lynn goldsmith/the atlantic the atlantic<u+2019>s new editor talks about his plans for the magazine, donald trump and the future of the middle east. by jake sherman 10/14/16 07:25 am edt jeffrey goldberg of the atlantic occupies a rare space in washington: he<u+2019>s an authority. an authority on the middle east and benjamin netanyahu and on barack obama<u+2019>s foreign policy. his massive april 2016 cover story, <u+201c> the obama doctrine ,<u+201d> is considered the essential read to understand the president<u+2019>s worldview. owner david bradley last week announced goldberg would become editor of the atlantic, a massive career change that even he hasn<u+2019>t fully gotten his arms around yet. goldberg told us he doesn<u+2019>t anticipate writing <u+201c>a huge amount of anything<u+201d> in the next year or two. but he will take time off to finish his book, which he describes as exploring why <u+201d>the middle east consumes presidencies.<u+201d> excerpts: on making the shift from writer to editor: <u+201c> i<u+2019>ve been making the transition for a grand total of 2<u+00bd> days and one of those days was yom kippur <u+2026> so i don<u+2019>t want to prejudge this. i think it will actually be easier in one crucial way than i thought which is that i<u+2019>ve always felt invested in the stories of people at the atlantic, especially those who i am helping in some kind of even marginal way. i believe it<u+2019>s very rewarding to see journalists at your enterprise succeeding and i have to imagine it<u+2019>s incredibly rewarding to help them succeed and so, my main job obviously is making quality journalism here and so if i can be of service to these folks <u+2014> especially the younger ones <u+2014> in moving their journalism to where they want to be, then i think that<u+2019>s very satisfying. do i want to weigh in all the time? yes. do i have to approach twitter differently? yes.<u+201d> story continued below will you be writing? <u+201c> if you<u+2019>re in my position, you can trick yourself thinking you understand the place you<u+2019>re working in because i<u+2019>ve been here for nine years. i<u+2019>ve gotta relearn things i think i know, but then there<u+2019>s a whole category of things i don<u+2019>t know. that in itself is two, three, four months. and i don<u+2019>t anticipate writing a huge amount of anything in the next year or two.<u+201d> about that endorsement <u+2026> <u+201c>i wrote the draft of it <u+2026> we<u+2019>ve endorsed three times in 159 years, so you can do the math. i don<u+2019>t think i<u+2019>ll be editor when the next time comes around. the thought that i had going way back was that the atlantic does not generally endorse. i read a lot about the atlantic<u+2019>s history, and i read a lot into the archives, and so i understood the two times in which the atlantic endorsed represent an extraordinary moment in american history. the truth is, it was the 1964 rather than the 1860 endorsement this is more modeled on. that was more of an attempt to say barry goldwater lies outside the mainstream political thought and his temperament is unsuited for the office. this is not about democrats or republicans. this is about a person who is not fit for office. and so we were very careful to say, <u+2018>this is not actually a partisan endorsement. she<u+2019>s qualified for this, and he<u+2019>s immensely unqualified.<u+2019><u+201d> what do you want to change at the atlantic? <u+201c> a), i have the luxury of being new, so i don<u+2019>t have to answer your question. but, b), i<u+2019>ll try to answer your question. i<u+2019>m lucky because i get to follow james bennett, who really organized this place well and led it well for 10 years. and oversaw with david bradley and bob cohn a pretty massive expansion of what the atlantic does in every direction. in audience, revenue, readership, ambition, staffing obviously. so i think i have the luxury of being able to think for a couple of months about where we should be headed. obviously, constant growth is the demand on all of us. i<u+2019>ll be thinking about that. the challenge is to maintain somewhere between dramatic and explosive growth on all platforms while adhering to atlantic standards and being true to the atlantic<u+2019>s history and purpose.<u+201d> what did you say when you were approached about the job? <u+201c> why it took me a little bit of time to get there is: i had a great job at the atlantic. why do i need another great job at the atlantic? <u+2026> i was helping think through names of people and so on and then all of a sudden, one day the conversation shifted to, <u+2018>do you want to do it?<u+2019> and my first answer was, of course, <u+2018>you gotta be kidding.<u+2019> <u+2026> it went from you<u+2019>re kidding, to <u+2018>huh,<u+2019> to a lot of questions, to, <u+2018>that sounds like a pretty good job.<u+2019> it<u+2019>s been 30 years since i was the editor of something and that something was the daily pennsylvanian at the university of pennsylvania, which is a great college newspaper, but still a college newspaper.<u+201d> who are you going to hire? <u+201c>obviously <u+2026> i know who the great writers are in my mind. i<u+2019>m really lucky in that we have great writers here already. obviously we have great writers here at the senior level <u+2014> jim fallows and ta-nehisi coates are basically american institutions. but it goes far beyond that. we have a group of people in their 30s mainly who are fantastic and are moving toward huge fame or getting there pretty quickly, or there are people in another category who are young geniuses <u+2026> i<u+2019>m trying to be deliberate about this. i<u+2019>m trying to figure out who we are, what it is that we do, what it is we should be doing, then i can better answer the question of who we need to supplement the team here with.<u+201d> don<u+2019>t you want to write? <u+201c>i shouldn<u+2019>t say this, because i<u+2019>m working on a book about the middle east, but the middle east <u+2014> and foreign policy <u+2014> can wear you down. the truth is, i don<u+2019>t know if i would be so inclined to do this job if i hadn<u+2019>t done that obama foreign policy piece, <u+201c> the obama doctrine ,<u+201d> because i felt as if that was a relatively large statement about the state of american foreign policy and america<u+2019>s role in the world, and <u+2026> i got an email immediately from jack shafer saying, you should just retire because it will never get any better <u+2026> i felt like i<u+2019>ve been doing this for a while <u+2026> and i had people say to me, <u+2018>try something new for a while.<u+2019> and after a while, it seemed like a pretty good idea. <u+201c>when you<u+2019>re an editor, it<u+2019>s not about you anymore. it<u+2019>s about your people and it<u+2019>s about the larger cause and the glory that they achieve does reflect on the editors and the ownership <u+2026> and i<u+2019>m fine with that. i suppose there are moments where i<u+2019>ll like to weigh in on syria policy or the middle east peace process and the pivot to asia and i won<u+2019>t be able to because i<u+2019>m worried about content distribution networks.<u+201d> does obama do anything on israel before he leaves? <u+201c>i think there<u+2019>s a certain desire of people in the administration to lay down what would become known as the obama parameters [on what a two-state solution looks like] to replace the clinton parameters. the problem is that when another clinton happens to come on the scene, which seems more likely than not at the moment, i think that the clinton people for various sound reasons would want to say to the obama team, <u+2018>you know what? you<u+2019>re handing off this ball to us with all the others and we would like to approach this from our angle, and doing something explosive like that might not be helpful.<u+2019> on the other hand, maybe there would be a level of coordination between the two foreign policy teams, where the hillary people could imagine a scenario in which obama could do something useful in the u.n. or in another setting to pave the way for some kind of initiative. all that being said, it doesn<u+2019>t seem likely that hillary clinton is going to on jan. 21 say, <u+2018>how do we solve the israeli-palestinian crisis,<u+2019> because it<u+2019>s not actually a very important crisis anymore, compared to five or six other crises in the middle east.<u+201d> by bill scher by thomas wright by joshua zeitz by jack shafer
the playbook interview: jeffrey goldberg - politico
jake sherman jack shafer