Introducing Revived: Breathing New Life Into Old Stories

Journalism is in a crisis of impermanence. It’s not just that newspapers and magazines are shuttering—the internet itself is degrading. More than one-third of web pages that existed in 2013 are no longer accessible. Between dead outlets and dead links, journalists too often get a 404 message when they navigate to stories they wrote years ago. Stories they were proud of. Stories that should have stood the test of time. 

The Atavist can’t fix link rot, but we can do our (small) part to help journalists affected by it. We’re launching a new project, Revived, to breathe new life into old stories. Every so often, we’ll release a previously published longform feature that can no longer be found online. We’ll collaborate with authors on edits and updates we deem appropriate, but our goal is to celebrate existing work, not remake it into something new. You can read more about the project on our Submissions page. 

Our first Revived story is by Alexandra Marvar. Originally published by Topic magazine in 2018, it unpacks the legacy of Lummie Jenkins, the longtime sheriff of Wilcox County, Alabama. (Topic ceased publishing in 2019.) Jenkins is a hero or a monster, depending on who you ask, and Marvar’s feature peels back the layers of a complicated figure whose tenure intersected with the civil rights movement and whose approach to the law still echoes in the MAGA era. The piece reads much as it did when it was first published; we’ve annotated it to provide additional context and to bring some of its subject matter up to date. 

We hope you enjoy the installments of Revived as much as we enjoy resurrecting them. Happy reading!

—Seyward Darby, Editor in Chief

December 2025