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Are You a $300,000 Writer?
Every Tuesday afternoon, many of The Atlantic’s newest, biggest stars gather for a meeting of what is called “the A-Team.” The Google Calendar invite goes out to 18 staffers, more than half of whom joined the magazine in the past six months and almost all of whom have been poached from the Washington Post, including Ashley Parker, Isaac Stanley Becker, Nick Miroff, Shane Harris, Missy Ryan, Jenna Johnson, and Michael Scherer. More veteran Atlantic heavyweights like Mark Leibovich, Tim Alberta, McKay Coppins, and Elaina Plott also are invited, as are the top brass, including editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg and his deputy, Adrienne LaFrance. The organizer of the meeting is Griff Witte, who joined The Atlantic from the Post in January as a managing editor to lead the politics and accountability team.
That’s what the A in A-Team technically stands for: accountability. But it’s not hard to see another connotation, as it also refers to a group of bigwig journalists who have been hired at enormous cost. Nor is it difficult to understand why others at the magazine, the B-teamers by implication, have been rolling their eyes at it.
The Atlantic has been on a hiring spree this year, announcing the addition of roughly 30 editorial staffers since January. Nine of them came from the Post, whose implosion under Jeff Bezos coincided swimmingly with The Atlantic’s drive to double down on political reporting during the second Trump administration. Posties were looking to jump ship, and The Atlantic, which last year became profitable