Before Jonathan Swan joined The New York Times earlier this month, there was stiff competition to poach a journalist who emerged during the Trump years as one of the industry’s biggest stars—and whose contract with Axios was known to be up at the end of the year. In addition to The Times, Swan had offers from The Washington Post as well as Axios, and was also talking to The Wall Street Journal, according to three people familiar with the discussions. The Post, I’m told, made a serious effort to court Swan. He had meals with a handful of top officials and editors—including a one-on-one meeting with executive editor Sally Buzbee—as well as various reporters, according to two people familiar with the information. Times executive editor Joe Kahn was also engaged in his paper’s successful pursuit of Swan and met with him, according to a Times staffer.
The jockeying for Swan comes as news outlets are getting a handle on covering Donald Trump’s third presidential bid. Last week, I reported how journalists are wrestling with the unprecedented situation of reporting on a twice-impeached former president running again—and explored whether the media has learned from its past mistakes. And reporters steeped in Trumpworld appear to be a hot commodity. Though Swan will start out covering Capitol Hill in January, The Times’ announcement emphasized his Trump coverage and noted he’ll later move to the politics team. I’m told Axios tried hard to keep Swan, who left a lot of money on the table when he turned down their offer. Part of Swan’s calculus in leaving was wanting to write in a more narrative-driven way, instead of Axios’s signature “Smart Brevity” style, according to a source familiar with the information. (Swan declined to comment.)
Another outlet recently beefing up its Trump expertise is Politico. In recent months, Alex Burns and Jonathan Martin, who coauthored This Will Not Pass, one of the big Trump books this year, left The Times for Politico, where they both had previously worked. (The Post was also courting Martin around this time, according to a Post staffer.) Burns, who got his start at the publication, will become Politico’s associate editor for global politics and a columnist, and Martin, who was among Politico’s first hires, will be politics bureau chief and a senior political columnist. The Times took another player off the field months earlier in hiring Michael Bender away from The Journal this past spring to cover Trump alongside Maggie Haberman.
Since then, The Journal has moved Alex Leary to the Trump beat, and recently hired Annie Linskey from The Post, ostensibly to replace Leary on the White House beat, according to someone familiar with the information. While The Post may not have succeeded in getting Swan, it’s already got a murderers’ row of political reporters covering the former president, from Josh Dawsey to Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer, as well as Isaac Arnsdorf, whom the paper hired from ProPublica in March.
It remains to be seen how Axios staffs up in light of Swan’s exit, but there will surely be more shaking out among news organizations as the Republican and Democratic fields come into focus. The makeup of political teams will hinge on what, if any, other candidates take on Trump, and how the Democratic side unfolds, depending on whether Joe Biden runs for reelection (as he’s so far signaled he will). As one journalist who covers Trump at a major news organization told me, “I feel like it’s another year before we really have a sense of what the field is.”