Veteran Washington Post writer Jennifer Rubin said Monday she’s leaving to join a startup — and blasted the billionaire owner of the Beltway broadsheet on her way out the door.
Rubin, an outspoken critic of President-elect Donald Trump, had recently publicly attacked the paper and its owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, for appearing to curry favor with the Republican.
“The corporate owners and billionaires of the mainstream media have betrayed the loyalty of their audiences and sabotaged the sacred mission of journalism – to protect, defend and advance democracy,” Rubin wrote in her resignation note.
Rubin — who came under fire on social media for urging Los Angeles Times reporters to leave the paper after blocking an endorsement by Vice President Kamala Harris, only to fail to heed her advice when Bezos did the same — is joins a Substack newsletter founded by CNN commentator and former Obama official Norm Eisen.
Her departure comes amid a new report showing the Washington Post suffered losses of around $100 million last year, while its online traffic has fallen to just 25% of its peak in January 2021.
Last week, the paper announced 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 Contrarian, a new independent publication that bills itself as “owned by nobody.”
“The Washington Post’s billionaire owner and registered management are among the offenders.”
The Post has sought comment from the Washington Post.
The Amazon founder, whose net worth is estimated by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index at $238 billion as of Monday, angered Rubin and other longtime Washington Post employees and readers by preventing the editorial board from publishing Harris’ endorsement.
It was reported that some 250,000 frequent readers of the paper canceled their subscriptions in protest.
Several other journalists left the newsroom. In the weeks that followed, a number of the paper’s top reporters and editors, including Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey, left.
Ann Telnaes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, resigned after the newspaper refused to publish her cartoon mocking Bezos and other tech moguls kneeling before Trump. She criticized the decision as harmful to the freedom of the press.
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 left the paper in response to Bezos’ decision.
Bezos defended the decision not to endorse Harris or any presidential candidate, saying it was “fair” and “principled.”
The tycoon also rejected suggestions that he did so to curry favor with Trump, whose administration will be responsible for regulating industries where Bezos’ businesses are active.
Bezos said editorial endorsements create a perception of bias at a time when many Americans distrust the media and do nothing to tip the election scales.
Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong offered a similar rationale, saying he was looking to diversify his newspaper’s opinion page.
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