Longtime Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus submitted her resignation on Monday after an op-ed she wrote disagreeing with owner Jeff Bezos’ new mandate for the storied paper’s opinion page was rejected by the Post’s publisher.
Marcus — who has been with the Post since 1984 as an editor, reporter and columnist — sent her resignation letter to both Bezos and publisher Will Lewis, telling them that she had never encountered one of her pieces being rejected in her nearly 20 years of column-writing. The letter was first reported by The New York Times.
As of publication, no communication of Marcus’ resignation had been sent to the Post newsroom, according to internal sources. A spokesperson for the paper did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Marcus quitting the Post after more than four decades with the publication comes roughly a week after the paper’s mega-billionaire owner sparked outrage among the paper’s staff and subscription base when he handed down a new direction for the Post’s opinion page.
“We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” Bezos noted in his memo to staff. “We’ll cover other topics too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”
The Amazon founder also revealed that opinion editor David Shipley had decided to step down rather than embrace Bezos’ new edict. “I suggested to him that if the answer wasn’t ‘hell yes,’ then it had to be ‘no.’ After careful consideration, David decided to step away,” Bezos stated. “This is a significant shift, it won’t be easy, and it will require 100 per cent commitment — I respect his decision.”
In her resignation letter, Marcus wrote that she “cherished my four decades at the Post” and stated that as an opinion writer, she had been “honored to offer commentary that readers could be assured constituted my best independent judgment of the topic at hand.” Lewis’ rejection of her latest op-ed that denounced Bezos’ new opinion policy, however, was a bridge too far.
“Unfortunately, on the opinions side of the newspaper, that appears to be no longer the case,” Marcus wrote. “Jeff’s announcement that the opinion section will henceforth not publish views that deviate from the pillars of individual liberties and free markets threatens to break the trust of readers that columnists are writing what they believe, not what the owner has deemed acceptable.”
She continued: “Will’s decision to not run the column that I wrote respectfully dissenting from Jeff’s edict — something that I have not experienced in almost two decades of column-writing — 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 concluded her letter to the Post’s owner and publisher by telling them “it breaks my heart to conclude that I must leave,” adding that she had the “deepest affection and admiration” for her colleagues and wished them “the best as you steer this storied and critical institution through troubled times.”
Bezos’ recent mandate comes after the Blue Origin owner has faced heat from both the newsroom and readers from seemingly cozying up to President Donald Trump and pushing the paper into a more conservative direction. His decision to scuttle the publication’s endorsement of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris just days before the 2024 election resulted in editorial board members resigning and roughly a quarter-million canceled subscriptions.
Amid additional concerns over Bezos’ editorial meddling and increasingly close relationship with the media-hating president, the paper has seen an exodus of talent from both the news and opinion side. The newsroom has also begged Bezos to come and personally speak to the Post’s journalists about his vision, to no avail.
Following Bezos’ latest edict, which has been met with approval from MAGA and Trump, NPR reported that an additional 75,000 readers canceled their digital subscriptions to the paper.
