Atavist


Atavist is a multimedia publishing platform. It was founded by Jefferson Rabb, Evan Ratliff, and Nicholas Thompson. In the spring of 2015, they released their free publishing platform, built with Google's Polymer. Fast Company that the new system "make it near-painless to create and sell beautifully designed long-form content across multiple platforms." Early investors in the company include IAC, Eric Schmidt, and the Founders Fund.
In June 2018, Atavist announced that they were being acquired by Automattic.

Usage

The Atavist Magazine is a monthly publication of longform narrative journalism. The stories are between 10,000 and 20,000 words and include video, interactive elements and full audio accompaniment. It has been nominated for eight National Magazine Awards since its launch in 2011, and in 2015 won for best Feature Writing with its piece "Love and Ruin," by James Verini. It is the first digital-only publication to receive the award.
In 2014, three Atavist Magazine titles were optioned for film:
The California Sunday Magazine, Mental Floss, The Daily Dot, The Christian Science Monitor, Esquire, and Vice, have all used Atavist to publish "eye-catching" feature stories on the Web.
A partnership with Atavist Books, a multiplatform book publishing company founded by Barry Diller, Scott Rudin, and Frances Coady, launched in the spring of 2014 with "Sleep Donation" by Karen Russell. All titles were produced and distributed using Atavist.