Newsman: Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus resigned Monday after accusing the paper’s CEO and publisher of killing her column criticizing owner Jeff Bezos’ latest editorial edict.
In a resignation letter to Bezos and CEO William Lewis, Marcus said “independent judgment” is no longer in play at the Post opinion section and new editorial policies will “break the trust of readers that columnists are writing what they believe, and not what the owners has deemed acceptable.”
“I love the Post,” Marcus concluded her resignation letter. “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.”
Marcus said she wrote a column deviating from Bezos’ edict— and Lewis spiked it.
“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 topics they wish to address and say what they think has been dangerously eroded,” Marcus wrote in her resignation, according to The New York Times.
Marcus, an associate editor and columnist with the Post’s opinion section, is leaving the paper where she’s been employed since 1984.
“We’re grateful for Ruth’s significant contributions to The Washington Post over the past 40 years,” a spokesperson for the Post said in a statement. “We respect her decision to leave and wish her the best.”
Bezos, the Amazon founder who purchased the venerable publication in 2013, told the staff last month that the opinion section would take a radical turn by “writing every day in support and defense” of “personal liberties and free markets.”
Bezos’ sudden policy change prompted the resignation of opinion editor David Shipley and has been interpreted as a bid to curry favor with President Donald Trump.
