The Atlantic Beefs Up Politics Coverage Under Trump

Media|The Atlantic Beefs Up Politics Coverage Under Trump

As news organizations gear up to cover President-elect Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House, The Atlantic is going big to cover the story.

The magazine, which in recent years has become a success in the realm of digital subscriptions, is preparing to hire roughly a dozen new reporters and editors to beef up its politics 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 has been in discussions to hire additional Washington Post journalists, two people with knowledge of the talks said.

“We believe in accountability journalism,” Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor in chief, said in an interview. “We want to cover the incoming administration rigorously. I want to build our team with the best political reporters and editors I can find.”

The hires are a sign of increased ambition at The Atlantic, which is controlled by Laurene Powell Jobs, the billionaire investor. In March, the company announced that it had crossed one million subscribers and had become profitable, a major milestone. The organization has added roughly 100,000 subscribers since then, one of the people said, and has increased its staff in recent years. About 350 employees now work at The Atlantic, in its newsroom and on its business staff.

Ms. Powell Jobs has been involved in the hiring push and sees it as an opportunity to continue expanding The Atlantic’s subscriber base, one of the people with knowledge of the hiring plans said. Mr. Goldberg sat down with Ms. Parker, Mr. Scherer and others in December to discuss the possibility of joining The Atlantic, the people said.

The departures from The Post add to months of turmoil at the paper, starting in June when Will Lewis, the paper’s chief executive, pursued a reorganization that led to the exit of the paper’s top editor, Sally Buzbee, and that has rankled many in the newsroom.

Matea Gold, an editor overseeing The Post’s national staff and other departments, recently left to join The New York Times as a senior editor in its Washington bureau, and The Atlantic hired Shane Harris, a national security reporter, from The Post this summer.

Still, The Post continues to hire in key areas. On Monday, the company announced that it had hired Warren Strobel, a veteran reporter for The Wall Street Journal, as an intelligence reporter for its national security team. The newspaper also recently hired Karen Pensiero, a long-serving editor at The Wall Street Journal, as its standards editor.

A spokeswoman for The Washington Post had no comment. The Post is retooling its politics staff post to cover the Trump administration and announced this month that a new division of the company, WP Ventures, would focus on experimental new journalism.