Second-Tier Cities Battle It Out For The Atlantic 38186

The Atlantic moved to D.C. two years ago, and Boston still isn’t over it.

The relocation was part of a larger initiative to give The Atlantic a broader appeal. The magazine has become less theoretical and literary???no more David Foster Wallace covers or monthly short stories???and more concerned with politics and business.

The result, according to Adam Reilly of the Boston Phoenix, is a magazine with Newsweek-esque covers and enough info-graphs to rival U.S. News & World Report.

But can you blame The Atlantic for leaving Boston? Reilly describes his own town as lacking any modern appeal:

Still, with cultural and financial gravity concentrated in New York and political power concentrated in Washington, Boston had cultivated something else: a kind of shared civic arrogance, rooted in memories of past glory, that drove Bostonians to sit in intellectual judgment on the great events of the day ??? events which, by and large, were no longer happening here.

Oh, Boston, if you don???t love yourself first, no one will love you second.