The Atlantic promotes Matt Thompson to executive editor and Adrienne LaFrance to editor of TheAtlantic.com
“To my delight, The Atlantic is growing at a rapid pace, and we need editorial leaders capable of grappling with the challenges and opportunities of this moment,” Goldberg said. “Matt and Adrienne are two such leaders. They bring great knowledge and skill, great judgment, and a great love of The Atlantic, to their new roles.”
Thompson and LaFrance will report directly to Goldberg along with the other members of The Atlantic’s editorial leadership, including magazine editor Scott Stossel, Atlantic Studios executive producer Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg, and creative director David Somerville.
LaFrance will manage the day-to-day editorial operations of TheAtlantic.com and oversee its reporting team across ten news desks. She succeeds the site’s previous editor J.J. Gould. LaFrance joined The Atlantic in early 2014; as a staff writer and editor, she has covered technology, politics, and the media. Before joining The Atlantic, LaFrance was a breaking news reporter and covered some of the biggest stories of the decade, including Hurricane Sandy, the Boston Marathon bombing, and the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre. She has worked for Honolulu Civil Beat, Nieman Lab, the NPR member station in Boston WBUR, and Digital First Media.
Thompson, who since early 2015 has been deputy editor of TheAtlantic.com, will take on an expanded, cross-platform portfolio. He will continue to lead medium- and long-term projects, with a greater focus on cross-platform collaboration, as well as manage The Atlantic’s audio platform, talent development, and the editorial aspects of new subscriber initiatives. Thompson, with Goldberg and contributing editor Alex Wagner, is also the co-host of the podcast Radio Atlantic debuting later this week.
As deputy editor, Thompson has helped lead The Atlantic’s daily journalism through one of its greatest periods of audience and staffing growth. He was instrumental in launching Notes, which brought blogging back to TheAtlantic.com; Life Timeline, personalizing more than a century of journalism to show readers their own place in history; and The Atlantic Daily, the publication’s flagship newsletter that has more than tripled subscribers in the past year. Thompson came to The Atlantic from NPR, where he directed news teams covering race, ethnicity, and culture; education; and global health and development. Thompson was the deputy web editor for The Star Tribune in Minneapolis, and he built and ran The Fresno Bee’s news blog, serving as the paper’s first online reporter.
TheAtlantic.com has grown audience +36 per cent in the first half of 2017 compared to the same period last year, punctuated by a spike to a record 42.3 million monthly unique visitors in May 2017. That month, TheAtlantic.com also set new records for daily unique visitors, page views, and concurrent visits.
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