'Atlantic' Raids 'Wired' for New Web Czar

Known for its commitment to long-form narratives and quasi-academic takes on culture and politics, The Atlantic is a somewhat unlikely candidate for success on the web, a distinction distressingly few print magazines have achieved. But found success it has with election-driven traffic gains that culminated in an October of 4.5 million unique visitors and 36.8 million page views.

Now the trick is to continue that growth without the excitement of a presidential campaign to fuel it. That task falls to Bob Cohn, who is coming on board as editorial director of theatlantic.com after seven years as executive editor of Wired (a sister publication of Portfolio.)

"It's going to be a huge challenge," acknowledges Cohn, who is moving from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., where The Atlantic is headquartered, and where he once served as Newsweek's White House reporter.

Wired has been even more successful on the web than The Atlantic, attracting 19 million unique visitors a month (including visitors to several other properties it owns, such as Reddit and ArsTechnica.) But Wired's print and web operations aren't integrated, and Cohn's experience editing for the web is limited. Still, he says, having edited a magazine about technology, "I understand the relationship between tech and publishing and reader habits." (He'll have help from Mike Nizza, formerly a key web producer and blogger for The New York Times.)

Cohn's departure could mean substantial changes for Wired, where his role is larger than that of most No. 2 editors. It's likely that editor in chief Chris Anderson, who spends much of his time writing books and lecturing, will devote more of his focus to the magazine in the near future until Cohn's responsibilities can be reassigned.