By: Greg Mitchell Ross Douthat, 29, a senior editor and conservative blogger for The Atlantic magazine, has been hired by The New York Times to write a regular column online and then fill the weekly Op-ed slot occupied by William Kristol during 2008.
A New York Times spokeswoman confirmed the hiring to E&P this afternoon. Andrew Rosenthal, editor page editor, asked by E&P's Joe Strupp why Douthat had been picked, cited his youth, Republican politics, "iconoclast" leanings and intelligence.
He also said that he had interviewed several applicants after reading widely the work of many conservatives (see separate story).
Rosenthal had sent around the following e-mail:
"Some exciting news. We?ve hired Ross Douthat, currently of Atlantic. Ross will be joining the Times staff in mid-April and will be based in the Washington bureau.
"He will start out primarily online, but will soon be writing with increasing frequency, and then regularity, on the Op-Ed page, in the Monday slot opposite Paul. At some point, he?ll also resume his work as a blogger, which I highly recommend.
"If you don?t know Ross, you?ll find him funny and smart and sharp. He?s going to be a great addition to our team. I know you?ll make him welcome."
Douthat has written articles for the Times and, unlike Kristol, is not known for regularly attacking the paper in print.
His bio at his Atlantic blog reads:
"Ross Douthat is a senior editor at The Atlantic. He is the author of 'Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class' (Hyperion, 2005), and the co-author, with Reihan Salam, of 'Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class And Save the American Dream' (Doubleday, 2008). He is the film critic for National Review, and his work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, GQ, Slate, and other publications. A native of New Haven, Connecticut, he now lives in Washington D.C."
His name, he notes, is pronounced "Dow-thut."
Marc Ambinder, his colleague at The Atlantic site, writes today, "It's one step back for the Atlantic, but an order of magnitude forward for the country: my colleagues and I learned today that senior editor Ross Douthat will, in short order, become an opinion columnist for the New York Times.
"Ross is late-twenties-year-old public intellectual with the sensibility of a 60-year eminence grise, the range of a Hitchens, the pitch of a conservative AJP Taylor, the conscience of a Neibuhr and the intellectual honesty of his frequent sparring partner, Andrew Sullivan."
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Greg Mitchell is editor of E&P. His new book is "Why Obama Won" (Sinclair Books).
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