Controversial Washington Post tech columnist Taylor Lorenz on Tuesday said she quit the left-leaning paper — weeks after the publication launched an internal review following her social media post that called President Biden a “war criminal.”
Lorenz, who hadn’t published anything for the Jeff Bezos-owned broadsheet since Aug. 7, said she was leaving in order to launch her own newsletter on the Substack platform, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Her surprise exit comes after she had previously told Fox News Digital that she was on an overseas vacation and implied she would be back to work at the paper the week of Sept. 30.
The outspoken scribe came under fire after New York Post reporter Jon Levine posed a photo on X that Lorenz had uploaded to her Instagram account while attending a White House event featuring Biden in August.
The selfie showed her wearing a COVID mask with Biden in the background that was captioned “war criminal.”
Lorenz initially claimed the image was digitally altered, writing: “You people will fall for any dumbass edit someone makes.”
She also told her editors the photo was a forgery. But National Public Radio confirmed the authenticity of the image.
The Washington Post, which hired Lorenz in 2022, launched an investigation but has yet to reveal the results.
On Tuesday, a spokesperson for the paper confirmed Lorenz’s resignation “to pursue a career in independent journalism, and we wish her the best.”
Lorenz told The Hollywood Reporter she “just wanted to get out of legacy media.”
“I like to be very vocal online, obviously. And I just think all of that is really hard to do in the roles that are available at these legacy institutions,” she said.
Her newsletter, titled “User Magazine,” will cover technology from the user side.
Lorenz has been at the center of controversy during a tumultuous career that also included stints at the New York Times and the Daily Beast.
In 2022, Lorenz was widely criticized for revealing the identity of the social media persona “Libs of TikTok.”
Weeks earlier, she appeared on MSNBC and broke down in tears while recalling how she faced “harassment” from critics online.
During her stint as a tech reporter for the Times, she was sued by a businesswoman who claimed that Lorenz defamed her with a claim that she leaked nude images of one of her clients.
Lorenz also sparked outrage after accusing tech mogul Marc Andreessen of using a derogatory term during a private conversation on the Clubhouse app — which was eventually proved to be false.