• by Sara Guaglione , March 7, 2016

Atlantic Media’s position of president has been vacant since fall 2013, when Justin Smith left and headed to Bloomberg, where he is now CEO of Bloomberg Media Group.

While the position was vacant, Atlantic Media chairman and CEO David Bradley essentially stepped in to fill the role of president himself.

Finnegan has moved up the Atlantic Media ranks quickly; just six months ago he was promoted from CFO to COO.  

In a staff memo announcing Finnegan’s new role as president, Bradley said that since Finnegan’s previous promotion six months ago, “nothing has changed in my regard for the pure force of Michael's mind. Where I am evolving is in my view of its centrality to our work. Media is as intricate a strategy puzzle as I've seen in my, now-long, career.”

Finnegan told Publishers Daily that his priorities in 2016 are to continue the growth of the company and to “stabilize our operations to ensure that growth is better locked down in an ever-changing media environment.”

“We are very enthusiastic about continuing to experiment with partners to bring our content to new platforms and audiences in ways that create sustainable business models,” he added.

Finnegan said Atlantic Media will also be more focused on introducing their brands to “broader audiences through greater international expansion, more of a focus on mobile devices, and increased experimentation with new content forms like video.”

He said they want to continue to cultivate brand loyalty.

“In a world of social media and content platforms, deepening a brand's connection with readers is critical for long-term success. Our events, paid content, information services and digital engagement initiatives will help support our loyalty goals to ensure that we are growing both in scale and engagement," he added.

Finnegan joined Atlantic Media in 2011 as director of business development and analytics. He brought data and analytics to the forefront of the Atlantic Media management decision-making process, as well as pursued distributed content. He built the business cases for the launch of new brands and constructed over 100 revenue and content partnerships.

For each of the past two years, revenues across the company grew 20% and are on track to achieve similar growth this year, according to the company. Flagship brand The Atlantic was recently named Magazine of the Year at the 2016 Ellie Awards. It is in its largest year of investment and growth.

Quartz, Atlantic Media’s business brand, grew revenues by 84% and traffic by 65% in its third year in operation and expects to be profitable in 2016, the company stated.