Another venerable traditional periodical migrated to the Web last year with something less than a bang. The Atlantic magazine constructed a Website, though a rather pitiful one last year. Now the site boasts video and big time bloggers and it has become rather upscale compared to the ugly duckling it once was. Like other traditional publications, Atlantic used their online presence initially as an advertising arm of the print version, but the new site aims much higher and looks a lot more like a publication in its own right. So, what does this mean for blogging as a journalistic pursuit?

According to an article on the New York Times, James Fallows - a national correspondent with a following - was the first to move his own blog to the new Atlantic online. After this move, several other prominent bloggers were added and now a virtual conversation has emerged between the diverse opinions and political stances of these respective bloggers. The result is a highly charged and dynamic flow of content directed in upon itself which promotes a unique focus.

The Atlantic users online jumped from 72,000 last year to over 300,000 of late. This is obviously attributable to both the new “tone” of the online entity and also to Web 2.0 features like video , archival pieces and more articles outside the firewall. According to this article the magazine is still in the red by several million dollars but it has stabilized after a brief period of turmoil. Ad sales are up and Goldman Sachs is sponsoring the elimination of the firewall by buying all the as space for one week. In the end Atlantic will have to follow others who have totally eliminated their firewalls to be accepted as a true blue online periodical in my view.

What this all means , in case you are wondering, is that the Web is slowly but surely becoming home to all the major media outlets. This is something we all predicted last year and some even before that .One question I have always has is: “Was this by design?” I write about these instances of migration because I believe we should all follow these trends if we care about the new Web or what is called Web 2.0.

By watching where the money goes, we can more readily see or predict what is next for Web 2.0 and evaluate our place in or on it. Take blogging for example, many people predict that blogging will become the next journalism frontier. If this is so and traditional media is vying for a spot, then where does that leave leading bloggers in the larger scheme of things? I hope you can see my point, as advertising and media are perhaps the biggest players in this Web 2.0 game we play. Stay tuned and see how does what next in or out of print

Image courtesy - The New York Times