The Atlantic Names Jane Yong Kim Culture Editor for TheAtlantic.com
Sophie Gilbert Moves to Staff Writer, as The Atlantic builds out its Culture reporting
Washington, D.C. (November 4, 2016)— Jane Yong Kim will join The Atlantic as culture editor for TheAtlantic.com, and Sophie Gilbert, who has been in this role since January 2015, is becoming a staff writer on the Culture team. The moves were announced today by the site’s editor J.J. Gould.
Culture is one of the most visited sections of TheAtlantic.com and consistently publishes many of the most-read pieces on the site. As the culture editor, Kim will shape the section’s coverage and oversee its staff of writers and frequent contributors.
Kim comes to The Atlantic from The Village Voice, where she ran the culture section in print and online. Before the Voice, she edited essays for Racked and was an opinion editor of Al Jazeera America. She launched the literary publication of the Asian American Writers Workshop; was the managing editor of CultureStrike.org; and was an assistant editor at Columbia Journalism Review. Kim has written about books and the arts for the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Columbia Journalism Review, the Paris Review Daily, BOMB magazine, and The New Republic.
Gilbert will now return fulltime to writing on pop culture and entertainment. She has recently mused about the glorious return of Bridget Jones, the end of one of Britain’s most popular shows in decades, and the uncanny resemblance of reality TV’s biggest stars to 19th century heroines, in the piece “The Real Housewives of Jane Austen.” Before joining The Atlantic as a senior editor in 2014, she was the arts editor at Washingtonian, where she wrote features and managed all cultural coverage in the magazine and online. Gilbert has written for The Washington Post, The New Republic, and Slate.
“Jane is an amazing editor, and Sophie is a phenomenal writer,” Gould wrote in a memo to staff. “They’re both much better at choosing modifiers than I ever will be. We’re all enormously lucky to have them.”
TheAtlantic.com has grown sizably in staff and audience over the past 12 months, bolstered by expanded coverage of Politics & Policy; science, tech, and health; culture; religion; and news. Audience to TheAtlantic.com has grown nearly 30 percent year over year; October 2016 brought record page views to the site, and near-record monthly audience. Jeffrey Goldberg is editor in chief of The Atlantic. TheAtlantic.com is led by Gould; Matt Thompson is the deputy editor.