Michele Norris, calling the Washington Post's decision not to endorse a candidate a "terrible mistake," has become the latest columnist to quit the paper. In a post on X Sunday, Norris said she was resigning from the newspaper she loves because the "decision to withhold an endorsement that had been written & approved in an election where core democratic principles are at stake was a terrible mistake & an insult to the paper's own longstanding standard of regularly endorsing candidates since 1976." Norris, a contributing opinion columnist at the paper since 2019, has links to the Post going back to 1988, when she was a reporter, Politico reports.
"America needs strong and sturdy journalism," Norris wrote. "Sending strength and courage to all who remain at The Washington Post. I will no longer be among them." An opinion column condemning the decision not to endorse has been signed by 20 Post columnists. Pulitzer Prize-winning illustrator Ann Telnaes skewered the decision in a cartoon with the title "Democracy Dies in Darkness," the Post's slogan.
- Editor-at-large Robert Kagan resigned Friday after more than 20 years with the Post. He tells the Daily Beast that he believes Post owner Jeff Bezos nixed the endorsement as part of a backroom deal with Donald Trump involving Bezos' Blue Origin space company. "All Trump has to do is threaten the corporate chiefs who run these organizations with real financial loss, and they will bend the knee," Kagan says.
- Post icons Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein have also spoken out against the move, the Guardian reports. "We respect the traditional independence of the editorial page, but this decision 12 days out from the 2024 presidential election ignores the Washington Post's own overwhelming reportorial evidence on the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy," they said in a statement. They added that the move is especially "surprising and disappointing in light of the paper's "rigorous investigation," under Bezos' ownership, of the "danger and damage" of a second Trump term.
- Humor writer Alexandra Petri endorsed Kamala Harris in her column for the Post on Saturday. "If I were the paper, I would be a little embarrassed that it has fallen to me, the humor columnist, to make our presidential endorsement," she wrote. "I will spare you the suspense: I am endorsing Kamala Harris for president, because I like elections and want to keep having them."
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