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The Washington Post’s competitors moved quickly to fill the space it vacated when it shifted from being a bulwark against former President Donald Trump to canceling a planned endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Guardian US editor Betsy Reed sent out an email to readers touting her publication’s endorsement of Harris earlier this month and soliciting membership support. The callout to readers of the American version of the British newspaper worked: They pledged more than $1.1 million between Reed’s email going out on Friday and Saturday evening, the biggest single fundraising day for the Guardian’s US operation.
“A Guardian editorial strongly endorsed Kamala Harris for president earlier this week — and we are unafraid of any potential consequences,” Reed wrote, calling it “an abdication of our duty as journalists to sit out this election out of self-interest.”
Oliver Darcy’s new Status media newsletter similarly solicited subscribers off of the Post’s decision and saw a small uptick.
And the New York Times scrambled both to calm confused readers who canceled subscriptions with harsh notes about Jeff Bezos and to stress that it had issued an endorsement. On Friday, the paper recirculated its endorsement to media reporters, and on Saturday, the paper published a video by opinion editor Kathleen Kingsbury explaining the paper’s decision and noting the controversy around the Post’s and the Los Angeles Times’ lack of presidential endorsements this election cycle.
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The Post has tried to contain the damage from owner Bezos’ last-minute decision — over, the New York Times reported, objections of the Post’s publisher and opinion editor — to stop offering presidential endorsements. After Semafor and other outlets published data reporting that thousands of Washington Post subscribers had canceled their subscriptions following the decision, the Post limited visibility to some subscriber data in the company’s internal Slack channel.
The paper’s leadership has also tried to address concerns from opinion staff about the paper’s direction and Bezos’ involvement. Post editor David Shipley scheduled another meeting on Monday with some opinion staff in the hopes of calming the waters, though two writers, Robert Kagan and Michele Norris, had already announced over the weekend that they were resigning, and Post employees told Semafor they expect more opinion staff to resign in the coming days. One opinion employee who spoke with Semafor on the condition of anonymity said that they found it difficult to imagine returning to the office after the endorsement.
More than a dozen of the publication’s opinion staff signed an op-ed admonishing the paper. The paper’s editorial union also released a statement saying it was concerned about the process leading up to the decision. Watergate journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward released a statement calling Bezos’ choice “disappointing,” while former executive editor Martin Baron called it a “betrayal of the core principles of the Post.”
Other prominent alumni also objected.
“Donald Trump has been threatening the press, rule of law, and liberal democracy for years. And there is a very good chance he might come to power again, hell-bent on retribution,” New Yorker editor David Remnick, a former Post correspondent, told Semafor in an email.
“To think that the endlessly wealthy owner of The Washington Post can’t muster the nerve to go forward with an endorsement essay is a miserable omen.”
Notable
- Jonathan Capehart, a Post editorial board member who moonlights as an MSNBC commentator, trashed the decision at length on-air.
- Semafor scooped the LA Times’ decision not to endorse last week, and the drumbeat of resignations and criticism has continued.
- The San Francisco Chronicle, the other prominent metro daily in Harris’ home state, hasn’t endorsed her yet — but the editorial board reminded readers its “position is clear.”
- Timothy Snyder, the popular historian of authoritarianism, said the papers were “obey[ing]” a would-be dictator “in advance,” ignoring the lessons of the 1930s.