Of course, neither of these men are so naive as to believe that print alone will safeguard their businesses. These are brilliant guys, after all. Two decades ago, when Thompson was serving as Remnick’s digital chief, they adapted The New Yorker to Internet 1.0—which, as Remnick told me, required dramatic “psychological, editorial, and almost physiological” changes on the part of the staff. “Anybody who tries to predict with any confidence what this business will look like in 10 years is playing a mug’s game. I don’t think it’s possible,” he said. Thompson, to his credit, was clear-eyed that, “if going from 10 issues to 12 issues is the most important thing I do, you fire me immediately, right? It’s not our principal strategy.” Still, it can be unnerving to hear no real answer to the question beyond print. Remnick cited the advent of A.I.-generated audio versions of the magazine’s stories, while noting, “admittedly, that’s certainly not the be all and end all of A.I. and its future.” Thompson said he and his team are putting a lot of effort into other ideas, but most of it seems to be around optimizing the existing business—such as determining when nonsubscribers should hit the paywall. “Should you be shown just the first 200 words of the article? Should you be shown 300? Should you be shown 100? Should you be shown quotes? Should you be shown summaries? Should you be shown excerpts? A lot of our work is going into testing that.” (Of course, The Atlantic is probably already doing this sort of testing and learning. At any rate, it can.) Coincidentally, on the same day the News/Media Alliance lawsuit was filed and the National Magazine Awards nominees were announced, I found myself in an off-the-record meeting with a high-level executive at one of the major tech companies. When asked what was occupying his brain space these days, he said: “A.I., A.I., A.I., that’s one, two, and three.” Like everyone in his field, he evidenced total clarity about the fact that the new technology would fundamentally change, well, everything, and that we were only in the earliest, Motorola DynaTAC 8000X phase of its evolution. I have no doubt that Thompson, Remnick, and their contemporaries across the publishing industry have countenanced that fact, but it’s not clear that they have any real plan for what to do about it. Anyway, for whatever it’s worth, both The New Yorker and New York led the Ellie nominations this year, with seven apiece. This included nods in the highly coveted “general excellence” category, a distinction they shared with National Geographic, ProPublica, and The Verge. The Atlantic picked up four nominations, one for reporting, two for photography, and one for animated illustration. (The New Yorker’s submission here, for Naomi Fry’s article on Mormon TikTok moms, was far more arresting.) The winners will be announced on April 10. Good luck to all. As I scrolled through these nominations, I couldn’t help but recall a point that Remnick made proudly. During our chat, he noted that The New Yorker employs some 28 fact-checkers to work on its long-form journalism. Anyone who has worked at The New Yorker knows the profound value that the department provides—elevating writers, assuaging lawyers, correcting the population of Panama or the maiden name of Saul Bellow’s fourth wife. And yet this is precisely the sort of function that A.I. will simplify, perhaps to the point where a future team will manage the software as it passes through dozens of articles all at once. It’s going to be a brave new world, and it may be one that benefits the magazine’s margins, even if it challenges its identity, history, and values.