Another day, another headline that raises the question: What the heck is going on at The Washington Post?
The latest? On Monday, well-respected Post columnist and associate editor Ruth Marcus, who has been at the paper for 40 years (yes, you read that right: four decades), resigned. She said she quit after her column criticizing Post owner Jeff Bezos and his plans for the paper was killed by publisher and CEO Will Lewis.
Just late last month, Bezos announced an overhaul of the Post’s opinion pages, writing to staff, “We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”
That announcement led to another well-respected journalist, David Shipley, stepping down as the Post’s opinions editor.
Now Marcus steps away.
In her resignation letter, 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.”
Marcus added, “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.”
Problems at the Post have been spiraling out of control since last summer when executive editor Sally Buzbee stepped down and the paper began trying to sort out how to divide the leadership in a revamped newsroom. Matt Murray is the paper's top editor and, quite frankly, despite losing several top editors and reporters, the newsroom continues to put out impressive work. If you read this newsletter consistently, you’ll know that I am constantly linking to the Post’s fine journalism.
The issue — and bad PR — has been in the editorial department, which is separate from the newsroom. There, problems came to a head last year when Bezos killed the editorial board’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris for president.
Since then, it feels like a slow but steady drip of departures, cancelled subscriptions and other less-than-flattering headlines.
Regarding Marcus’ departure, a Washington Post spokesperson told NPR’s David Folkenflik in a statement, “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.”
Marcus said in her resignation letter, “I love the Post. It breaks my heart to conclude that I must leave. I have the deepest affection and admiration for my colleagues and will miss them every day. And I wish you both the best as you steer this storied and critical institution through troubled times.”
More Post news
Axios’ Sara Fischer reported Monday that the Post will make “major changes” to the newsroom in an effort to broaden the paper’s coverage and expand its audience.
According to a memo obtained by Fischer, the Post will divide the national desk into two sections: one that focuses on national reporting and another with politics and government coverage. In addition, Fischer wrote, business, technology, health, science and climate teams at the Post will be brought together in a new department.
Executive editor Matt Murray told Fischer that broadening coverage will help the paper become less dependent on political news. Murray told Fischer, “I want to make sure there are a few areas that are equally staffed and strong to make sure we're always putting a strong foot forward and that we're not just the politics paper, even though that's important to who we are.”
What’s it all mean? We haven’t even seen the changes in action, so it’s way too early to say. But it sounds like more upheaval is in store, and not just in the opinion section.
X outages
Yikes, it has been a rough few days for President Donald Trump’s right-hand man, Elon Musk. Last week, his SpaceX Starship rocket exploded less than 10 minutes after launch and rained debris over the state of Florida. (By the way, if you’re keeping score at home, Starship rocket launches are now 0-for-2 in 2025, with both ending in explosions.)
Then, on Monday, Musk’s other big toy, the social media platform X, was on the fritz. Ten of thousands of X users suffered outages at various times on Monday.
In a post on X, Musk wrote early Monday afternoon, “There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X. We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources. Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved. Tracing …”
But was it a cyberattack? It’s not the first time Musk has cried about a cyberattack whenever X has gone down.
CNN’s Ramishah Maruf wrote, “Musk has a history of attributing technical snafus to cyberattacks. When his conversation with Donald Trump on X started 42 minutes late in August 2024, he said there was a ‘probability’ of an attack.”
There was absolutely no evidence that X was a victim of a cyberattack.
Gizmodo’s Matt Novak wrote, “Musk appears to just be speculating about the cause of the outages, given how he leaves everything so open-ended.” Novak added, “We may never get a real answer for why X is struggling today, but you can rest assured that whatever’s actually happening, Musk will capitalize on it to claim he’s a victim. That’s the MAGA mindset, and it doesn’t matter that Musk is the wealthiest man in the world. These guys always find a way to sound like they’re an oppressed minority.”
The outages were off and on, but long enough that NFL fans were a bit riled up. As CNBC’s Ashley Capoot and Alex Sherman noted, “The timing of the X outage couldn’t have been worse for NFL fans, who rely on the service for news updates. The first day of the NFL’s free agency tampering window began at 12 p.m. ET with the service down, sending fans searching for other options such as linear TV and Bluesky to get their news on player signings.”
Speaking of Musk …
