Charles Bethea

About

Charles Bethea is a staff writer at The New Yorker. He began contributing to the magazine in 2008. His investigative reporting has centered on politics, true crime and the south. He broke the news of Roy Moore's mall ban, as well as Mark Meadows's involvement with creationist paleontology and apparent commission of voter fraud. He has also covered the attempt to change the U.S. Census, the consequences of news deserts, the absence of adequate public defense in the Southern District of Georgia, a brewery run by active rival gang members, and the most lucrative fraud ever perpetrated by a prison inmate. Bethea has published more than seventy Talk of the Town pieces, too, on such subjects as the creator of barackobama@gmail.com, Alex Honnold's attempt to scale a skyscraper, Pete Buttigieg's Oxford years, Kanye West's presidential run, and a sculptor obsessed with Donald Trump.Previously, Bethea was an editor at Outside magazine and a writer-at-large for Atlanta magazine. His work has also appeared in Grantland, The New Republic, the Wall Street Journal, GQ, Rolling Stone, and Wired. In 2020, Bethea was named to Georgia Trend's list of "40 Under 40" in the state. In 2021, he won The Mirror Award for "Best Single Article/Story" for his reporting on the loss of local news in Jones County, North Carolina. In 2023, he was nominated for a James Beard Award, in the "feature reporting" category, for his investigation into TRU Colors Brewing Company.He lives in Atlanta and goes mountain biking a lot