Atlantic Magazine Seeks New CEO As Laurene Powell Jobs Strengths Commitment to Journalism

Laurene Powell Jobs via Wiki Commons

On Wednesday night, Atlantic Media chairman David Bradley sent a memo announcing that he’ll remain chairman but will step away from executive responsibilities following the selection of a new president/CEO for The Atlantic. He said he’ll continue to help where useful, in areas such as “recruiting, retention, matters of culture” and “Washington entertaining,” writes Politico.

David Bradley speaking at the 2013 San Diego Comic Con International, for "Doctor Who", at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California. Image via Gage Skidmore

Bradley bought the 162-year-old media institution in 1999, moving it from Boston to Washington, where it became a fixture among the political and media elites. The memo — expected since the July 2017 announcement of the purchase of The Atlantic by Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective. At the time AOC reported the sale, Bradley expected to continue as chairman operating partner for three to five years, with Emerson Collective moving to increase its ownership of The Atlantic from 70 percent to 100 percent with five years.

In Wednesday’s memo, Bradley said his minority ownership of The Atlantic would continue for at least five years from the date of the 2017 sale, “but maybe longer.” Bradley characterized his partnership with Powell Jobs as “uncommonly happy” and a “pure privilege.”

While she isn’t seen frequently at The Atlantic, Powell Jobs has added more than 100 employees — 50 in the newsroom alone — since 2017. The magazine is no longer profitable, according to WSJ, but The Atlantic is instituting a paywall.

Besides The Atlantic, Powell Jobs’ seeks to make further investments in journalism, writes Vox Recode.. Her Emerson Collective, described by C Net as “equal parts think tank, foundation and venture capital fund”, has also acquired majority stakes in Axios and Pop-Up Magazine Productions. Add on large stakes in several Hollywood production companies like Concordia Studio, Anonymous Content and Macro. It has also invested in podcast maker Gimlet Media. Emerson Collective is equally committed to nonprofit journalism organizations , including ProPublica, Mother Jones, Marshall Project, Committee to Protect Journalists and the Texas Observer.

Leonardo DiCaprio Folds His Climate Change Foundation Into New Earth Alliance

Leonardo DiCaprio Folds His Climate Change Foundation Into New Earth Alliance

Environmentalist and Oscar-winner Leonardo DiCaprio is the narrator and co-producer of Ice on Fire, an ‘eye-opening’ look at ‘never-before-seen solutions’ to climate change.

‘Ice On Fire’ first aired on HBO June 11 and is perhaps coordinated with another major decision by DiCaprio to fold his environmental charity, The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, into the new Earth Alliance.

As a co-founding chair, the actor will join forces with Laurene Powell Jobs and her Emerson Collective and billionaire investor Brian Sheth, who is a co-founder and president of the private equity fund Vista Equity Partners and also board chair of the Global Wildlife Conservation.

Mitch Landrieu Launches E Pluribus Unum Fund For Racial Reconciliation With Backing By Emerson Collective

Mitch Landrieu Launches E Pluribus Unum Fund For Racial Reconciliation With Backing By Emerson Collective

The removal of the statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis in New Orleans, was the second of four Confederate monuments scheduled by then New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu for relocation in advance of the city’s 300 anniversary. The larger-than-life image of Davis atop an ornate granite pedestal roughly 15-feet high was erected in 1911, nearly 50 years after the end of the war, and commissioned by the Jefferson Davis Memorial Association.

A month earlier workers dismantled an obelisk that was erected in 1891 to honor members of the Crescent City White League who in 1874 fought in the Reconstruction-era Battle of Liberty Place against the racially integrated New Orleans police and state militia.

Two other works were also removed in the summer of 2017: a bronze statue of Gen. Robert E Lee that has stood in a traffic circle, named Lee Circle, in the city’s central business district since 1884, and an equestrian statue of P.G.T. Beauregard, a Confederate general. 

Former Alabama Senator and Attorney General in the Trump Administration Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III bears the Confederate general’s name.

Protests on both sides of the Confederate statue debate were fierce, prompting Mayor Landrieu to make an eloquent, emotional and gifted speech on the subject of removing the Confederate monuments on Friday, May 19, 2017.

The full text of Landrieu’s speech was published by The New York Times. I consider it to be one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard — from its sweeping beginning to its soul-wrenching end.

Thank you for coming.

