[esperent]

I kinda have the exact same experience with The Atlantic as OP does with The Economist. I used to read it regularly but now it feels there's 5% good articles and 95% some kind of highbrow clickbait.

On the front page now:

1. Seven books that will make you smarter

2. Whoops, I Deleted My Life

3. How Much Would You Pay to Save Your Cat’s Life?

4. The Strength of the ‘Soft Daddy’

5. The Black Investors Who Were Burned by Bitcoin

Etc.

These don't sound like articles that are worth my time. I did persevere with reading the magazine for quite a while out of habit but by now I'm pretty much convinced that most of these articles will be just as vapid as their titles.

[bmj]

There is a difference in the online content of the Atlantic v. the print magazine. The print magazine still has some high quality content.

[civilized]

Don't they ultimately publish the same stuff in both?

I would definitely appreciate a quality/triviality filter though, maybe the print is the only way to get it.

[chipotle_coyote]

I think that everything that's in print is available on the web site, but there are also web-only things, so the print magazine may be a bit of a "quality/triviality filter" in that regard.

I like The Atlantic in general, although I think they have a bit of what I sometimes call a "contrarian bias", e.g., prioritizing "the conventional wisdom is X, but here's why it's wrong" think-pieces even when their theses aren't particularly strong. (Slate and Salon were much worse about that in their heyday.)

[civilized]

I think they're mostly conventional these days, but the pieces aren't that strong whether they're conventional or contrarian.

[bmj]

No, there is a lot of online-only content. I believe there's a daily email with new content, and often that content is quite weak compared to what's in the print version.

[IfOnlyYouKnew]

This is a selection of about 60 story links on the front page. The story about cats is about people paying thousands for organ transplants for pets, which is somewhat intriguing and new to me.