Glenn Greenwald Leaves Salon for the Guardian

The widely read political columnist will move his blog to The Guardian

Glenn Greenwald, the iconoclastic Salon columnist known for provocative political reporting, is moving to the Guardian as the British newspaper expands its U.S. presence, Greenwald announced Thursday in a blog post.

Greenwald, who has written for Salon since 2007, will move his entire blog to the Guardian's site Aug. 20 and write a weekly column for the newspaper's print edition.

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"One of the reasons we really like reading Glenn is that he has a broad view, he's not in the D.C. Beltway," Guardian U.S. Editor-in-Chief Janine Gibson told TheWrap. "He doesn't get caught up too much in that tiny world."

The Rio de Janeiro-based journalist and lawyer has written opinion essays for the Guardian, for at least a year.

Gibson said the newspaper, about a year into its second attempt at a U.S. venture, had been eyeing the columnist for months.

"I was actually slightly worried," Gibson said with a laugh. "I didn't want to put Glenn front-and-center too early because he's such a big brand."

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Indeed, the former New York prosecutor has led multiple charges with his stories, most recently with his full-throated defenses of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Pfc. Bradley Manning, the 24-year-old Army soldier accused of leaking a massive cache of secret documents to the transparency activist website.

"Now I think we've got a really strong slate [of writers] and we're starting to build out," Gibson said. "It was just a really good time for him to move here."

Greenwald lauded Salon for respecting and encouraging his editorial independence during his five-and-a-half year tenure.

"The Guardian affords the opportunity to reach a new audience, further internationalize my readership, and be reinvigorated in a different environment," he wrote. "As difficult as leaving Salon is, I'm excited by my new venue, and look forward to continuing the work with my readers which we've been able to do here so constructively over the past several years."

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