Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart quits paper after owner Jeff Bezos overhauls op-ed section: report
Capehart, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer known for his outspoken criticism of President Trump, had been with the Post since 2007. His exit was first reported by Axios on Monday.
Capehart's final column for the Post, published in May, featured a conversation with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison on 'countering' the president.
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4 Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart has reportedly accepted a buyout from the paper, becoming the latest high-profile departure amid sweeping editorial changes.
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That same month, Capehart resigned from the newspaper's editorial board over a dispute with a white colleague about a piece that anazlyed Georgia's voting laws and their alleged racial implications.
Capehart had previously referred to Trump as 'a cancer on the presidency and American society' and compared a rally held by Trump at Madison Square Garden to a Nazi rally at the same venue in 1939.
The terms of his buyout were not disclosed.
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Representatives for the Washington Post did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Capehart will continue co-hosting MSNBC's 'The Weekend' and remain a panelist on PBS's 'NewsHour.'
The buyout follows comments made by Washington Post CEO Will Lewis, who in recent weeks urged employees who do not 'feel aligned' with the company's editorial direction to resign.
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4 The newspaper's billionaire owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has shifted the publication's editorial direction.
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His departure adds to a string of exits at the paper over the Beltway broadsheet's shift to the right. In February, Bezos ordered the Post's opinion section to focus on 'personal liberties and free markets.'
The directive led to the resignation of Opinion Editor David Shipley, followed by the departure of multiple other opinion writers, including longtime columnist Ruth Marcus.
Last month, Adam O'Neal, formerly of The Economist and The Dispatch, was named opinion editor.
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4 In May, Capehart quit the newspaper's editorial board after a dispute with a colleague over Georgia's voting laws.
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Weeks later, popular columnist Joe Davidson announced he was leaving after one of his columns was killed for being 'too opinionated.'
Davidson criticized the paper's ownership, stating that 'Bezos's policies and activities have projected the image of a Donald Trump supplicant.'
The paper faced subscriber backlash after Bezos blocked a planned endorsement of Kamala Harris for president shortly before the election. Approximately 250,000 subscribers canceled their subscriptions.
4 The Washington Post has undergone significant change in the last year, including the departure of big-name reporters.
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In January, several top reporters and editors — including Ashley Parker, Michael Scherer, Josh Dawsey and Tyler Pager — left the Post for rival outlets such as The Atlantic and the New York Times.
Managing editor Matea Gold joined the Times' Washington bureau in late 2024. At the same time, the Post laid off 4% of its business-side staff due to profitability concerns.
Earlier this year, more than 400 staff members signed an internal petition expressing concern over editorial independence and management decisions.
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