The Washington Post was founded in 1877 by Stilson Hutchins, a man who would never have imagined his small daily publication would one day topple a president. In its early years, the newspaper struggled financially and editorially, going through several owners before finding stability under Eugene Meyer. Meyer, a financier who had run the War Finance Corporation since World War I, purchased the bankrupt paper at an auction on the 1st of June 1933 for $825,000. He had bid anonymously and was prepared to go up to $2 million, far higher than other bidders, including William Randolph Hearst, who had long hoped to shut down the ailing Post to benefit his own Washington newspaper presence. Meyer's purchase marked the beginning of a transformation that would see the Post become a global powerhouse of journalism, winning 76 Pulitzer Prizes, the second most of any publication after The New York Times. The paper's influence grew so significant that it became known as a newspaper of record in the United States, with journalists receiving 18 Nieman Fellowships and 368 White House News Photographers Association awards. The Post's political reporting in the U.S. is legendary, and it is one of the few remaining American newspapers to operate foreign bureaus, with international breaking news hubs in London and Seoul. The paper's headquarters moved from 1150 15th Street NW to One Franklin Square, a high-rise building at 1301 K Street NW in Washington, D.C., in May 2014, after the Graham family sold the newspaper to Jeff Bezos' Nash Holdings in October 2013 for $250 million. The Post has its own exclusive ZIP Code, 20071, and its 21 foreign bureaus are in Baghdad, Beijing, Beirut, Berlin, Brussels, Cairo, Dakar, Hong Kong, Islamabad, Istanbul, Jerusalem, London, Mexico City, Moscow, Nairobi, New Delhi, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, Seoul, Tokyo, and Toronto. In November 2009, the newspaper announced the closure of three U.S. regional bureaus in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City, as part of an increased focus on Washington, D.C., based political stories and local news. The newspaper has local bureaus in Maryland (Annapolis, Montgomery County, Prince George's County, and Southern Maryland) and Virginia (Alexandria, Fairfax, Loudoun County, Richmond, and Prince William County). The Post does not print an edition for distribution away from the East Coast. In 2009, the newspaper ceased publication of its National Weekly Edition due to shrinking circulation. The majority of its newsprint readership is in Washington, D.C., and its suburbs in Maryland and Northern Virginia. As of March 2023, the Post's average printed weekday circulation is 139,232, making it the third largest newspaper in the country by circulation. In 2023, the Post had 130,000 print subscribers and 2.5 million digital subscribers, both of which were the third-largest among American newspapers after The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. In 2025, the number of print subscribers had declined to below 100,000 for the first time in 55 years.
The story of The Washington Post is inextricably linked to the Graham family, whose influence shaped the paper's identity for decades. Eugene Meyer, who purchased the paper in 1933, was succeeded as publisher by his son-in-law, Philip Graham, in 1946. After Philip's death in 1963, control of The Washington Post Company passed to his wife, Katharine Graham, who was also Eugene Meyer's daughter. Few women had run prominent national newspapers in the United States, and Katharine Graham said that she was particularly anxious about assuming this role. She served as publisher from 1969 to 1979. Graham took The Washington Post Company public on the 15th of June 1971, in the midst of the Pentagon Papers controversy. A total of 1,294,000 shares were offered to the public at $26 per share. By the end of Graham's tenure as CEO in 1991, the stock was worth $888 per share, not counting the effect of an intermediate 4:1 stock split. Graham also oversaw the Post company's diversification purchase of the for-profit education and training company Kaplan, Inc. for $40 million in 1984. Twenty years later, Kaplan had surpassed the Post newspaper as the company's leading contributor to income, and by 2010 Kaplan accounted for more than 60% of the entire company revenue stream. Donald E. Graham, Katharine's son, succeeded her as a publisher in 1979. In 1995, the domain name washingtonpost.com was purchased. That same year, a failed effort to create an online news repository called Digital Ink launched. The following year it was shut down and the first website was launched in June 1996. The Post's political orientation was colored by the developing friendship of Phil and Kay Graham with the Kennedys, the Bradlees and the rest of the Georgetown Set, including many Harvard University alumni. Kay Graham's most memorable Georgetown soirée guest list included British diplomat and communist spy Donald Maclean. The Post is credited with coining the term McCarthyism in a 1950 editorial cartoon by Herbert Block. Depicting buckets of tar, it made fun of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's tarring tactics, i.e., smear campaigns and character assassination against those targeted by his accusations. Sen. McCarthy was attempting to do for the Senate what the House Un-American Activities Committee had been doing for years, investigating Soviet espionage in America. The HUAC made Richard Nixon nationally known for his role in the Hiss/Chambers case that exposed communist spying in the State Department. The committee had evolved from the McCormack-Dickstein Committee of the 1930s. Phil Graham's friendship with John F. Kennedy remained strong until their deaths in 1963. