. But not as an exercise in vanity or as an exercise in philanthropy. This is ultimately supposed to at least break even and make a little money. So that’s pretty tough. But if you give people substance when the rest of the business is running toward ephemera, then there should be a way to get not 2 million readers, not even a way to get 1 million readers, but a way to get 500,000 true subscribers.
Look at nonfiction narrative. People write books that aren’t examples of perfect writing. It’s just good writing. And look what happens. The fastest way to get a half million dollars in a book advance these days is to go to Random House and Simon & Schuster with a solid proposal for a great nonfiction yarn. Now, is the entire publishing industry wrong? People get passionately engaged in anything that offers them a good story well told, even if it’s only a pretty good story pretty well told. And magazines have been running in the other direction.
One thing I’ve done in the last year, which I’ve not done much of before, is talk to and listen to advertisers. And one of the things that surprised me was how firm and how often you hear this point made: Advertisers will say to you, ‘Run the magazine you want to run, but make it true to a vision and true to the reader. And make it great. And that’s worth more than whether you have another 150,000 readers.’ And I think that probably should be true. God knows, it’s not easy to do, but I know the other way is a disaster.
About the new cover, will it be an illustration every month like The New Yorker?
No. There are times when it will be photography. I have a fondness, myself, for black and white photography of a certain level. I used one four or five months ago, a piece by William Langewiesche called “The Shipbreakers,” that was a Sebastiao Salgado cover.
What about the logo? It’s thicker, less dainty than the previous.
Less “dainty” is a good word. It’s a bit brawnier. It’s significantly brawnier, really. And I hope it’s a bit sassier. I hope there’s some wit there. Like most of the other elements of the design, it’s rooted in things that are part of the magazine’s natural history. In this case, for much of this century, the logo was not The Atlantic Monthly but The Atlantic. Just those two words. And this is to some degree a return to that, but with a concession made to the fact that most people think our real name is The Atlantic Monthly and most people think of us as The Atlantic Monthly. But visually the word The Atlantic, or, rather, the word “Atlantic” is hugely dominant, and “The” and “Monthly” are much smaller. The intent there was a logo that would still be elegant but less dainty, less aloof.
You’ve been at The Washington Post, The National Journal, The New Republic. Now you’re at a monthly. What’s the hardest part about covering politics for a monthly, especially this last election day, which turned into election month?
A good question, because it’s something The Atlantic does. The Atlantic has always covered or written about politics. You simply cannot try to keep abreast of the actual news cycle. What we can do is write the kind of political or policy article, usually a large article, often a cover story, that doesn’t reflect the cycle but creates a new cycle, that doesn’t reflect the current conversation but creates a new conversation.
The first cover of your redesign features Bill Clinton, a man you have written about extensively, and have been critical of. How come you personally didn’t weigh in with the other essayists?
This issue of the magazine is the first time I’ve ever written anything—I wrote the editor’s letter. Up until now, I hadn’t even written that.
Why?
Well, I’m not sure. I think it can work. I think David Remnick has made it work at The New Yorker. But I think it’s a dicey proposition. If you write something and it’s not that good, then all the other fellas and gals are going to sit around saying, “Yeah, well, he got his in. It was lousy but he got it in.” And I’m reluctant, I’ve always been reluctant to take up space in the magazine with my own stuff. And I’ve started writing the editor’s letter because that’s a reasonably appropriate thing to do.
No one was indifferent about Bill Clinton. You either loved him or hated him. Like Nixon, he’s such a three-dimensional character. Will you miss not writing about him?
I won’t, only because I’ve written about him too much. I think an awful lot of writers probably feel this way who trod that territory. There’s not a great deal to say that you haven’t said at this point. And also, the truth is, of course, you’re going to be writing about him. He’s made it entirely clear he’s not going anywhere. You and I and everybody else will be writing about him for a good long time. But personally I’m glad to have a change of conversation.
How will Washington change with George W. in the White House?
Gosh, that’s almost impossible to answer. Because the ethos from the Clinton era to anything else has got to be so wildly different. There was never anything remotely like the Clinton time before. There can’t be any succeeding administration, including Al Gore’s, that would be anything like this. I mean, this was eight years of psychodrama. That’s not normal. The norm of a presidency is relatively boring. Presidencies that convulse the nation and grip it and polarize it for years are exceptions. On my bookshelf, the Carter section is four books, not counting his official papers. My Nixon section-again, just what’s written about him, not counting his official stuff-is two shelves. My Clinton section is already two shelves. You know, the Bush section’s not going to produce two shelves. Whatever it is, it’s just not going to be like that. It’s going to be a normal presidency. This was nothing remotely like anything everybody saw before.
It was Clinton Agonistes.
Yes, exactly. People will be writing about the Clinton presidency for years. Thirty years from now, I will be writing a pained letter to The New York Review of Books saying, “Dear Sir, I must protest Mr. Sidney Blumehthal’s characterization of me.” That’s not going to happen with the Bush administration. Those kind of stakes aren’t going to be in play.
One thing Bush has going for him, I think, is that expectations are so low, he’s only got one way to go, and that’s up.
And that’s not one thing; that’s a terrific thing. That’s not a bad place to start out from if he can rise above it. And there is a lot of evidence that he can rise above it. During the latter part of the campaign, when things, as they always do, get to the point where everybody says just anything to win, Bush was depicted as generally incompetent on every level you could think of. But it’s very hard to find evidence of that if you talk to people in Texas, including Democrats. The actual testimony is that he was very good at working with people, including people in the other party.
Are Democrats in Texas the equivalent Republicans in New York?
Well, you’d have a hard time selling that to Molly Ivins. Or to—
Ann Richards, sure.
Or to Jim Hightower. I mean, Ann Richards was as liberal as anybody in America. And she got elected to governor of that state as a Democrat. I’ve known Ann Richards since I was a kid. She used to live on Capitol Hill next to my parents. Paul Begala is a Texas Democrat. I don’t think of those people as milquetoast Democrats.
I actually think they tend to be more fire-breathing. The average Democrat in Massachusetts is more milquetoast because they know they’re going to win all the time. Democrats in Texas, they’re fighters. But your larger point, I think, is a very good point, which is that Bush has no experience going into the situation he’ll face with the Democrats in Congress. It will be an awful tough thing for him to pull off because he can be as bipartisan as he wants and as nice and charming as he wants. But the reality is that he’s got a divided Congress that is as narrowly divided as you can get, where the opposition party knows for a fact that they have a very, very good chance of becoming the majority party two years from now. They have an imperative to strive for that. How? By making the distinction between your party and the party of the President as clear as possible. And by fighting, fighting, fighting. Which we’ve already seen happen. The pretense of bipartisanship has not even lasted till Inauguration Day. So I think you’re looking at least two years, depending on how the by-elections go, but at least two years of just the same sort of unbelievable, vicious fighting that we’re seeing in both parties.
You’ve been editor of The Atlantic for about a year now. How is living in Boston different from living in Washington? Will Pedro matter more than Dubya?
I was born and raised in Washington on Capitol Hill. My father was a tabloid reporter there for the old Washington Daily News. I love the city and everything. But it’s wonderful being up here. As everybody who always leaves Washington says, it’s nice for entire days to go by without hearing the words Clinton, Bush or Gore. That’s very nice.
