Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, set off a storm of criticism Thursday when he suggested that, in seeking a diverse group of writers for cover stories, he had found it difficult to hand those plum assignments to anyone other than white male magazine journalists.

“It’s really, really hard to write a 10,000-word cover story,” Mr. Goldberg said in an interview with Nieman Lab, a nonprofit journalism organization and website, which noted that 11 of The Atlantic’s 15 most recent cover stories were written by men. “There are not a lot of journalists in America who can do it. The journalists in America who do it are almost exclusively white males.”

The way to broaden The Atlantic’s contributors, Mr. Goldberg continued, is to tell new writers that “you’re really good at this and you have a lot of potential and you’re 33 and you’re burning with ambition, and that’s great, so let us put you on a deliberate pathway toward writing 10,000-word cover stories.”

“It might not work,” he said. “It often doesn’t.”

Critics seized on the comments, accusing the veteran editor of underestimating the abilities of those who fall outside the pool of white male writers. The article length he cited fueled hours of commentary on Twitter, especially among journalists. Margaret Sullivan of The Washington Post joked on Twitter: “I aspire to be one of those women who can write 1,200 words. I top out at about 850.” Andi Zeisler, a co-founder of the nonprofit feminist organization Bitch Media, wrote, “So has anyone told Jeffrey Goldberg about women who write books yet.”