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reportedly told the new President Lyndon B. Johnson, I don't have much influence with the Post because I frankly don't read it. I view it like the Daily Worker. Ben Bradlee became the editor-in-chief in 1968, and Kay Graham officially became the publisher in 1969, paving the way for the aggressive reporting of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate scandals. The Post strengthened public opposition to the Vietnam War in 1971 when it published the Pentagon Papers. In the mid-1970s, some conservatives referred to the Post as Pravda on the Potomac because of its perceived left-wing bias in both reporting and editorials. Since then, the appellation has been used by both liberal and conservative critics of the newspaper.
The Watergate Scandal That Shook a Nation
The Washington Post's most famous moment came not from a single headline but from a relentless, years-long investigation that would bring down a president. In 1972, executive editor Ben Bradlee put the newspaper's reputation and resources behind reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who, in a long series of articles, chipped away at the story behind the 1972 burglary of Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate complex in Washington. The Post dogged coverage of the story, the outcome of which ultimately played a major role in the resignation of President Richard Nixon, won the newspaper a Pulitzer Prize in 1973. The investigation began with a simple break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office complex on the 17th of June 1972. Woodward and Bernstein, working under the guidance of editor Ben Bradlee, followed a trail of clues that led from the burglars to the Committee to Re-elect the President, and eventually to the White House. The story was so dangerous that the Nixon administration tried to bury it, with White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler infamously accusing The Washington Post of shabby journalism for their focus on Watergate only to apologize when the damning reporting on Nixon was proved correct. The Post's reporting on Watergate was so influential that it became the subject of a 1974 book by Bernstein and Woodward, All the President's Men, and a 1976 film based on the book. The Post's role in the Watergate scandal was so significant that it helped establish the newspaper's reputation as a watchdog of power. The paper's political reporting in the U.S. is legendary, and it is one of the few remaining American newspapers to operate foreign bureaus, with international breaking news hubs in London and Seoul. The Post's headquarters moved from 1150 15th Street NW to One Franklin Square, a high-rise building at 1301 K Street NW in Washington, D.C., in May 2014, after the Graham family sold the newspaper to Jeff Bezos' Nash Holdings in October 2013 for $250 million. The Post has its own exclusive ZIP Code, 20071, and its 21 foreign bureaus are in Baghdad, Beijing, Beirut, Berlin, Brussels, Cairo, Dakar, Hong Kong, Islamabad, Istanbul, Jerusalem, London, Mexico City, Moscow, Nairobi, New Delhi, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, Seoul, Tokyo, and Toronto. In November 2009, the newspaper announced the closure of three U.S. regional bureaus in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City, as part of an increased focus on Washington, D.C., based political stories and local news. The newspaper has local bureaus in Maryland (Annapolis, Montgomery County, Prince George's County, and Southern Maryland) and Virginia (Alexandria, Fairfax, Loudoun County, Richmond, and Prince William County). The Post does not print an edition for distribution away from the East Coast. In 2009, the newspaper ceased publication of its National Weekly Edition due to shrinking circulation. The majority of its newsprint readership is in Washington, D.C., and its suburbs in Maryland and Northern Virginia. As of March 2023, the Post's average printed weekday circulation is 139,232, making it the third largest newspaper in the country by circulation. In 2023, the Post had 130,000 print subscribers and 2.5 million digital subscribers, both of which were the third-largest among American newspapers after The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. In 2025, the number of print subscribers had declined to below 100,000 for the first time in 55 years.
