You’ve gotta love Atlantic Publisher David Bradley, if for nothing his else, his luxurious and spacious kitchen which has cream colored couches and a fireplace as well as his dramatic flair for internal memo writing. This morning he sent off a memo to staff about his decision to rebrand Atlantic Wire to the more succinct “The Wire.”
Colleagues at Atlantic Media,
We all love our children equally. But, sometimes we’re left with a particular affection for some particular history with a child. That’s the way I’ve felt about Atlantic Wire.
Beginning in 2008, I oversaw a small team of fellows developing a generation one theory for Atlantic Wire. I won’t trouble you with the detail; the concept was wonderful, but also way inferior to the vision Gabriel Snyder developed for Atlantic Wire years later. And, now, fully adult, Atlantic Wire is dropping its family name.
Last night, Atlantic Wire became The Wire and can be found at thewire.com.
Our decision to rebrand the website as its own, independent news center, reflects the terrific success the site has been enjoying and the likelihood that it can support its own brand. Across 2013, Atlantic Wire has been averaging traffic just below six million unique visitors per month. That constitutes a doubling of traffic since last year.
When visiting the site, you will find a new design and, more to today’s imperative, a responsive design. The website is created principally with mobile use in mind. The site already enjoys 40% of its traffic on mobile and tablet devices.
There is a nation state of people to thank for the relaunched website: Gabriel and Bob Cohn and James Bennet for editorial leadership; Kim Lau and Betsy Ebersole for product and technology leadership; Jason Goldstein and Carl Johnson who served as lead developers; David Minkin who has managed sales strategy and operations – and now will step forward to lead the site’s own sales and marketing staff; and Scott Havens who manages and will continue to manage The Atlantic and everything it has spawned. I am very appreciative of the scale of labor devoted to these launch and relaunch efforts.
My best wishes to you.
David