James Bennet, the editor credited with revitalizing The Atlantic magazine, will join The New York Times as editorial page director, the company said on Monday, replacing Andrew M. Rosenthal, who is stepping down.
Mr. Rosenthal, 60, will leave in late April, but will write an online column covering a range of subjects, including the presidential election, according to a statement issued on Monday by Arthur Sulzberger Jr., The Times’s publisher. Mr. Bennet, a former correspondent for The Times, will start his new job in May.
Mr. Bennet, 49, was a Jerusalem bureau chief and a White House correspondent, and held other prominent roles at The Times before joining The Atlantic a decade ago. He said it was an honor to succeed Mr. Rosenthal and that he was “looking forward to joining my new colleagues to continue his work imagining all the new possibilities for intelligent commentary in these times.”
Mr. Sulzberger said that when Mr. Bennet left for The Atlantic, “those of us who worked with him knew that he would usher in the resurgence of that great publication.”
“He’s done that and more,” Mr. Sulzberger said. “We also knew, or at least hoped, that someday he would return.”
The editorial page has occasionally been a steppingstone to the top position in the newsroom. In recent decades, both Max Frankel, in 1986, and Howell Raines, in 2001, moved from editorial page editor to become executive editor of The Times. Given Mr. Bennet’s background and credentials, he could be seen as a potential candidate to replace the current executive editor, Dean Baquet, at the end of Mr. Baquet’s tenure.
Though it had long been speculated that Mr. Bennet would return to The Times, the news that he would replace Mr. Rosenthal came as a surprise on Monday — a report over the weekend, by Politico, had suggested that Mr. Bennet would come back to the newsroom.
Mr. Rosenthal is the son of Abe Rosenthal, a legendary executive editor of The Times, and has been editorial page director since 2007. He was previously an assistant managing editor for news, as well as foreign and national editor. He joined The Times in 1987 from The Associated Press.
Mr. Sulzberger credited Mr. Rosenthal with reinventing The Times’s opinion pages for a new era in journalism, leading the way in the paper’s digital transformation. He cited Mr. Rosenthal’s contributions to video, opinion documentaries, interactive journalism and international expansion.
“I feel very honored to have served in this position for longer than any editorial page editor in the modern history of The Times and during a period of such sweeping change, both in our business and in the world we cover,” Mr. Rosenthal said. “I’m looking forward to the opportunity to step back and focus my full attention on writing about subjects I care deeply about.”
In a separate statement, The Atlantic said it would appoint Bob Cohn, previously co-president with Mr. Bennet, as sole president of The Atlantic. He and the magazine’s owner, David Bradley, “will lead the search for a new editor in chief,” the statement said.
“As to a new editor in chief, I don’t begin with a view,” Mr. Bradley said in a memo to his staff on Monday. “I met 100 writers and editors along the path to finding James. You can tell from this that I have a bias for certainty over speed.”