Philip Rucker, who rose through the ranks of The Washington Post to become the outlet’s national editor, is jumping to CNN to take on a senior role directing its coverage of politics in the nation’s capital.
Rucker has been named senior vice president of editorial strategy and news, and has been tasked with, among other things, guiding coverage of President Donald Trump, who was inaugurated into office Monday. Rucker will start his new role on February 10.
He is the latest in a series of departures of prominent journalists from The Washington Post, which has been navigating a downturn in subscriptions and pushback to stances it has recently taken under CEO Will Lewis and owner Jeff Bezos. The Post announced in late October that it would not endorse any candidate for president, a move subscribers saw as a kowtow to newly-inaugurated president Donald Trump by the Post’s owner. Other prominent staffers have in recent weeks left to join publications including The Atlantic, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
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Rucker, who has been a familiar face on TV-news outlets including MSNBC, led a staff of 150 journalists at the Post as its national editor, overseeing coverage of beats that included the White House, Congress, politics, national security, criminal justice, the Supreme Court, U.S. domestic news, health, education, science, race, immigration and more. He also served as a deputy national editor, a senior Washington correspondent and White House bureau chief. He joined The Post in 2005 as a local news reporter and has covered Congress, the Obama White House and the 2012, 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns.
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Rucker co-authored, with Carol Leonnig, two bestselling books: “A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America” in 2020 and “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year” in 2021. He graduated with a degree in history from Yale University.
