Washington Post executives sought initially to keep its latest internal drama at arms length from its billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos. After a week of speculation about the endorsement kicked off by Semafor and Status News, on Friday, publisher Will Lewis — who had reportedly opposed the decision to end political endorsements — published an essay explaining the decision in his own name, which appeared just before noon in Washington and just before 7:00 pm in Venice. Lewis and the paper released a series of statements saying it was the Post’s decision alone to revise its presidential endorsement policy going forward.
But over the weekend, reporting revealed that Bezos was obviously involved. The tech billionaire had made the decision after seeing the Post’s planned Harris endorsement. Leadership at the Post also began to panic as the paper’s business began to enter a tailspin: The non-endorsement decision had also ballooned into a full-blown crisis that had cost the paper millions in revenue as hundreds of thousands of readers canceled their subscriptions overnight.
On Monday, the owner published his own essay defending the decision, and made passing reference to the decision’s lurching, last-minute quality: “I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it. That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy,” he wrote.
