Veteran Washington Submit opinion author Jennifer Rubin mentioned Monday she is leaving to affix a startup — and blasted the Beltway broadsheet’s billionaire proprietor on her method out the door.
Rubin, an outspoken critic of President-elect Donald Trump, had just lately publicly attacked the paper and its proprietor, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, for showing to hunt to get into the Republican’s good graces.
“Corporate and billionaire owners of major media outlets have betrayed their audiences’ loyalty and sabotaged journalism’s sacred mission — defending, protecting and advancing democracy,” Rubin wrote in her resignation word.
Rubin — who was pilloried on social media for urging Los Angeles Instances journalists to stop the paper after it blocked an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, solely to fail to heed her personal recommendation when Bezos did the identical — is becoming a member of a Substack publication based by CNN commentator and former Obama official Norm Eisen.
Her exit comes amid a brand new report indicating that the Washington Submit suffered losses of round $100 million final 12 months whereas its internet site visitors has plummeted to simply 25% of its peak in January 2021.
Final week, the newspaper introduced that it was shedding 4% of its workforce — which interprets to fewer than 100 individuals. Most of these affected labored within the Washington Submit’s public relations unit.
Eisen, a former White Home ethics lawyer, is teaming up with Rubin to launch the Contrarian, a brand new impartial publication which payments itself as “not owned by anybody.”
“The Washington Post’s billionaire owner and enlisted management are among the offenders.”
The Submit has sought remark from the Washington Submit.
The Amazon founder, whose internet price is valued by Bloomberg Billionaires Index at $238 billion as of Monday, angered Rubin and different longtime staff and readers of the Washington Submit by stopping the editorial board from publishing its endorsement of Harris.
It was reported that as many as 250,000 frequent readers of the newspaper canceled their subscriptions in protest.
A number of different journalists stop the editorial board. Within the weeks that adopted, a variety of the newspaper’s prime reporters and editors, together with Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey, departed.
Ann Telnaes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, resigned after the paper declined to publish her cartoon mocking Bezos and different tech moguls kneeling earlier than Trump. She criticized the choice as detrimental to press freedom.
Parker and Michael Scherer, each senior political reporters, left the Washington Submit to affix The Atlantic, the left-leaning publication owned by billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs.
Opinion columnists Robert Kagan and Michele Norris stop the newspaper in response to Bezos’ choice.
Bezos defended the choice to not endorse Harris or any presidential candidate, saying it was “right” and “principled.”
The mogul additionally rejected ideas that he did so to be able to curry favor with Trump, whose administration might be in control of regulating industries the place Bezos’ companies are energetic.
Bezos mentioned editorial endorsements create a notion of bias at a time many People don’t consider the media, and do nothing to tip the scales of an election.
Los Angeles Instances proprietor Dr. Patrick Quickly-Shiong provided the same rationale, saying he was seeking to diversify his newspaper’s opinion web page.
