The Atlantic hires Michael Powell and Zoë Schlanger as staff writers

The journalists Michael Powell and Zoë Schlanger will join The Atlantic as staff writers, editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg has announced. Powell has been a reporter at The New York Times since 2007, and will begin with The Atlantic next month. Schlanger will start this fall, covering issues of climate and writing the newsletter The Weekly Planet, which tells the story of life on a changing planet.

In a note to staff, Goldberg wrote: “Michael and Zoë are brilliant additions to our growing roster of staff writers. Michael is one of the preeminent reporters working today, and Zoë is a young journalist of exceptional promise. I am committed to providing our readers with the best journalism from the best writers, and Michael and Zoë will help us achieve this goal.”

At The New York Times, Powell covered presidential campaigns, reported on the economy, wrote the “Gotham” column for the Metro section, and for six years was the “Sports of the Times” columnist. Most recently, he was a national reporter covering issues around free speech and expression, and stories capturing intellectual and campus debate. He and two colleagues won the George Polk Award for reporting on a corrupt police detective — stories that led to more than a dozen exonerations, including freeing a man who had served 22 years for a murder he did not commit — and he was part of a team that won the Pulitzer for breaking-news reporting on Eliot Spitzer. Before joining the Times, Powell worked for The Washington Post from 1996 to 2006, where he covered the 2000 presidential campaign and later served as New York bureau chief.

Schlanger is a distinguished science reporter and the author of a forthcoming book, "The Light Eaters," about plant intelligence. She has contributed to The Atlantic, The New York Times, New York Review of Books and Audubon magazine, among other publications. She was previously a staff reporter at Newsweek and later Quartz, reporting on climate change, the environment, health and science policy. She has received several awards for her reporting, including for her coverage of the global plastic trade and air pollution in Detroit.

Other recent journalists to join The Atlantic are Hanna Rosin, as a senior editor and host of the Radio Atlantic podcast; the Pulitzer Prize winner Stephanie McCrummen as a staff writer, after nearly two decades at The Washington Post; and Laura Secor as a senior editor directing coverage of global issues and foreign policy. Secor was a features editor for The Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Review, and previously a deputy editor at Foreign Affairs.