Ruby Cramer Is J
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It’s not the first time POLITICO has tried to hire her, but it’s the first time we actually made it happen: Ruby Cramer is joining us as a senior staff writer for POLITICO and POLITICO Magazine, with a focus on political enterprise and magazine stories about Biden's Washington and the state of the GOP. Ruby is a careful student of her craft. She specializes in sparkling, definitive profiles that capture the flaws and motivations of some of the biggest characters in politics — and we are ecstatic about what she’ll bring to her new role, whether it’s revealing the inner lives of members of Congress, digging into the Biden administration, or bringing her refractive lens to the 2024 campaign. Ruby began her journalism career as a fact-checker for the CBS Evening News. She joined BuzzFeed in 2012 via the bulletin board equivalent of a cold call — by reaching out to one of its writers, the late Michael Hastings, during a Reddit AMA to ask if he needed a research assistant (without securing permission from his boss, he said yes). Over nine years, Ruby went on to do standout work at BuzzFeed News, where her list of achievements is far too lengthy to list here. Among them most recently: a painstaking reconstruction of the collapse of the 2020 Iowa caucuses, as seen through the eyes of Troy Price, a man who had devoted his career to them; a newsy, narrative-changing profile of Bernie Sanders followed by a cinematic tick tock on his losing primary bid; inside looks at Sanders’ surprising friendships with Joe Biden and Amy Klobuchar; and a gut-wrenching exhumation of Herman Cain, whose death from Covid-19 took him from political punchline to partisan cudgel. Ruby knows how to dominate a beat, securing the only sit-down print interview with Hillary Clinton for a profile that remains an enduring account of her reasons for running and her inability to communicate them to voters. She has a knack for zooming in on the overlooked detail that tells a larger story, like this piece on two “everyday Americans” who tried to get close to Clinton but were crushed by her juggernaut of a campaign. And she can do funny, delivering arch political sketches from the trail on deadline, as she did from a day on the road with Bill Clinton and from Biden’s long-awaited victory rally last year in Wilmington. But often, it’s in telling the stories of previously unknown characters where Ruby shines the brightest — as in this textured 2016 portrait of Rob Russo, a Clinton staffer who handled her mail for a decade, including the outpouring of grief-by-letter following her defeat to Donald Trump. Ruby starts on June 15, reporting to Bill Duryea. She’s eager to get to know her new colleagues and find opportunities to partner on big stories. Please give her a warm POLITICO welcome. Blake Carrie Matt .