Todd S. Purdum, a veteran political journalist renowned for pulling back the curtain on Washington's halls of power, will join Politico.
He will become a senior writer at the news organization, Politico said Wednesday. It's a splashy hire for the site and paper and another sign of its growing influence in the political sphere.
Purdum, who has produced a series of incisive stories at Vanity Fair as its national editor, will continue his affiliation with the magazine and will remain a contributing editor. At Vanity Fair, Purdum made a stir with a profile of Bill Clinton that examined his questionable post-presidential business dealings and a look at Sarah Palin that implied she suffered from "narcissistic personality disorder."
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“Todd, in his more than 30 years in journalism, has fashioned a deserved reputation as one of the most perceptive reporters and elegant stylists of his generation,” Politico editor John F. Harris said in a statement. “He’ll do at Politico what he has done throughout his career: write stories that vividly capture people in the news and the combination of circumstances and motives that explain their actions. Politico will be Todd’s home for the wealth of more in-the-moment reporting and observations that are in his head and his notebook at any time.”
Prior to Vanity Fair, Purdum spent 23 years at The New York Times. His relationship and subsequent marriage to former White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers was said to have inspired the romance of C.J. Cregg and reporter Danny Concannon on the NBC drama "The West Wing."
Purdum is currently writing a book entitled “An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties, and the Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964."