Washington Put up columnist Jonathan Capehart has accepted a buyout from the paper, turning into the most recent high-profile departure amid sweeping editorial modifications carried out underneath proprietor Jeff Bezos.
Capehart, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author recognized for his outspoken criticism of President Trump, had been with the Put up since 2007. His exit was first reported by Axios on Monday.
Capehart’s ultimate column for the Put up, revealed in Might, featured a dialog with Minnesota Legal professional Basic Keith Ellison on “countering” the president.
That very same month, Capehart resigned from the newspaper’s editorial board over a dispute with a white colleague a few piece that anazlyed Georgia’s voting legal guidelines and their alleged racial implications.
Capehart had beforehand referred to Trump as “a cancer on the presidency and American society” and in contrast a rally held by Trump at Madison Sq. Backyard to a Nazi rally on the identical venue in 1939.
The phrases of his buyout weren’t disclosed.
Representatives for the Washington Put up didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Capehart will proceed co-hosting MSNBC’s “The Weekend” and stay a panelist on PBS’s “NewsHour.”
The buyout follows feedback made by Washington Put up CEO Will Lewis, who in current weeks urged workers who don’t “feel aligned” with the corporate’s editorial path to resign.
His departure provides to a string of exits on the paper over the Beltway broadsheet’s shift to the correct. In February, Bezos ordered the Put up’s opinion part to deal with “personal liberties and free markets.”
The directive led to the resignation of Opinion Editor David Shipley, adopted by the departure of a number of different opinion writers, together with longtime columnist Ruth Marcus.
Final month, Adam O’Neal, previously of The Economist and The Dispatch, was named opinion editor.
Weeks later, well-liked columnist Joe Davidson introduced he was leaving after one in every of his columns was killed for being “too opinionated.”
Davidson criticized the paper’s possession, stating that “Bezos’s policies and activities have projected the image of a Donald Trump supplicant.”
The paper confronted subscriber backlash after Bezos blocked a deliberate endorsement of Kamala Harris for president shortly earlier than the election. Roughly 250,000 subscribers canceled their subscriptions.
In January, a number of prime reporters and editors — together with Ashley Parker, Michael Scherer, Josh Dawsey and Tyler Pager — left the Put up for rival retailers resembling The Atlantic and the New York Occasions.
Managing editor Matea Gold joined the Occasions’ Washington bureau in late 2024. On the identical time, the Put up laid off 4% of its business-side workers as a result of profitability considerations.
Earlier this 12 months, greater than 400 workers members signed an inside petition expressing concern over editorial independence and administration selections.
