The Washington Post’s chief executive told the newsroom Friday that it would no longer endorse presidential candidates, breaking with decades of precedent at the newspaper.

“The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election,” wrote Will Lewis, the Post’s chief executive. “Nor in any future presidential election. We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.”

The Post has endorsed presidential candidates since 1976, Lewis wrote, when it gave its stamp of approval to Jimmy Carter, who went on to win the election. Before that, it generally did not make presidential endorsements, though it made an exception in 1952 to back Dwight Eisenhower.

Questions about whether the Post would endorse a candidate this year have spread for days. Some people have speculated, without any proof, that the paper’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, was being cowed by a prospective Trump administration because his other businesses have many federal government contracts.

Bezos Made the Decision

Bezos made the decision not to endorse presidential candidates after a debate among senior Post leaders, according to a person familiar with the talks.

Lewis, in his note to the staff, said little about how the Post arrived at its decision, adding only that it was not “a tacit endorsement of one candidate,” or “a condemnation of another.” He referenced an editorial the paper published in 1960 that it was “wiser for an independent newspaper in the Nation’s Capital” to avoid an endorsement.

A spokesperson for Bezos did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Bezos has told others involved with the Post that he is interested in expanding the Post’s audience among conservatives, according to a person familiar with the matter. He has appointed Lewis — a chief executive who previously worked at the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal — and has informed Lewis that he wants more conservative writers on the opinion section, the person said.

The Washington Post’s editorial writers had already drafted an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president, according to four people who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive newsroom matters.

The Post’s editorial board had contacted the Harris campaign and the Trump campaign to request interviews before its decision to endorse, two of the people said. Harris declined the interview and the Trump campaign didn’t respond, one of the people said.

The Post’s decision drew immediate blowback inside the paper. At least one member of the opinions department, Robert Kagan, resigned.

Marty Baron, the recent editor of the Post who led the paper through a period of editorial and business success, called the decision “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty,” in a post on the social platform X. He added that former President Donald Trump would see it as an invitation to continue to try to intimidate Bezos. “Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”

The Washington Post Guild is ‘Deeply Concerned’

Leaders of The Washington Post Guild said in a statement that they were “deeply concerned” by the decision not to endorse “a mere 11 days ahead of an immensely consequential election.”

“The message from our chief executive, Will Lewis — not from the Editorial Board itself — makes us concerned that management interfered with the work of our members in editorial,” the statement said.

The Post’s move follows unfurling tumult at The Los Angeles Times, where the head of the editorial board and two of its writers have resigned this week to protest the decision by the Times’ owner, billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, to block a planned presidential endorsement.

Mariel Garza, the former editorials editor, said in an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review on Wednesday that the editorial board had planned to endorse Harris and she had drafted an outline. But Soon-Shiong informed the editorial board on Oct. 11 that the Times would not be publishing any presidential endorsement.

“I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent,” Garza told Columbia Journalism Review. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up.”

In a post on X on Wednesday, Soon-Shiong accused the editorial board of not following through on his directive to do an analysis of the positive and negative policies of each candidate during their White House tenures.

“With this clear and non-partisan information side-by-side, our readers could decide who would be worthy of being President for the next four years,” he said. “Instead of adopting this path as suggested, the Editorial Board chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision.”

Robert Greene, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer, and Karin Klein, another editorial board member, resigned Thursday. Greene confirmed his resignation but declined to comment further.

Klein said in a post on Facebook that her decision to quit was solidified by Soon-Shiong’s social media post. She said the editorial writers had never been told about the request for an analysis.

“The board was not the one choosing to remain silent. He blocked our voice,” Klein wrote.

Newspapers across the United States have steadily backed away from endorsing political candidates in recent years, as some question whether the feature is still relevant. In 2022, the investment firm Alden Global Capital, which owns some 200 newspapers, said its publications would no longer endorse major political candidates, citing readers’ confusion over what is opinion and what is news and the “increasingly acrimonious” public discourse.

The New York Times’ editorial board, which operates separately from the newsroom, endorsed Harris for president on Sept. 30, saying: “It is hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president of the United States than Donald Trump.” But in August, it said it would stop endorsing candidates in New York elections, including the New York City mayoral race.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Benjamin Mullin and Katie Robertson/Eric Lee
c. 2024 The New York Times Company