The Atlantic hires Jake Lundberg as first staff archivist and historian, and Drew Goins as senior editor
Below is editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg's note to staff announcing Jake Lundberg:
For the first time, The Atlantic will have an in-house historian and archivist. This dream job is being filled by a brilliant academic and writer named Jake Lundberg, who comes to us from the University of Notre Dame, where he has been director of the undergraduate history program and an associate teaching professor since 2016.
The creation of a special staff writer role for an Atlantic historian has been a goal of mine for many years. One reason this role took so long to fill is that we were inundated with interest, and we were forced to plough through an enormous number of candidates (though it would also be fair to say that Jake stood out as soon as he came to our attention).
A little background. A friend of mine, a former Pakistani ambassador to the U.S., says that America is the only place on Earth where the expression 'That's history' means, 'That's irrelevant.' He is, unfortunately, correct. We suffer as a nation and as a culture because we don't know where we come from or how we got here. It's extraordinarily important, particularly now, to fight against the forces of willed amnesia and pernicious propaganda, and ammunition for this fight can be found in The Atlantic 's 168-year-old archives.
Jake is a great person to unearth the riches of our history, and history generally, and to contextualize what he finds. He has a PhD in History from Yale with an emphasis on American culture, ideas, and media, and is the author of Horace Greeley: Print, Politics, and the Failure of American Nationhood. (Here's a delightful 1930 accounting of Greeley's life, with an emphasis on his Civil War years, written by William Augustus Croffut, who died in 1915. Why this piece appeared 15 years after the author's death is a mystery for Jake to solve.)
Jake has already written for us; here's his excellent piece about the 11-year-old girl who was most likely responsible for Abraham Lincoln's iconic facial hair.
Our effort to bring the archives to life that has already achieved excellent results, thanks in good measure to the work of Shan Wang. Her perpetual digging uncovered A Century-Old Byline Mystery, about the unknown writer who foreshadowed the Titanic disaster. She is a key leader in our newsroom who helps connect our work, old and new, to Atlantic readers. Shan will continue her archives work, of course, in addition to fulfilling her many other leadership responsibilities.
Below is an announcement about Drew Goins, from managing editor Bhumika Tharoor:
We're thrilled to welcome Drew Goins as a senior editor!
Drew joins us from The Washington Post, where he was most recently the creator and writer of the Today's Opinions newsletter and host of the Impromptu podcast. He will report to me, and will be helping think through strategies to develop and strengthen relationships with readers. To start, he will be focused on how we can use trivia to create new and engaging experiences for our audience—something he is well positioned for as a Jeopardy! champion.
Drew is from North Carolina and graduated from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he studied journalism, music, and Hispanic linguistics, the latter of which has resulted in a lot of strong thoughts on vowel placement, if you ever have a spare hour and a half.
I'm sure Drew will feel right at home here at The Atlantic, and not only because he's in good company with fellow Jeopardy! stars. We're excited for him to bring his talents, and fun facts, to our team.
The Atlantic has welcomed a number of editors and writers this year, including managing editor Griff Witte; staff writers Tom Bartlett, Isaac Stanley-Becker, Idrees Kahloon, Tyler Austin Harper, Quinta Jurecic, Nick Miroff, Toulouse Olorunnipa, Ashley Parker, Alexandra Petri, Missy Ryan, Michael Scherer, Jamie Thompson, Josh Tyrangiel, Caity Weaver, and Nancy Youssef; and senior editors Jenna Johnson and Dan Zak. Please reach out with any questions or requests.
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