Advertisement
Supported by
The magazine is recruiting a city rival, the Washington Post, to its political team.
By Benjamin Mullin
As news organizations prepare to cover President-elect Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House, The Atlantic is pulling out all the stops to cover the story.
The magazine, which has seen virtual subscription success in recent years, is preparing to hire a dozen new reporters and editors to bolster its political coverage, a spokeswoman for The Atlantic said.
To bolster its Washington staff, The Atlantic has turned to a crosstown rival. Ashley Parker, a senior national political correspondent for The Washington Post, and Michael Scherer, a national political reporter for The Post, will join a formidable political team at The Atlantic that includes Elaina Plott Calabro, McKay Coppins and Mark Leibovich.
The magazine is in talks to hire more Washington Post reporters, two other people familiar with the talks said.
“We are guilty journalists,” Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic, said in an interview. “We need to cover the new management rigorously. I need to build our team with the most productive journalists and political editors I can find.
The hires are a sign of greater ambition at The Atlantic, which is controlled by billionaire investor Laurene Powell Jobs. In March, the company announced that it had surpassed one million subscribers and had been successful, a first milestone. Since then, the organization has added about 100,000 subscribers, one of the sources said, and has improved its club in recent years. About 350 painters currently work at The Atlantic, in its newsroom and on its sales team.
Powell Jobs has been concerned about the hiring drive and sees it as an opportunity to continue expanding The Atlantic’s subscriber base, another person familiar with the hiring plans said. Goldberg spoke with Parker, Scherer and others in December to discuss the option of joining The Atlantic, the resources said.
The Post’s departures add to months of turmoil at the paper, which began in June when Will Lewis, the paper’s chief executive, carried out a reorganization that led to the departure of the paper’s editor, Sally Buzbee, and angered many at the paper. .
Matea Gold, the Post’s national and other editor, recently left The New York Times as editor of its Washington bureau, and The Atlantic hired Shane Harris, a Post national security reporter, this summer.
Still, The Post continues to rent in key areas. On Monday, the company announced that it had Warren Strobel, a veteran Wall Street Journal reporter, as an intelligence reporter for its national security team. The newspaper also recently added Karen Pensiero, a longtime Wall Street Journal editor, as criteria editor.
A Washington Post spokeswoman had no comment. The Post is reorganizing its policy to cover up Trump’s administration and announced this month that a new department of the company, WP Ventures, would focus on new experimental journalism.
Benjamin Mullin reports on news and entertainment from major corporations. Contact him securely at Signal at 1 530-961-3223 or benjamin. mullin@nytimes. com. Find out more about Benjamin Mullin
Advertisement