The ripple effect of Jeff Bezos’s decision to block The Washington Post — a newspaper based in the US capital — from endorsing a presidential candidate continues to reverberate through the newspaper, as a tidal wave of readers cancel their subscriptions and nearly one-third of the Post’s editorial board step down in protest.
The resignations came Monday as David Shipley, the Post’s editorial page editor, met with staffers in the opinion section, telling them that Bezos, the newspaper’s owner, first expressed doubts in September about endorsing in this year’s presidential election.
A person with knowledge of the matter told CNN that an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris had been drafted by the Post’s editorial board members before it was quashed by Bezos. But a final decision on the endorsement was not made until last week, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting.
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Shipley said he tried to convince Bezos to agree to make the endorsement, but told staffers “I failed”, according to the person.
Attendees asked about reports that hundreds of thousands of Post readers had cancelled their subscriptions since the decision was announced Friday, but Shipley said he did not know the figures, the person said.
On Monday, NPR reported that by midday more than 200,000 people had cancelled their digital subscriptions to the Post, citing two people familiar with the matter. CNN could not independently confirm the figure. A Washington Post spokesperson declined to comment.
Staffers also asked Shipley about former president Donald Trump’s meeting on Friday with executives from Blue Origin, the same day the Post announced it would not endorse in the race.
Shipley said Bezos told him he did not know executives from his company were scheduled to meet with Trump.
A person close to Bezos later confirmed to CNN that he did not know about the Blue Origin meeting in advance.
But in the wake of Bezos’s decision not to endorse, many Post staffers have been left with unanswered questions and a sense of bewilderment over the reasoning behind the move.
“There’s just this huge amount of feeling that what we do has been set back by this sort of giant hit on our trust, and trust is what journalism is about,” the person said.
Two Post journalists, Molly Roberts and David E Hoffman both announced Monday they had stepped down from their positions on the editorial board, although both will stay at the paper.
A third journalist, Mili Mitra also stepped down, the Post reported, meaning nearly one-third of the 10-member board had resigned.
Hoffman, who was awarded the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Editorial Writing for a series on the new tactics authoritarian regimes use to repress dissent, told CNN in an interview he did not want to remain silent about the threat Trump poses to the country.
“I cannot sit here any longer on the editorial board and write those editorials while we ourselves have given in to silence,” he said.
“We face a terrible, terrible choice, I believe, a looming autocracy.
“I don’t want to be silent about it. I don’t want the Post to be silent about it, and the fact that we’re not going to endorse is a degree of silence I can’t stand.”
In her resignation letter, Roberts said she was resigning “because the imperative to endorse Kamala Harris over Donald Trump is as morally clear as it gets”.
“Worse, our silence is exactly what Donald Trump wants: For the media, for us, to keep quiet.”
Robert Kagan, a Post columnist and opinion editor-at-large who had been with the paper for 25 years, also resigned Friday as a direct result of the non-endorsement.
“This is obviously an effort by Jeff Bezos to curry favour with Donald Trump in the anticipation of his possible victory,” Kagan told CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront.
“Trump has threatened to go after Bezos’ business.
“Bezos runs one of the largest companies in America.
“They have tremendously intricate relations with (the) federal government. They depend on the federal government.”
Former Post executive editor Marty Baron, who led the paper under Bezos during the first Trump administration, called the decision not to endorse an act of “cowardice”.
“To declare a moment of high principle, only 11 days before the election that is just highly suspect that is just not to be believed that this was a matter of principle at this point,” Baron told CNN’s Michael Smerconish on Saturday morning.