Veteran Washington Post opinion writer Jennifer Rubin said Monday she is leaving to join a startup — and blasted the Beltway broadsheet’s billionaire owner on her way out the door.
Rubin, an outspoken critic of President-elect Donald Trump, had recently publicly attacked the paper and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos for appearing 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 note.
Rubin — who was pilloried on social media for urging Los Angeles Times journalists to quit the paper after it blocked an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris only to fail to heed her own advice when Bezos did the same — is joining a Substack newsletter founded by CNN commentator and former Obama official Norm Eisen.
Her exit comes amid a new report indicating that the Washington Post suffered losses of around $100 million last year while its web traffic has plummeted to just 25% of its peak in January 2021.
Last week, the newspaper announced that it was laying off 4% of its workforce — which translates to fewer than 100 people. Most of those affected worked in the Washington Post’s public relations unit.
Eisen, a former White House ethics lawyer, is teaming up with Rubin to launch “The Contrarian,” a new independent publication which bills itself as “not owned by anybody.”
“The Washington Post’s billionaire owner and enlisted management are among the offenders.”
The Post has sought comment from the Washington Post.
The Amazon founder, whose net worth is valued by Bloomberg Billionaires Index at $238 billion as of Monday, angered Rubin and other longtime employees and readers of the Washington Post by preventing 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.
Several other journalists quit the editorial board. In the weeks that followed, a number of the newspaper’s top reporters and editors, including Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey.
Ann Telnaes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, resigned after the paper declined to publish her cartoon mocking Bezos and other tech moguls kneeling before Trump. She criticized the decision as detrimental to press freedom.
Parker and Michael Scherer, both senior political reporters, left the Washington Post to join The Atlantic, the left-leaning publication owned by billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs.
Opinion columnists Robert Kagan and Michele Norris quit the newspaper in response to Bezos’ decision.
Bezos defended the decision not to endorse Harris or any presidential candidate, saying it was “right” and “principled.”
The mogul also rejected suggestions that he did so in order to curry favor with Trump, whose administration will be in charge of regulating industries where Bezos’ businesses are active.
Bezos said that editorial endorsements create a perception of bias at a time many Americans don’t believe the media, and do nothing to tip the scales of an election.
Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong offered a similar rationale, saying he was looking to diversify his newspaper’s opinion page.