Updated October 29, 2024 at 09:17 AM ET
The Washington Post has been rocked by a tidal wave of cancellations from digital subscribers and a series of resignations from columnists, as the paper grapples with the fallout of owner Jeff Bezos’s decision to block an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
More than 200,000 people had canceled their digital subscriptions by midday Monday, according to two people at the paper with knowledge of internal matters. Not all cancellations take effect immediately. Still, the figure represents about 8% of the paper’s paid circulation of roughly 2.5 million subscribers, which includes print as well. The number of cancellations continued to grow Monday afternoon.
A corporate spokesperson declined to comment, citing The Washington Post Co.'s status as a privately held company.
“It’s a colossal number,” former Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli told NPR. “The problem is, people don’t know why the decision was made. We basically know the decision was made but we don’t know what led to it.”
Chief Executive and Publisher Will Lewis on Friday explained the decision not to endorse in this year’s presidential race or in future elections as a return to the Post’s roots: It has for years styled itself an “independent paper.”
Few people inside the paper credit that rationale given the timing, however, just days before a neck-and-neck race between Harris and former President Donald Trump.
Former Executive Editor Marty Baron voiced that skepticism in an interview with NPR's Morning Edition on Monday.
"If this decision had been made three years ago, two years ago, maybe even a year ago, that would've been fine," Baron said. "It's a certainly reasonable decision. But this was made within a couple of weeks of the election, and there was no substantive serious deliberation with the editorial board of the paper. It was clearly made for other reasons, not for reasons of high principle."
Bezos: "inadequate planning" not "intentional strategy"
Indeed, in his own opinion piece published by the Post Monday evening, Bezos acknowledged that the timing was not ideal.
"That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy," he wrote.
Post reporters have revealed repeated instances of wrongdoing and allegations of illegality by Trump and his associates. The editorial page, which operates separately, has characterized Trump as a threat to the American democratic experiment. Several Post journalists say their relatives are among those canceling subscriptions.
The mass cancellations point “to the polarization of the times we’re living in, and the energy people feel about these issues,” Brauchli says. “This gave people a reason to act on this mood.”
Brauchli has publicly encouraged people not to cancel their Post subscriptions in protest.
“It is a way to send a message to ownership but it shoots you in the foot if you care about the kind of in-depth, quality journalism like the Post produces,” he said. “There aren’t many organizations that can do what the Post does. The range and depth of reporting by the Post’s journalists is among the best in the world.”
Even at the rival New York Times, with a much higher circulation level, a significant protest might register in the low thousands. Earlier this year, Lewis, the Post publisher, had touted the paper's net gain of 4,000 subscribers as noteworthy.
Three of the top 10 viewed stories on the Post’s website Sunday were articles written by Post staffers outraged by Bezos’ decision. The top one was humor columnist Alexandra Petri’s piece, headlined, “It has fallen to me, the humor columnist, to endorse Harris for president.” More than 174,000 people read it online.
Resignations follow Bezos' decision
The decision by Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, was first reported by NPR on Friday. In the days since, two columnists have resigned from the paper and writers have stepped down from the editorial board.
One of those writers, Molly Roberts, warned of the possible consequences of the eleventh-hour decision to stay quiet rather than publish the editorial endorsing Harris. "Donald Trump is not yet a dictator," she wrote in a statement she posted on social media. "But the quieter we are, the closer he comes."
Another, David Hoffman, accepted a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing on Thursday, the day before Bezos’ decision was made public. Pulitzer judges recognized him “for a compelling and well-researched series on new technologies and the tactics authoritarian regimes use to repress dissent in the digital age, and how they can be fought.”
“For decades, the Washington Post's editorials have been a beacon of light, signaling hope to dissidents, political prisoners and the voiceless,” Hoffman wrote in a letter Monday explaining his decision to leave the editorial board. “When victims of repression were harassed, exiled, imprisoned and murdered, we made sure the whole world knew the truth.
“I believe we face a very real threat of autocracy in the candidacy of Donald Trump,” Hoffman added in his letter to Editorial Page Editor David Shipley, which was obtained by NPR. “I find it untenable and unconscionable that we have lost our voice."
Hoffman says he intends to remain at the paper, saying he "refuses to give up on The Post, where I have spent 42 years." He writes of being launched on several projects, including "the expanded effort to support press freedom around the world."
Shipley held a contentious meeting on Monday afternoon with scores of opinion section staffers, who posed tough questions to the editorial page chief, including appeals for Bezos to address them.
As recently as last week, according to a person present, Shipley said he sought to talk Bezos out of his decision. Shipley added, “I failed.”
Questions about Bezos' timing and motives
Former columnist Robert Kagan, an editor-at-large, explained his decision on CNN Friday night to resign from the paper.
“We are in fact bending the knee to Donald Trump because we're afraid of what he will do,” Kagan said, noting that officials from Bezos’ Blue Origin aerospace company met with Trump a few hours after the decision became public.
Blue Origin has a multi-billion dollar contract with NASA. During the Trump administration, Amazon sued the government after alleging it had blocked a $10 billion cloud-computing-services contract with the Pentagon over the then-president’s ire about coverage in the Post, which Bezos owns personally.
Yet Bezos resolutely supported the staff's coverage during the Trump presidency (and has not interfered with reporting on his own business interests or personal life).
Bezos: 'I am not an ideal owner of The Post'
Bezos publicly broke his own silence late Monday. In his opinion piece, he characterized his decision to end presidential endorsements as an attempt to avoid a "perception of bias" and "non-independence." He rejected assertions that he was attempting to placate Trump or protect his other business interests.
"No quid pro quo of any kind is at work here," he wrote, adding that he did not consult or inform any candidate about his decision.
Bezos said he did not know about the meeting between Blue Origin executives and Trump on Friday — the same day as the paper announced its decision.
"I sighed when I found out, because I knew it would provide ammunition to those who would like to frame this as anything other than a principled decision," he said.
He acknowledged that his stake in other companies — and their lucrative government contracts — complicates things for the Post.
"When it comes to the appearance of conflict, I am not an ideal owner of The Post," he wrote. "I assure you that my views here are, in fact, principled, and I believe my track record as owner of The Post since 2013 backs this up."
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