Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, has “a lot of affection” for the Washington Post, where he started his career, and believes “it’s important to have strong national newspapers.”
Then he added: “If the Washington Post’s ownership and management is going to drive away its best journalists, I’m more than happy to give them a home.”
Goldberg spoke to TheWrap as the Atlantic poached four reporters from the Washington Post, including Matt Viser, the paper’s White House bureau chief, and as NOTUS — a site launched by Politico co-founder and former owner Robert Allbritton — added at least a half-dozen Post alums.
Allbritton has “money, drive, desire and experience,” Goldberg said. “If I were the Washington Post, I’d really watch out.”
Since the Post slashed its newsroom in February, resulting in more than 300 journalists exiting, local and national competitors have hired recently laid-off reporters and editors, as well as others who survived the newsroom culling but are looking to leave. Reverberations from the Post’s upheaval can be felt at national publications, like the New York Times, local sites such as City Cast and the Baltimore Banner, and the sports obsessed Athletic and ESPN — which have together added a dozen Post alums.
The Washington talent scramble is playing out amid a relentless news cycle, with President Donald Trump conducting a war abroad and waging political and legal battles at home — including against the media itself. Journalists have been flexing their unusual access to the president, dialing him directly on Iran. But whereas Trump’s first term felt like endless jockeying between the Times and Post for scoops, the second has provided opportunities for a broad array of outlets — big and small — as well as independent journalists to command attention.
One publication looking to capitalize in the second term is NOTUS, whose founder Allbritton saw an “opportunity” to expand in response to the Post’s retrenchment. He and Editor-in-Chief Tim Grieve — another Politico alum — have their sights set on their old stomping grounds, recently hiring defense reporter Joe Gould and national political reporter Elena Schneider, who expressed her excitement Monday to join “a newsroom with a clear, exciting vision.”
The poaching comes as Politico on Sunday named Jonathan Greenberger as its new editor-in-chief, succeeding co-founder John Harris. Greenberger told staff in a memo that Politico “will invest — significantly, and immediately — in our world-class journalistic talent,” and reiterated that push in a Tuesday town hall, urging staff to alert him to hiring needs, according to sources.
The Post, even if diminished, has continued to stand out in coverage of Trump’s use of executive power, federal cuts, proposed renovations to the Kennedy Center and White House ballroom and military operations in Iran, including reporting Monday on the Pentagon preparing for ground operations. And despite gutting its Metro desk, the Post appears to still have the biggest local news staff in the city — for now.
City Cast DC, one of a network of local podcasts and sites owned by Graham Family Holdings — the family that previously owned the Post — has also sensed an opportunity to move into the Post’s turf, adding three reporters and editors from the paper.
“When the Post imploded,” City Cast CEO David Plotz told TheWrap, the company saw an opportunity “to really serve DC and to grab a lot of the territory that the Post has abandoned.”
“We will not be the largest local newsroom yet,” Plotz said. “But our goal is to become the largest local newsroom.”
NOTUS grows
Allbritton has taken on the Post before.
In 2006, he co-founded Politico along with then-Post journalists Harris and Jim VandeHei, who later left to launch Axios with Mike Allen.
The print publication and ambitious digital play were new terrain for Allbritton, a banking and communications scion who at the time owned a number of TV stations, including local outlets WJLA-TV and NewsChannel 8. But Allbritton was following in a family tradition: His father, the late Joe Allbritton, once owned the Washington Star, a Post rival that folded in the early 1980s.
In recent years, Allbritton scaled back his media holdings, selling the company’s TV stations to Sinclair in 2014 for nearly $1 billion, and then offloading Politico to German media conglomerate Axel Springer for another reported $1 billion. He committed to spending $20 million in 2023 to launch the nonprofit Allbritton Journalism Institute, which aimed to produce non-partisan coverage of government and politics and train aspiring journalists.
The institute and its news site, NOTUS — which stands for News of the United States — weren’t seen as an attempt to take on Politico. Indeed, Semafor reported at the time that Allbritton “agreed to some restrictions about his own next business moves as part of the deal (primarily not turning around and starting a Politico competitor).”
Ambitions clearly grew, evident in a NOTUS memo last month to rebrand and build the “next great Washington newsroom,” which would cover “government, politics, policy, local news and D.C. sports with the power of the Washington Post of the 1970s, the punch of Politico in the 2010s and the audience focus required to build a sustainable news organization in 2026.”
NOTUS declined interview requests for Allbritton and Grieve.
Washington journalists familiar with NOTUS’ pitch to prospective hires boiled it down to: You’ll make more money; you won’t be forced to churn out copy but will instead focus on stories you really want to do; and you’ll work for a local owner committed to journalism and the city, rather than a large corporate entity. (Breaker reported Tuesday that NOTUS is also eyeing Times journalists and part of that pitch is that reporters’ bylines can get lost in that stacked newsroom.)
