The Atlantic Scraper

Extract full article text or the newest headlines from The Atlantic — no account or subscription needed.

Why use this actor

• No account or login required
• Full article text included, not just a summary — headline, dek, byline (with co-authors), tags, and publish/update dates
• Also fetches the newest headlines from a single site-wide feed without visiting each article individually
• Stable JSON output suitable for pipelines, spreadsheets, or databases
• Automatic retries on temporary network hiccups

How it works

1. Give the actor one or more article URLs, or switch to "latest" mode to get the newest stories automatically.
2. In article mode, the actor opens each URL and pulls out the full text and every publicly available detail about the story.
3. In latest mode, the actor reads the site's headline feed and returns the newest stories.
4. Results stream into your dataset, ready to download as JSON, CSV, or Excel.

You don't need to manage retries, rate limits, or figure out the site's internal data format — the actor handles all of that.

Input

Article mode (default):

{
  "mode": "article",
  "urls": [
    "https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/08/a-year-of-troops-in-washington/688317/"
  ],
  "maxConcurrency": 4,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"] }
}

Latest headlines mode:

{
  "mode": "latest",
  "limit": 10,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"] }
}

Field	Type	Description
mode	string	"article" (default) — extract one or more article URLs. "latest" — fetch the newest headlines.
url	string	A single article URL. Used in article mode.
urls	array	Multiple article URLs to extract in one run. Used in article mode.
limit	integer	Max headlines returned in latest mode. Default 10, max 30.
maxConcurrency	integer	How many articles to fetch in parallel in article mode. Default 4.
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify Proxy settings. Residential is on by default.

Output

Article mode — one record per URL (truncated here for readability):

{
  "_input": "https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/08/a-year-of-troops-in-washington/688317/",
  "_source": "S1-urql",
  "_scrapedAt": "2026-08-23T20:06:18Z",
  "headline": "An American City, With Troops on Its Streets",
  "description": "Since the country's founding, deployments of soldiers to U.S. soil have been exceedingly rare. But residents of Washington, D.C., are living in a new normal.",
  "articleBody": "The sight of military troops patrolling in a peaceful American city would once have been strange, if not outright alarming ...",
  "author": [
    { "name": "Quinta Jurecic", "url": "https://www.theatlantic.com/author/quinta-jurecic/" },
    { "name": "Marie-Rose Sheinerman", "url": "..." }
  ],
  "tags": ["Politics", "Washington D.C.", "National Guard"],
  "primaryCategory": "Politics",
  "hasMeter": true,
  "datePublished": "2026-08-23T07:52:11-04:00",
  "dateModified": "2026-08-23T11:26:55-04:00"
}

Latest headlines mode — one record per headline:

{
  "_input": "latest",
  "_source": "S2-atom",
  "_scrapedAt": "2026-08-23T20:07:22Z",
  "title": "An American City, With Troops on Its Streets",
  "link": "https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/08/a-year-of-troops-in-washington/688317/?utm_source=feed",
  "guid": "tag:theatlantic.com,2026:50-688317",
  "pubDate": "2026-08-23T07:52:11-04:00",
  "updated": "2026-08-23T11:26:55-04:00",
  "description": "Since the country's founding, deployments of soldiers to U.S. soil have been exceedingly rare. But residents of Washington, D.C., are living in a new normal.",
  "authors": ["Quinta Jurecic", "Marie-Rose Sheinerman"]
}

Field	Type	Description
_input	string	The URL you requested, or "latest", for traceability.
_source	string	Which strategy produced this record.
_scrapedAt	string	UTC timestamp of when the record was captured.
headline / title	string	Article headline (headline in article mode, title in latest mode).
articleBody	string	Full plain-text article content (article mode only).
description	string	Article dek/summary.
author / authors	array	Byline — array of {name, url} objects in article mode, an array of name strings in latest mode. Co-bylines supported.
tags / primaryCategory	array / string	Topic tags and section (article mode only).
hasMeter	boolean	Whether The Atlantic's metered-subscription flag is set on this article (full text is still returned regardless — see the actor's technical notes).
datePublished / dateModified	string	Publication timestamps.
link	string	The article URL (latest mode).

A record with _error instead of article fields means that URL could not be processed (for example, "_error": "not_found" for a removed article).