The Washington Post

The Post has been owned since October 2013 by Nash Holdings LLC, the private investment vehicle of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who purchased the newspaper and related publishing assets from the Graham family for $250 million. ⁵ Beginning in October 2024, Bezos intervened directly in the paper’s editorial operations, blocking a drafted endorsement of then-Vice President Kamala Harris (D) in the 2024 presidential election and subsequently directing that the opinion section direct itself toward advocacy of “personal liberties and free markets.” ^{6 7} Those decisions triggered mass subscription cancellations from left-of-center readers, the departure of many of the paper’s left-leaning columnists, and open conflict between management and the newspaper’s staff union, a local of the left-of-center NewsGuild-CWA. ⁸

History

The Washington Post was founded on December 6, 1877, by Stilson Hutchins. It was sold in 1905 to John R. McLean, under whose family the paper embraced sensationalism and, under Edward B. McLean, drifted into disrepute and bankruptcy. In 1933, the financier and former Federal Reserve Chairman Eugene Meyer purchased the paper out of receivership and rebuilt its editorial operation. Meyer transferred active management to his son-in-law Philip Graham in 1947. ^{9 10 11}

Following Philip Graham’s death in 1963, Katharine Graham assumed the presidency of the Washington Post Company and named Ben Bradlee its executive editor in 1968. The company had acquired Newsweek in 1961 and a portfolio of broadcast properties. Under Graham and Bradlee, the Post published portions of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 and pursued the Watergate reporting that preceded then-President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974. ¹²

The Post‘s editorial page built its national reputation during the Meyer-Graham era in opposition to the anti-Communist investigations of the early Cold War. Cartoonist Herbert Block, who signed his work “Herblock” and drew for the paper’s editorial page from 1946 until his death in 2001, coined the term “McCarthyism” in a March 1950 cartoon depicting Republican senators pushing a reluctant party elephant toward a platform built on a barrel of tar. ¹³

The Post endorsed Dwight Eisenhower for president in 1952 and has not endorsed a Republican for the presidency since. It abstained in 1960, when then-U.S. Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-MA) faced then-Vice President Nixon, and began issuing regular presidential endorsements in 1976 when it backed former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter (D). From that point through 2020, the board endorsed the Democratic nominee in every Presidential election except 1988, when it declined to endorse then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. In 2020, it endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden and then-U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA). ^{14 15}

The Post adopted the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” in February 2017, roughly a month into the first Trump administration. It was the first slogan the paper officially adopted in its 140-year history. Media reporter Oliver Darcy later wrote that Jeff Bezos was elated by the reception and insisted the phrase appear prominently alongside the Post‘s logo across all products, at a moment when Bezos, along with much of corporate America, had adopted an adversarial posture toward President Donald Trump. ^{16 17 18}

Bezos closed his purchase of the newspaper on October 1, 2013, ending 80 years of Graham family control and 42 years as part of a publicly traded company. The transaction was made in Bezos’s personal capacity through Nash Holdings and did not involve Amazon. The residual company, renamed Graham Holdings, retained Kaplan, broadcast stations, Slate, and Foreign Policy. ^{19 5 20 21 22}

The newsroom staff at the paper is unionized and bargains collectively under the Washington Post Guild, part of Washington-Baltimore News Guild-CWA Local 32035, which is affiliated with the NewsGuild-CWA and the Communications Workers of America. ²³

Editorial Orientation

Background

The Washington Post began issuing regular Presidential endorsements in 1976 and did not endorse a Republican for the Presidency thereafter, abstaining only in 1988. ² In 2020, the editorial board endorsed the Democratic ticket of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. ¹ The paper’s editorial page characterized Donald Trump as the worst president in modern history and argued that he should have been removed from office following the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot. ²⁴

Adam O’Neal, hired in June 2025 to run the opinion section, publicly acknowledged that the Post’s readers were “overwhelmingly” left-leaning and said he was prepared to lose some of them in pursuit of a different editorial direction. ⁴

2024 Presidential Non-Endorsement

On October 25, 2024, less than two weeks before the presidential election, the Washington Post announced that it would not endorse a candidate. The editorial board had already drafted an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris; the decision to withhold it was reportedly made by the paper’s owner, Jeff Bezos. Publisher Will Lewis framed the reversal as a return to the paper’s earlier practice of abstaining, a rationale that few inside the newsroom credited given its timing. ⁶

More than 200,000 digital subscribers canceled within three days, and the figure exceeded 250,000 within a week, comprising roughly 10 percent of the paper’s approximately 2.5 million paid subscribers. Three members of the ten-member editorial board, Molly Roberts, David Hoffman, and Mili Mitra, stepped down from the board while remaining on staff. Former executive editor Martin Baron, who retired in 2021, publicly called the decision an act of cowardice. In early January 2025, cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned after the paper declined to publish a cartoon depicting Bezos and other business figures prostrating themselves before President Donald Trump. ^{8 25 26 27 6 25}

Bezos defended the decision at a December 2024 conference, saying he was proud of it. During the same period, Bezos dined with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago, donated $1 million to Trump’s presidential inaugural fund, and attended the inauguration; Amazon reportedly paid approximately $40 million for a documentary about First Lady Melania Trump. Bezos has also publicly welcomed U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to visit his space-launch company Blue Origin, which holds a multibillion-dollar NASA contract, while maintaining that his commercial interests do not affect his handling of the newspaper. ^{28 8 29}

2025 Opinion Overhaul

On February 26, 2025, Bezos announced that the Washington Post’s opinion section would be reoriented to defending two pillars: “personal liberties and free markets,” and that opposing viewpoints would be left to other publications. Opinion editor David Shipley resigned rather than implement the directive. Approximately 75,000 digital subscribers canceled within 48 hours. ^{30 7}