Even as NOTUS employees took to X this week to introduce themselves, their beats and promote open roles, there’s still uncertainty among Washington journalists about how exactly the site will compete on government and national political stories as well as local news and sports. (“It does seem like a black box,” said one journalist.)
The more skeptical view among journalists is that NOTUS’ hiring binge echoes The Messenger, an ambitious media venture that quickly fizzled out. (Some Allbritton-backed outlets have had relatively short lives: both local Washington site TBD and the tech-focused Protocol were shuttered within three years.) Still, others see Allbritton as a capable steward, given his 15 years at Politico and his personal fortune to provide the outlet runway as its business model matures.
NOTUS currently has around 45 staffers and hopes to grow to around 90-95. (Politico, by comparison, has around 300 newsroom staffers, according to a spokesperson.)
The newsroom expansion presents a test for Allbritton to demonstrate he can build a successful media brand without Harris and VandeHei, and perhaps pick up where his father left off decades back with the Star.
“I find myself in this really odd position,” Allbritton told Chuck Todd last week in a Noosphere interview. “I’m sort of mourning the loss of my old friend the Washington Post.”
Allbritton said he was “really sad” about the Post, but thought, “Somebody’s got to do something about this.”
Atlantic dives in the talent pool
Veteran media critic Jack Shafer captured on Tuesday how much the D.C. media landscape is shifting.
Goldberg noted that the Post “has been a deep pool of talent” — one his magazine has tapped before. The Atlantic has hired roughly 30 Post journalists over the last couple years, including Ashley Parker, Michael Scherer, Shane Harris and Sally Jenkins.
In addition to Viser, the latest round includes technology reporter Will Oremus and culture reporters Kelsey Ables and Janay Kingsberry. The Atlantic now boasts more than 200 newsroom staffers.
Last month, Post owner Jeff Bezos reaffirmed his commitment to the Post during a lunch at his Kalorama home with a few dozen Post reporters and editors. Some staffers are staying put, like managing editor Peter Spiegel, who was in contention for the top job at Politico.
But the four journalists heading to the Atlantic — along with several to NOTUS, including chief economics correspondent Jeff Stein, congressional reporter Kadia Goba and columnist Dana Milbank — had survived the Post cuts, signaling that talent retention remains an issue.
The Post, Goldberg said, has done its “level best to make some of the country’s best journalists want to get the hell out of Dodge.” Meanwhile, he said the Atlantic’s “ambitions are growing, and it just so happens that our period of growth and profitability coincides with a period of mismanagement at the Washington Post.”
The Atlantic also has a billionaire owner with roots in the tech world, Laurene Powell Jobs, founder of Emerson Collective and wife of late Apple chief Steve Jobs. Goldberg emphasized that Powell Jobs is not “subsidizing the Atlantic” and that she demands the magazine make a profit — though she allows that profit to be reinvested in the magazine.
“This is how we grow and we get to hire more journalists, make more journalism,” he added. “The more journalism we make, the more readers we attract.”
Graham Family looks local
City Cast’s Plotz, who grew up in Washington D.C., said he practically “learned to read from the Washington Post sports section.”
Watching the Post scale back has been “painful,” he said, especially as he works with members of the Graham family, who for decades put “passion and care” into the paper.
Plotz said it’s “insulting” for the Post to focus more on over-serving audiences in tech and politics than maintaining its “connection to the human beings who inhabit here, work here, play here, raise children here, go to sports here.”
He considers City Cast to be “one small piece of trying to remedy that.” He also applauded Axios DC and the 51st for their ongoing coverage of local matters.
City Cast has hired three Post alums: City Hall reporter Michael Brice-Saddler, reporter Emma Uber and managing editor Yu Vongkiatkajorn. The site also hired Michael Schafer, a veteran of the Washingtonian, Washington City Paper and Politico, as executive editor.
Plotz said City Cast DC will focus on local politics, business development, transportation and cultural life — and notably not sports, which he considers well-served by competitors.
The Graham family, which sold the Post to Bezos in 2013, still owns publications like Foreign Policy and Slate, where Plotz was once top editor, and has invested in Atlas Obscura, where he was previously CEO. Plotz said that City Cast’s DC expansion is rooted in seeing opportunities in advertising and potentially subscriptions as the outlet builds its audience.
“Local media is a good business when done right,” he said, “and there’s an opportunity for new models.”
The capital has already seen its once-dominant player, the Washington Post, cede ground to Politico, Axios and Punchbowl News — and is now competing for turf with upstarts backed by families deeply tied to the city.
The D.C. media map is being redrawn as a consequential presidency tests the press corps’ power like never before.
