The Redesign, Ctd

by Patrick Appel

Fallows continues the conversation in TNC's comment section:

I have now literally spent the majority of my years on Earth as an employee of the Atlantic, and I could not be more loyal to the magazine, its heritage and prospects, my colleagues, and whatever it takes to keep this enterprise going. Therefore it's unusual for me to say in public that I think we've put a foot wrong. I do think that -- as explained at my neighboring site -- but I want to be entirely clear about the underlying reasons. No one at this company has had anything in mind except finding a way to maintain our standards of journalism in circumstances that always present new problems and new opportunities. This was an honest effort by a well-meaning and mutually supportive group of people to modernize the site, make the presentation of topics and themes more coherent, and also of course to make it more viable as a business. Everyone has quickly recognized that in the process we've created new problems for ourselves. The idea was just to make things better, not to screw up anything that worked. The point may seem obvious, but I wanted to say that I agree with TNC that this should be understood as a well-intentioned miscalculation rather than anything else.