Two more Washington Post staffers have stepped down from the editorial board following the paper’s decision to not endorse Kamala Harris for president.
Writer Molly Roberts resigned from the board on Monday, according to The New York Times, making her the latest writer to publicly condemn the paper in recent days.
While initially unclear, Semafor’s Max Tani notes that though she is leaving the editorial board, she is not leaving The Post entirely.
Pultizer Prize-winning journalist David Hoffman is also stepping down from the board after 12 years while remaining with the outlet, Tani reports.
“I stand against silence in the face of dictatorship. Here, there, everywhere,” Hoffman wrote in a letter to Post Opinion editor David Shipley, resigning from the board. He further noted that he has spent 42 years of his career there and refuses to give up on The Post.
In the letter, Hoffman praised the paper’s history of editorial decisions that signaled “hope to dissidents, political prisoners and the voiceless. When victims of oppression were harassed, exiled and murdered, we made sure the whole world knew the truth.”
“Under our watch at The Post, no one would be lost in silence,” Hoffman wrote. “Until Friday, I assumed we would apply the same values and principles to an editorial endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. I believe we face a very real threat of autocracy in the candidacy of Donald Trump. I find it untenable and unconscionable that we have lost our voice at this perilous moment.”
Harvard grad Roberts had been a member of the editorial page since 2018, according to her LinkedIn, and with the paper for eight years. She writes about “technology and society,” according to her WaPo bio. Her most recent story for the Post, which focuses on the electoral college, was published Monday morning.
Roberts’ exit from the editorial board comes after Friday’s announcement that the Post will not be endorsing a candidate in this year’s presidential race; the Post had endorsed every Democratic presidential candidate dating back to Bill Clinton in 1992.
Publisher Will Lewis said the decision was about “returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.” Later on Friday, word broke that the Washington Post editorial board had already written an endorsement for Harris, but owner (and Amazon founder) Jeff Bezos personally nixed it.
A growing list of Post employees have left the paper altogether in recent days over its decision, including other members of the editorial board staff.
On Sunday, Post columnist Michele Norris resigned over the scrapped Harris endorsement. Norris had been with the paper for five years in her role as a columnist and consultant for Post Opinions.
“As of yesterday, I have decided to resign from my role as a columnist for The Washington Post — a newspaper that I love. In a moment like this, everyone needs to make their own decisions,” she wrote in a post on X explaining why she’s stepping down.
“The Washington Post’s decision to withhold an endorsement that had been written and approved in an election where core democratic principles are at stake was a terrible mistake and an insult to the paper’s own longstanding standard of regularly endorsing candidates since 1976,” she continued.
Editor at large Robert Kagan also submitted his resignation on Friday. A number of other high-profile media names have ripped the paper in the meantime, including Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
Adam Chitwood contributed to this report.
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