The soul of our beloved City is deeply rooted in a history that has evolved over thousands of years; rooted in a diverse people who have been here together every step of the way — for both good and for ill. It is a history that holds in its heart the stories of Native Americans — the Choctaw, Houma Nation, the Chitimacha. Of Hernando De Soto, Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, the Acadians, the Islenos, the enslaved people from Senegambia, Free People of Colorix, the Haitians, the Germans, both the empires of France and Spain. The Italians, the Irish, the Cubans, the south and central Americans, the Vietnamese and so many more. Read on.

Marie Claire US September 2018 Issue Devoted To Immigration In America & Women Immigrants

Marie Claire US September 2018 Issue Devoted To Immigration In America & Women Immigrants

The September 2018 issue of Marie Claire US devotes its entire issue to the talents and contributions "of female authors, executives, actresses, athletes, designers (all of whom have become activists)—including Priyanka Chopra, Constance Wu, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Maria Cornejo, among other equally formidable women—with roots in foreign lands."

After a huge dose of womanly inspiration, Marie Claire gets down to business with these timely articles:

1)The Women Fixing How the US Treats Immigrants; 2)True Stories from the Border and 3) Easy Ways to Help Immigrant Kids Right Now

Flipping on Marie Claire's first story, in walks Laurene Powell Jobs and her Emerson Collective.

Known for their focus on education and publishing (They now own The Atlantic), the Emerson Collective is developing a major arm to help immigrants and asylum seekers. In the image at the top, I'm pretty sure that's JR with Jobs.

Laurene Powell Jobs' Emerson Collective Buys Majority Position In The Atlantic, Expanding Media Reach

Laurene Powell Jobs with Russlynn Ali at Summit Everest High School, an exemplary charter school. Photo: Jake Stangel

For more than 20 years, Laurene Powell Jobs has engaged in education-reform through her organization, Emerson Collective. In her March 2016 Vogue interview, Powell explained why she's always been attracted to Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists.

“So there’s Emerson’s idea of self-reliance,” she explained to Robert Sullivan, who explains that self-reliance is a big theme for Powell Jobs, given her rural New Jersey roots and current status as one of the world's richest people.  “I’ve always had this idea that you have to make the most of things,” she says. “And then collective because I wanted the idea that you achieve your goals with people, because good ideas come from a lot of places.”

Laurene Powell Jobs and her Emerson Collective made news this week with the announcement that they have bought a majority stake in The Atlantic magazine and website. David G. Bradley, the chairman and owner of Atlantic Media will retain a minority stake in The Atlantic and will continue as chairman and operating partner for at least three to five years, writes The Atlantic. In a letter to his staff, Bradley wrote that Emerson Collective will most likely assume full ownership of The Atlantic within five years.

Emerson Collective already has significant investments in media, from movie-production companies such as Anonymous Content to start-ups such as The California Sunday Magazine. The organization has provided support to several nonprofit journalism outlets, including the Marshall Project and ProPublica.

In a statement, Powell Jobs noted that her inspiring muse Ralph Waldo Emerson was a co-founder of The Atlantic. She praised the highly-profitable, expending audience magazine for the breadth and scope of its purpose: to “bring about equality for all people; to illuminate and defend the American idea; to celebrate American culture and literature; and to cover our marvelous, and sometimes messy, democratic experiment.”

Related: Lauren Powell Jobs' $100 Million Mission to Disrupt American High School New York Magazine

Update: Podcaast Startup Gimlet Media Raises $15 Million From Stripes Group, Laurene Powell Jobs' Emerson Collective Variety Aug. 2, 2017

Women For Hillary | Laurene Powell Jobs Calls Hillary 'One of America's Greatest Modern Creations'

Women For Hillary | Laurene Powell Jobs Calls Hillary ‘One of America’s Greatest Modern Creations’ AOC Women

Hillary Clinton: Realist and Idealist

Speaking about Hillary Clinton to TIME 100, Laurene Jobs said:

Hillary Clinton is not familiar. She is revolutionary. Not radical, but revolutionary: The distinction is crucial. She is one of America’s greatest modern creations.

Her decades in our public life must not blind us to the fact that she represents new realities and possibilities. Indeed, those same decades have conferred upon her what newness usually lacks: judgment, and even wisdom.

Laurene for Dreamers

Through her work for College Track, Laurene Powell Jobs became deeply involved in the challenges of being undocumented in America. The result is that this powerhouse woman has become a leader in pushing the Dream Act, first introduced in 2001. In December 2012, Powell Jobs enlisted the help of the Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, asking him to make a short documentary about immigration. The two met through the making of Davis’ documentary ‘Waiting for Superman’, a film that examined the crisis in America’s public schools.

Powell Jobs needed a film to influence Congress in deliberations around an immigration bill.

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