Editor resigns, subscribers cancel as Washington Post's non-support creates crisis at Bezos' newspaper

Washington Post leadership recently sought meetings with Democratic and Republican presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, people familiar with the requests said. Neither campaign had scheduled the meeting. Post editors assured the Harris campaign that a meeting would have no impact on an endorsement. And insiders and outsiders alike assumed that the Post would vote Democrat, as virtually every American newspaper has in the last two elections.

On Friday, readers and staff learned something different: The Post, like the Los Angeles Times (as first reported by Semafor), will no longer endorse candidates. Post editor Will Lewis wrote that “we know” some readers will interpret the decision as an “abdication of responsibility,” and many of his staffers appear to have done so as well. (A person familiar with the numbers said that missing the meeting actually had no impact on the decision.)

The first prominent journalist, editor-in-chief Robert Kagan, resigned on Friday in response to the decision, as Semafor first reported. But it could be more: “People are shocked, angry, surprised,” said one editorial member, referring to internal discussions surrounding the resignation. “If you don’t have the courage to own a newspaper, don’t do it.”

Members of the Post's editorial board were stunned Friday to learn of top opinion editor David Shipley's decision. The board wrote a recommendation for Harris earlier this month, which was sent to the newspaper's owner, Jeff Bezos. On Friday, NPR reported that pollsters learned the news at a tense meeting shortly before Lewis' announcement

A person familiar with the numbers told Semafor that the decision appears to have already impacted subscriptions. In the 24 hours ending Friday afternoon, about 2,000 subscribers canceled their subscriptions, an unusually high number, an employee said. Another email the Post sent to subscribers on Friday also sparked a flood of complaints from readers about the paper's lack of a recommendation.

Another person who saw the numbers downplayed them, saying Friday's cancellation rate was “not statistically significant.”