James Bennet, who has served as the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic since 2006 and as its co-president since 2014, is moving to the New York Times to take over as editorial-page director. He’ll replace Andrew M. Rosenthal, who is stepping down to write an online column covering the presidential election, the Times reports. The owner of The Atlantic, David Bradley, announced in a memo that Bob Cohn (who was co-president with Bennet) has been appointed as the sole president.
Bennet joined The Atlantic after 15 years at the Times, where he served as White House correspondent and Jerusalem bureau chief. He’s credited with turning around, and perhaps saving, the 159-year-old Atlantic, with a web-centered approach and big opinion stories by the likes of Anne-Marie Slaughter and Ta-Nehisi Coates. “The Times is the world’s greatest newspaper; even so, they could not do better than James Bennet,” Bradley wrote. He’s currently looking for a new editor-in-chief (and says he interviewed more than 100 people before he found Bennet). The Atlantic was recently named “Magazine of the Year” for its work in 2015.
