The Atlantic announced on Wednesday that it would be expanding by adding 100 positions, with roughly half of those being editorial hires.
News of the hiring was announced in a company-wide town hall meeting with Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg and Atlantic Media Chairman David Bradley.
The hires were made with the approval of the company’s new majority shareholder, Emerson Collective. The non-profit is owned by Steve Jobs widow, Laurene Powell Jobs.
“Over the next 12 months, we’ll be adding as many as 100 new staffers to The Atlantic. That’s about a 30 percent boost in personnel,” wrote Atlantic president Bob Cohn in a memo shared with staff on Wednesday, which was obtained by TheWrap.
“The newsroom will grow the most, with up to half of these new employees coming to editorial. We’ll also be nearly doubling the size of our product team, bringing new engineering and design resources to bear on all our work. And we are planning major commitments to the data, consumer marketing, and sales teams.”
The news of The Atlantic’s hiring plans comes at a time when many media companies are cutting staff.
On the same day that The Atlantic announced its expansion, employees at Vox Media were given very different news, with company chief Jim Bankoff announcing that his organization would be laying off around 50 employees, with the cuts coming from editorial and social video.
“This morning we will let go around 50 people and are offering role changes to about a dozen others. The groups bearing the biggest impact are the Racked, Curbed, SB Nation, and the Video Services teams, although there are also some smaller changes elsewhere in the company,” Bankoff said an internal memo to staff Wednesday, which was obtained by TheWrap.
“Our leadership team and I took this decision very seriously. We know it has a big impact on the lives of our co-workers who will be leaving, as well as on the morale of those who remain. We commit to treating all those affected with professionalism, compassion and dignity,” he added.