The Washington Post had an endorsement of Kamala Harris ready to go — until the paper’s owner Jeff Bezos nixed it, staffers told the Columbia Journalism Review on Friday. The Post itself also reported that the decision not to endorse came at the last minute, although rumors about the non-endorsement had been circling for days.
Sewell Chan talked to two Post staffers who said that two board members, Charles Lane and Stephen W. Stromberg — neither of whom spoke with Chan — had worked on drafts of a Harris endorsement. (The WaPo Guild reiterated the decision came directly from Bezos in their subsequent public statement).
“Normally we’d have had a meeting, review a draft, make suggestions, do editing,” the staffer is quoted as saying. But a few weeks ago, the process apparently “stalled.”
Last week, editorial page editor David Shipley reportedly told the editorial board that the endorsement was still happening, with the comment, “This is obviously something our owner has an interest in.”
However, the news and editorial departments were “stunned” on Friday that Bezos had decided not to take a position after all.
“We thought we were dickering over language — not over whether there would be an endorsement,” the Post employee told Chan.
Bezos, the tech billionaire who founded Amazon, bought the Post for $250 million in 2013. As the New York Times reported in July 2023, Bezos has “taken a more active role in the paper’s operations this year.”
The decision not to endorse comes mere days after The Los Angeles Times — also breaking with tradition — opted to skip the usual public backing for a presidential candidate.
The Times’ owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, has stated that it was the editorial board’s call not to endorse, however the LA Times Guild issued a statement objecting to Soon-Shiong “unfairly shift[ing] blame onto editorial board members.”
The guild’s statement that it is “deeply concerned” about the lack of endorsement prompted three staffers to quit in protest: Mariel Garza, Karin Klein and Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Greene.
There was also widespread outrage among journalists and the public, many of whom said they were cancelling their subscriptions.
On Thursday, the LAT Guild asked subscribers not to cancel: “Before you hit the ‘cancel’ button: That subscription underwrites the salaries of hundreds of journalists in our newsroom. Our member-journalists work every day to keep readers informed during these tumultuous times.”
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