The news follows an announcement last year that Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of the late Steve Jobs, would invest in the media group through her nonprofit group called the Emerson Collective.

The Washington-based group said it plans to increase staff by some 30 percent in the next 12 months, with as much as half of the new staff in the newsroom, while adding to its engineering, design, data, consumer marketing and sales staff.

"Starting today, we are committing ourselves to a series of initiatives that will drive our journalism to even greater heights and accelerate the growth of our businesses," said a memo to staff from Atlantic president Bob Cohn.

The expansion will affect the main Atlantic news site as well as the print magazine and the newly introduced premium subscription-based site known as The Masthead, according to the statement.

The news organization said it has been profitable over the last several years as it has expanded its digital efforts.

The group will expand its coverage of Washington politics, but also boost reporting in technology and on Hollywood and launch a new "family initiative" for news affecting "the cultural, political, and economic forces shaping America's families," the statement said.

The memo said the Atlantic would be experimenting with various digital subscription models.

"Paid content (on the digital side) is new territory for us, and we have a lot to learn about metered paywalls, conversion rates, funnels, pricing, and more," Cohn said.

"In the end, we believe that readers will pay for the richness of The Atlantic in digital form. And we think it's important for the company to rely equally on audience and advertisers for financial support."

The Emerson Collective, founded and run by Powell Jobs, agreed to a deal last year that includes the flagship magazine, digital properties, the events business, and consulting services.

Atlantic Media chairman David Bradley retained a minority stake in the company along with other properties in the group which include the online news site Quartz and National Journal Group.

Founded in Boston in 1857 as the Atlantic Monthly, the magazine has been known as a literary and cultural publication. It published writings of Mark Twain as well as Martin Luther King Jr's 1963 defense of civil disobedience in "Letter from Birmingham Jail."