Atlantic cuts down on fiction

Journalism is edging out fiction at the Atlantic Monthly magazine, which in its nearly 150-year history has published short stories by Henry James, Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway.

In a note to readers in the May issue, the Atlantic’s editors said they will no longer run a short story in every issue but will produce an annual fiction issue in August that will be available on newsstands and online.

“The challenge is ‘real estate’ -- space in the magazine -- at a time when in-depth narrative reporting from around the country and the world has become more important than ever,” the editors said. “Everyone knows that the surface features of the news are being reported faster all the time, in smaller and smaller bits. But explaining the deeper features of the world requires a different and more expansive kind of reporting -- one that has increasingly become the Atlantic’s signature. That reporting consumes a lot of space.”