In March 2025, columnist and associate editor Ruth Marcus, a Post employee since 1984, resigned after Lewis declined to publish a column she had written dissenting from the new policy. Marcus wrote that the freedom of columnists to choose their subjects had been “dangerously eroded.” Executive editor Matt Murray announced a separate newsroom reorganization the same day and told staff he would not remain at the paper if he believed editorial interference was coming from the top. NPR reported that Murray had blocked Post reporters from covering the fallout at their own newspaper. ^{31 30}

The Post named Adam O’Neal, a correspondent for The Economist who had previously written editorials for the Wall Street Journal, as opinion editor in June 2025. In October 2025, O’Neal hired three right-of-center columnists: Kate Andrews of The Spectator, Dominic Pino of National Review, and Carine Hajjar of the Boston Globe editorial board, following departures that included Jonathan Capehart, fact-checker Glenn Kessler, David von Drehle, Molly Roberts, and Perry Bacon, Jr. Columnist Eugene Robinson also left the section during the overhaul. ^{32 33 4}

O’Neal announced his own resignation in July 2026, effective August 31, after roughly one year in the position. He described the move as a personal decision, and staff reported that Post leadership had not been forewarned. No successor had been named at the time of the announcement. ^{34 35 36}

Financial Decline and Layoffs

The Washington Post had aimed to reach five million digital subscribers by 2025 but reported approximately 2.5 million in late 2024, and the New Yorker reported the paper had combined losses of $177 million across 2023 and 2024. Print subscriptions fell below 100,000, their lowest point in 55 years. ³⁷

In February 2026, the Post announced layoffs affecting more than 300 employees out of a newsroom of almost 800, which executive editor Matt Murray described as a strategic reset. The cuts eliminated the sports and books sections and the photography department and substantially reduced foreign, local, business, and national coverage. The Washington-Baltimore News Guild subsequently calculated that between 350 and 375 journalists were laid off, or between 44 and 47.5 percent of the newsroom, once non-union staff and foreign bureau closures were included. ^{38 39 40 3 41}

Owner Jeff Bezos had not publicly commented on the newspaper’s condition for approximately 13 months at the time of the layoffs, and reporting indicated he was no longer willing to subsidize the paper’s operating losses at prior levels. Will Lewis, who had been chief executive of Dow Jones and publisher of the Wall Street Journal before his appointment in 2023, announced his departure on February 7, 2026; chief financial officer Jeff D’Onofrio was named acting publisher and CEO. Baron, the former executive editor, said the paper’s difficulties had been worsened by decisions made at the top. ^{28 42 40 43}

Labor Relations

Washington Post journalists are represented by the Washington Post Guild, part of Washington-Baltimore News Guild-CWA Local 32035, an affiliate of the NewsGuild-CWA and the Communications Workers of America (CWA). The Guild and a separate Washington Post Tech Guild picketed the paper’s headquarters on February 5, 2026, with support from the CWA and the Association of Flight Attendants officers. The Guild alleged that management had unlawfully attempted to lay off technology workers who were bargaining a first contract. ^{44 23}

The Guild publicly called for Jeff Bezos either to rescind the layoffs or sell the paper to an owner willing to invest in it and launched a campaign to that end. ^{45 42}

In September 2025, the Washington Post terminated opinion columnist and former Global Opinions editor Karen Attiah over social media posts published after the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. Attiah had written that she would not engage in performative mourning for a white man whom she claimed had espoused violence. ⁴⁶ Her termination letter cited the paper’s social media policy and asserted that the posts endangered staff safety. ⁴⁷ The Post Guild said the paper had disregarded its own disciplinary procedures, and PEN America warned of a chilling effect. ⁴⁸ Attiah, represented in correspondence by the Democracy Defenders Fund, filed a grievance and pursued arbitration. ^{49 47} In August 2026, an arbitrator ruled that the Post must rehire Attiah. ⁵⁰

Coverage Controversies

Trump Georgia Call

On January 9, 2021, the Washington Post reported that President Donald Trump had instructed a Georgia elections investigator to “find the fraud” and told her she would be a “national hero.” Two months later, after the Georgia secretary of state’s office released a recording of the call, the Post corrected the story, acknowledging that President Trump had used neither phrase and that the quotations had come from a single anonymous source. Numerous other outlets repeated the erroneous quotations, and they were cited during impeachment proceedings; PolitiFact noted that the Post corrected rather than retracted the article. ^{51 52}

Nick Sandmann Defamation Suit

In February 2019, Nicholas Sandmann, then a student at Covington Catholic High School, sued the Washington Post for $250 million over its coverage of a confrontation at the Lincoln Memorial following the annual March for Life. A federal judge dismissed the case, then partially reinstated it; the Post settled on undisclosed terms in July 2020 while admitting no wrongdoing. ⁵³

Weigel-Sonmez Dispute

In June 2022, then-Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel was suspended for a month without pay after retweeting a joke deemed sexist, which colleague Felicia Sonmez had publicized on social media. Sonmez was fired days later for what the paper called insubordination and maligning colleagues online. Sonmez had previously sued the Post over restrictions placed on her assignments. A federal labor board later found the dismissal unlawful and directed the Post to reinstate her. ^{54 55 56}

Leadership

Jeff Bezos owned the Washington Post through Nash Holdings LLC as of 2026. ²² Jeff D’Onofrio, who joined the paper as chief financial officer in June 2025 after positions at Google and Yahoo, was named acting publisher and CEO in February 2026. ⁴² Adam O’Neal led the opinion section from July 2025 until his departure in August 2026. ³⁵