Mr. Hayes, who has spent the last year contributing regularly to The Nation as a Puffin Fellow at the Nation Institute, will replace David Corn, whose departure for Mother Jones was announced a month ago. While technically a senior editor at In These Times, Mr. Hayes said The Nation has been his primary focus during the last 12 months, and that about 90 percent of his writing from that time has appeared in its pages.

According to an e-mail Mr. Hayes sent to subscribers of his Google Groups listserv, he "will focus more squarely on the political doings in the nation's capital" than he did as a freelancer, but that he hopes "to preserve some of the focus on movements, institutions, organizations and ideas that has been the through-line for much of [his] previous political writing."

Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel told Media Mob that she hired Mr. Hayes last week while the two of them sat in DC's Union Station.

"He has a great voice, he's a superb writer, he has a keen eye, and great intellectual sophistication," Ms. vanden Heuvel said. "I think [New Yorker political writer] Rick Hertzberg is eternally youthful, but I think Chris has the ability to be a young Rick Hertzberg."

Ms. vanden Heuvel said The Nation may also be adding an investigative editor to the DC bureau in the next few weeks.