Second Post Columnist Resigns While Others Defend Publication

Backlash — and backlash to the backlash — keeps coming for The Post’s non-endorsement.

By Greta Reich

Politico

10/27/2024 05:07 PM EDT

Michele Norris announced her resignation from The Washington Post in a social media post Sunday following the newspaper’s decision not to endorse a presidential candidate this election cycle, making her the second columnist to leave after Robert Kagan.

Norris called the non-endorsement a “terrible mistake” and “an insult to the paper’s own longstanding standard of regularly endorsing candidates since 1976.” Norris has been connected to The Post since 1988 when she was a reporter. She was also the first Black female host for NPR and has been an opinion columnist at The Post since 2019.

However, other journalists inside and outside the organization have been coming to The Post’s defense — not for the editorial board or their decision, but for the reporters and editors who work at The Post and are suffering the consequences of canceled subscriptions and loss of trust.

David Maraniss, a longtime associate editor at The Post, initially reacted to the announcement that The Post wouldn’t be endorsing a candidate by calling the move “contemptible.” He wrote in a Facebook post on Friday, “This is the bleakest day of my journalism career.”

But in another Facebook post published Sunday, he explained some of his reflection, writing that while he understands the dismay, he’s “come out on the other side.”

“First let me ask: Why have all of you not quit Facebook? Do you think Mark Zuckerberg is good for democracy? Why on the other platform have so many people who cancelled subscriptions announced their actions on X? Do they think Elon Musk is good for democracy? Those questions are both rhetorical and real. I think we all know the reasons. Tradeoffs,” Maraniss wrote.

He praised The Post’s reporters and editors who “have done one helluva lot more than anything on Facebook or X to uncover and illuminate the dangerous politics of the moment and the threats to democracy - and will continue to do so despite the craven cowardice of the owner and publisher.”

Former Post editor Marty Baron made a parallel point in an interview with the New Yorker, saying he’s not in favor of canceling subscriptions because The Post and news organizations like it “serve an incredibly important role in our democracy,” emphasizing that we don’t have enough of them.

“I don’t think that we should do Donald Trump’s work for him, which is: he would like to actually weaken these institutions and eliminate them. And so that’s where I come down,” Baron said.

Non-Washington Post journalists have shared similar messages. CNN anchor Jake Tapper wrote in a post on X that “canceling a newspaper subscription helps politicians who don’t want oversight, does nothing to hurt the billionaires who own the newspapers and make decisions with which you may disagree, and will result in fewer journalists trying to hold the powerful to account.”

Ellen Cushing, a staff writer at The Atlantic, argued in an article that rather than canceling Washington Post subscriptions in an attempt to get back at Jeff Bezos — who owns The Post and who many are blaming for the non-endorsement decision — people should cancel their Amazon Prime membership, which would more tangibly impact the billionaire.

While Norris and Kagan are the only two columnists to have resigned so far, 18 others published a dissent of the decision on Friday night, saying that it “represents an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love, and for which we have worked a combined 228 years.” Ruth Marcus and Karen Tumulty also wrote columns saying the decision damaged the publication’s credibility.

Humor columnist Alexandra Petri responded to the decision by using her preferred medium to make the case for Kamala Harris.

“We as a newspaper suddenly remembered, less than two weeks before the election, that we had a robust tradition 50 years ago of not telling anyone what to do with their vote for president,” she wrote in her weekend column.

Petri continued: “But 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. I will spare you the suspense: I am endorsing Kamala Harris for president, because I like elections and want to keep having them.”