Mr. Smith also hired away the publisher of Wired, Jay Lauf, who did something fairly radical for the magazine business: He told his staff they did not have to meet separate targets for print and digital ad sales.

“If you do $1.8 million in digital and $200,000 in print, that’s fine.” In the last year, digital advertising revenue at The Atlantic rose almost 70 percent while print revenue climbed more than 25 percent.