Dear everyone,
I’m writing to share the happy news that two of Washington’s most accomplished and authoritative reporters, Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer, are joining The Atlantic as part of our effort to deepen our coverage of the incoming administration, and of America’s tumultuous politics more generally.
Ashley and Michael, who both come to us from The Washington Post, have distinguished themselves as scoop-driven stylists—they are both relentless, well-sourced reporters with a keen sense of language and narrative, and a deep belief in the importance of accountability journalism. They will make great additions to our already excellent politics team. As we move into 2025, it is vitally important for us to cover Washington—the implementation of the MAGA agenda; the role of money (foreign and domestic) in our politics; the future of the Democratic Party—in the most comprehensive and rigorous way possible, and Ashley and Michael will play important roles in helping us meet our goals.
Ashley, the Post’s senior national political correspondent, is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner who covered Donald Trump’s first term, and covered the Biden administration as White House bureau chief. Before her time at the Post, she spent 11 years at The New York Times, where she covered the 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns and Congress, among other subjects. (She got her professional start at the Times as Maureen Dowd’s research assistant, and before that she served as a reporter and an editor at the world’s greatest college newspaper.) Ashley was part of the Post team that won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2018, for coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. She was also a member of the team that won the Pulitzer for Public Service in 2022, for its coverage of the causes, costs, and aftermath of the January 6 siege of the Capitol. And she was part of the Post team that won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2024, for their coverage of the role the AR-15 plays in American culture.
Michael has been a national political reporter at the Post since 2017, focusing on campaigns and elections. Most recently, he covered the Republican presidential primaries and the inner workings of the Trump, Biden, Harris, and Kennedy campaigns. Michael’s decision to join The Atlantic represents a kind of homecoming; he is a magazine writer at heart, having previously worked at Time, first as a campaign reporter beginning in 2007, before becoming the White House correspondent and later Washington bureau chief. He wrote more than 20 cover stories for the magazine, including two Person of the Year stories, and interviewed Trump six times. Before joining Time, Michael served as the Washington correspondent for Salon, the Washington correspondent for Mother Jones, and an assistant editor at the Columbia Journalism Review. He began his career as a reporter for the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, Mass., covering local schools and city government. Michael has served on the board of the White House Correspondents’ Association, and won the National Press Club’s Lee Walczak Award for Political Excellence for his article on the 2012 Obama reelection effort, and the 2014 New York Press Club Award for Political Coverage for a cover story on the 2013 government shutdown.
Please join me in welcoming Ashley and Michael to The Atlantic.
Best wishes for a happy new year,
Jeff
