The One Franklin Square Building, home of The Washington Post, in downtown Washington, Feb. 8, 2019.Pablo Martinez Monsivais/The Associated Press
A columnist who has worked at The Washington Post for four decades resigned on Monday after she said the newspaper’s management decided not to run her commentary critical of owner Jeff Bezos’ new editorial policy.
“It breaks my heart to conclude that I must leave,” Ruth Marcus, who has worked at the newspaper since 1984, wrote in a resignation letter.
Her exit is the latest fallout from the billionaire owner’s directive that the Post narrow the topics covered by its opinion section to personal liberties and the free market. The newspaper’s opinions editor, David Shipley, had already resigned because of the shift.
The storied newspaper has been in a free fall, financially and editorially, over the past year. Marcus, who worked in the news and opinion departments during her career, is “the bedrock of The Washington Post, embodying the history of the place as well as the talent and accomplishments of its journalists,” said Paul Farhi, a former media reporter there.
Marcus said that the Post’s publisher, Will Lewis, declined to run her column, which she described as “respectfully dissenting” from Bezos’ edict. It was the first time in nearly 20 years of writing columns that she’s had one killed, she said.
The decision “underscores that the traditional freedom of columnists to select the topics they wish to address and say what they think has been dangerously eroded,” she wrote. Her resignation letter was first reported by The New York Times Co.
A Post spokesperson said Monday that “we’re grateful for Ruth’s significant contributions to The Washington Post over the past 40 years. We respect her decision to leave and wish her the best.”
Is it unusual for a publisher to strike down a news column?
While Bezos and Lewis have the right to make such decisions – they’re the bosses – “that has not been the tradition,” Farhi said. He likened it to how the Justice Department, while technically under White House control, has generally operated independently. Editorial writers and columnists, paid to give their opinions, usually decide what to write, he said.
The danger is that a decision by the publisher not to allow a column to go forward can make readers question whether the viewpoints of writers are truly their own, he said. Worse yet, it could taint the news department, which by most accounts is aggressively covering the new administration.
Shortly after the editorial page decision was announced nearly two weeks ago, another Post story on the issue, by media columnist Erik Wemple, was scrapped, according to the Gene Pool, a blog written by former Post writer Gene Weingarten. Wemple declined to comment on Monday.
In January, editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned after her work depicting Bezos and other billionaires genuflecting before a statue of President Donald Trump was rejected, a decision Shipley explained at the time was because it was repetitive of other opinion pieces.
Under executive editor Matt Murray, the Post has also said it would refrain from having its journalists write about issues involving the newspaper, a decision Wemple said in a chat with readers in January that “I couldn’t possibly dissent (from) more strongly.”
The Post’s opinion section on Monday included an editorial opposing Mexico’s $10 billion lawsuit against firearms manufacturers, a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Columnists Max Boot wrote about Trump and Russia, Perry Bacon Jr. about Democratic resistance to Trump centring in the states, Phillip Bump on whether Trump would pay a political price for unpopular policies and Jim Geraghty about violence in Syria.
Post has seen an exodus of prominent journalists
The Post, which made money during the first Trump administration, has been losing money in recent years and its internal strife largely began last June, when Sally Buzbee resigned as executive editor rather than accept a newsroom reorganization. Several prominent Post journalists – among them Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey, Philip Rucker, Matea Gold, Jackie Alemany, Michael Scherer and Will Sommer – have left for other jobs.
Bezos’ decision last fall that the Post would not endorse a presidential candidate – after the editorial staff had prepared to support Democrat Kamala Harris – led to an exodus of subscribers that the newspaper is fighting to recover from.
Marty Baron, the Post’s executive editor when Bezos bought the paper in 2013, wrote last week in the Atlantic that Bezos “handled his ownership admirably for more than a decade. But his courage failed him when he needed it the most.”
Marcus’ resignation on Monday overshadowed a newsroom reorganization plan introduced by Lewis, including separating workflows for the Post’s digital and print products.