July 7, 2026, (Inside AI) — The Atlantic’s owner, Laurene Powell Jobs, is betting that artificial intelligence will not replace top-tier human creativity but instead amplify its value. In a landmark deal with OpenAI, she is reshaping how a legacy media organization can survive and thrive by partnering with the very technology many journalists view as an existential threat.
The partnership, disclosed in a new Harvard Business School case study by Professor Caroline Elkins, gives OpenAI access to The Atlantic’s deep archives and new long-form content. In return, The Atlantic gains undisclosed revenue and technical capabilities to build internal language models. But the deal has ignited fierce internal debate over IP, newsroom independence, and the future of creative work.
Elkins, who discussed the case on the Cold Call podcast, framed the move as a strategic leap onto a new S-curve. “Laurene Powell Jobs looks at legacy media and says, ‘I’m going to look to the next S-curve,’” Elkins said. That curve involves paying top journalists salaries of $200,000 to $300,000—well above industry norms—while betting that their deeply reported, analytical work remains beyond AI’s reach.
The Business of Ideas and the Creativity Crisis
Central to Powell Jobs’s strategy is what Elkins calls “the business of ideas”—a supply chain moving from raw ideas to meaning, scale, and value. She argues that AI can handle the commodified daily news, but the interpretive, meaning-making stage is uniquely human. “You can’t take out that meaning stage,” Elkins explained. “You can take it out of the commodified daily news, but you can’t take it out of the interpretation.”
This bet is underpinned by data. Elkins cited research by William & Mary professor Kyung Hee Kim, who analyzed 300,000 Torrance tests and found U.S. creativity scores declining since the 1990s. Meanwhile, a Microsoft survey of 30,000 companies revealed that over two-thirds of CEOs worry most about where the next big idea will come from. Powell Jobs sees an opening: as AI homogenizes routine output, demand for genuinely novel, human-driven insight will soar.
Yet the cultural backlash inside The Atlantic was immediate. Journalists feared for their livelihoods and the dilution of their craft. Elkins acknowledged the tension: “AI can take somebody who has a lower degree of creativity and elevate them,” she said, referencing MIT studies. “But what we know very little about is what does AI do for highly creative people? Right now, the highly creative people beat the machine, pretty consistently.”
Fair Use, Attribution, and the Power of Gatekeepers
The case also forces a reckoning with fair use. OpenAI and others argue that training on copyrighted material is transformative, but creators see uncompensated expropriation. Elkins likened it to property seizure: “How many of you own property? Would you be okay if the government came in and took all your property, didn’t pay you for it?”
Powell Jobs’s solution sidesteps the legal quagmire by paying upfront—shifting compensation from back-end royalties to high salaries and advances. But attribution remains unsolved. Even when AI cites sources, links are often broken or ignored. “People who really want to understand meaning, interpretation—that’s what people crave the most,” Elkins said. “You’re actually willing to pay somebody who is this intermediary like The Atlantic.”
This dynamic concentrates power in a few gatekeepers. Elkins noted that while technology enables anyone to publish, the path from idea to scale without institutional meaning-making often flames out—like BuzzFeed. “The top of the funnel is getting more and more narrow,” she warned. Powell Jobs, with her hands-off yet strategic approach, becomes a kingmaker for the kind of journalism she deems essential to democracy.
Competing models exist. The New York Times is suing OpenAI for copyright infringement, while also diversifying into games and cooking. Jeff Bezos’s ownership of The Washington Post has veered into editorial interventions that critics say undermine independence. Powell Jobs, by contrast, is described as non-interventionist, focused on sustaining high-quality journalism as both a business and a public good.
Elkins believes such partnerships will redefine media. “100%,” she said. “She has shown the world and legacy media that there is a very different model to this.” The case study leaves students debating whether to partner or sue—a question with no easy answer. But for Powell Jobs, the calculus is clear: feed the machine with exceptional human work, and the machine will need you more than you need it.
Looking ahead, Elkins sees a broader shift from the “age of efficiency” to an “age of creativity.” She cited Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile’s finding that time pressure is creativity’s kryptonite. AI’s efficiency gains, if plowed back into ever-tighter deadlines, could backfire. Powell Jobs’s patient capital—giving writers time for insight—may be the real competitive moat. As AI swallows routine tasks, the premium on original, time-intensive thought could finally be priced into the market.
