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New Hires at Tablet

David Samuels and Bari Weiss are literary, senior editors

by
Marc Tracy
July 19, 2011
(Ravi Joshi/Tablet Magazine)
(Ravi Joshi/Tablet Magazine)

Exciting news on the home front. David Samuels, a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Atlantic, and other places—as well as a Tablet Magazine contributing editor, editorial consultant, and resident interviewer—was named today in a press release as Tablet’s literary editor. And Bari Weiss, an assistant features editor at The Wall Street Journal, was named senior editor in charge of the News & Politics section. Tablet also announced an impending redesign.

To get personal for a second: Over my time at Tablet I have come to know David not only as one of the best journalists around—trying to think of his greatest pieces that are online, my mind goes to his Arafat profile, but really, buy his book and read everything (especially the one about Spaceman Lee)—but also as a superb, insightful editor, one who recognizes and cultivates great writing and knows when to inspire a writer and when to be hands-off. I am tremendously excited about the increased role he’ll be playing, and not least because he will continue to publish some of the world’s best long-form journalism in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Atlantic, and other places.

Bari, on the other hand, I have known for several times as long as I have known David: She was my college classmate and remains my friend. Her founding of The Current, a journal of Jewish affairs by Columbia students, as a college junior is a testament to her unmatched entrepreneurial energy and passion; her decision not to name it Dysentery, as a friend and I had suggested, and in fact to make it a still-going-strong concern (insects have longer average life spans than undergraduate publications) with an interesting, provocative, and original voice is a testament to her editorial talent. My favorite piece by her in recent years is probably her profile of Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf. She is a huge addition.

Finally, congratulate deputy news editor Matthew Fishbane, too: He is getting a bump—he is now a senior editor, who will be working on Arts & Culture when not shipping off to places that you could call Godforsaken if there weren’t Jews there.

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.