The Atlantic hires BuzzFeed’s Cushing as senior tech editor

The Atlantic announced Thursday that Ellen Cushing has been hired as a senior tech editor.

Cushing will help to establish and lead a new bureau in San Francisco as The Atlantic grows both its reporting team and coverage dedicated to technology and Silicon Valley. She will begin with The Atlantic next month.

“Ellen comes aboard at a time when we are aggressively expanding our coverage of Silicon Valley,” said The Atlantic’s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg and editor of TheAtlantic.com Adrienne LaFrance in a statement. “From our earliest conversations with her, we could see that among all the candidates we considered, she had the most developed and sophisticated ideas about how to carry out this expansion.”

Cushing comes to The Atlantic after more than three years as an enterprise and tech editor at BuzzFeed News. In addition to managing a team of investigative reporters, Cushing led BuzzFeed’s enterprise reporting on sexual assault and harassment. She previously was a senior editor at San Francisco magazine and staff writer and editor at East Bay Express.

Under the leadership of Ross Andersen, editor of The Atlantic’s science, technology, and health sections, Cushing will shape The Atlantic’s reporting on the companies, individuals, and shifting centers of power in Silicon Valley.

She will work with The Atlantic’s staff writers Alexis Madrigal and Alana Semuels, both in the Bay Area, and Taylor Lorenz, who is joining The Atlantic at the end of the month from The Daily Beast.

The Atlantic plans to fill out the San Francisco bureau with several additional hires this year.