Madeleine Carlisle, daughter of Stephen Colbert, is returning to The Atlantic as a staff writer following her resignation from CBS’s “60 Minutes” earlier this month.
The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, announced the hire Friday, marking a homecoming for Carlisle, who served as an editorial fellow at the magazine during its 2018-19 class. “A bunch of us sensed that, sooner or later, she would be coming back to us,” Goldberg wrote in the staff announcement, recalling her fellowship work covering a Florida woman whose nephew died in the Parkland shooting and President Trump’s unmet promises to General Motors workers in Ohio. “We’ve been so happy to watch her become an outstanding journalist,” he added.
Carlisle’s path back to The Atlantic wound through several newsrooms. She first joined CBS News as an intern in 2017 before departing for reporting stints at Time and The Atlantic, covering politics, law and gender issues. She returned to CBS in 2022 as an associate producer on “60 Minutes,” where she worked alongside correspondents Scott Pelley, Anderson Cooper and Cecilia Vega and contributed to an Emmy-nominated investigation into crypto figure Changpeng Zhao.
Her exit came amid what staffers have taken to calling “Black Thursday,” a wave of May firings that swept out correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Vega, executive producer Tanya Simon and executive editor Draggan Mihailovich. Former executive producer Bill Owens had already resigned earlier, saying he no longer had editorial independence, a departure Pelley publicly criticized on air before Pelley himself was let go.
The upheaval followed CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss’s arrival, and Weiss has since installed Nick Bilton, who has no prior television news experience, as the program’s new executive producer. The program has also faced scrutiny over a reportedly unaired Jeffrey Epstein investigation, though CBS has denied the reporting was shelved for editorial or political reasons.
Carlisle’s resignation followed her father’s own departure from CBS by roughly two months. “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” aired its final episode in May after the network canceled it, a move CBS attributed to financial reasons tied to the show’s reported $40 million annual losses. No reporting has linked Carlisle’s decision to her father’s exit or specified why she chose to leave. The Atlantic also announced Friday that former Vibe and Billboard editor-in-chief Danyel Smith is joining the magazine as a staff writer.