The Billionaire Who Bought the Paper
In October 2013, Jeff Bezos purchased The Washington Post and other local publications, websites, and real estate for $250 million, transferring ownership to Nash Holdings LLC, Bezos's private investment company. The paper's former parent company, which retained some other assets such as Kaplan and a group of TV stations, was renamed Graham Holdings shortly after the sale. Nash Holdings, which includes the Post, is operated separately from technology company Amazon, which Bezos founded and where he is executive chairman and the largest single shareholder, with 12.7% of voting rights. Bezos said he has a vision that recreates the daily ritual of reading the Post as a bundle, not merely a series of individual stories. He has been described as a hands-off owner, holding teleconference calls with executive editor Martin Baron every two weeks. Bezos appointed Fred Ryan (founder and CEO of Politico) to serve as publisher and chief executive officer. This signaled Bezos' intent to shift the Post to a more digital focus with a national and global readership. In 2015, the Post moved from the building it owned at 1150 15th Street to a leased space three blocks away at One Franklin Square on K Street. Since 2014 the Post has launched an online personal finance section, a blog, and a podcast with a retro theme. The Post won the 2020 Webby People's Voice Award for News & Politics in the Social and Web categories. In 2017, the newspaper hired Jamal Khashoggi as a columnist. In 2018, Khashoggi was murdered by Saudi agents in Istanbul. In October 2023, the Post announced it would cut 240 jobs across the organization by offering voluntary separation packages to employees. In a staff-wide email announcing the job cuts, interim CEO Patty Stonesifer wrote, Our prior projections for traffic, subscriptions and advertising growth for the past two years and into 2024 have been overly optimistic. The Post has lost around 500,000 subscribers since the end of 2020 and was set to lose $100 million in 2023, according to The New York Times. The layoffs prompted Dan Froomkin of Presswatchers to suggest that the decline in readership could be reversed by focusing on the rise of authoritarianism instead of staying strictly neutral, which Froomkin says places the paper into an undistinguished secondary role in competition with other contemporary media. As part of the shift in tone, in 2023 the paper closed down the KidsPost column for children, the Skywatch astronomy column, and the John Kelly's Washington column about local history and sights, which had been running under different bylines since 1947. In May 2024, CEO and publisher William Lewis announced that the organization would embrace artificial intelligence to improve the paper's financial situation, telling staff it would seek AI everywhere in our newsroom. In June 2024, Axios reported the Post faced significant internal turmoil and financial challenges. The new CEO, Lewis, has already generated controversy with his leadership style and proposed restructuring plans. The abrupt departure of executive editor Buzbee and the appointment of two white men to top editorial positions have sparked internal discontent, particularly given the lack of consideration for the Post's senior female editors, as well as allegations that in March 2024 Lewis put pressure on Buzbee to bury a story about his involvement in a British phone-hacking scandal. Additionally, Lewis' proposed division for social media and service journalism has met with resistance from staff. Recent reports alleging Lewis' attempts to influence editorial decisions, including pressuring Buzbee to drop a story about his past ties to a phone hacking scandal, and offering NPR's media correspondent an exclusive interview about the Posts future in exchange for not publishing similar allegations, have further shaken the newsroom's morale. Staffers also became worried about Lewis' drinking and uninvolved role in the newsroom. Lewis continues to grapple with declining revenue and audience on the business front, seeking strategies to regain subscribers lost since the Trump era. Later that month, the paper ran a story allegedly exposing a connection between incoming editor Robert Winnett and John Ford, a man who admitted to an extensive career using deception and illegal means to obtain confidential information. Winnett withdrew from the position shortly thereafter. In January 2025, the Post announced it will layoff 4% of its staff, less than 100 people. Newsroom employees will not be affected. On the 14th of January 2026, the FBI raided the apartment of a Post journalist, Hannah Natanson, and seized her phone, two laptops, and a smartwatch. Investigators said to Natanson that the focus of the probe was not her but Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a system administrator with top-secret security clearance, under investigation for taking home classified intelligence reports. The day after, the Post's editorial board called the search an aggressive attack on the press freedom of all journalists.
The Opinion Section That Divided the Newsroom
In January 2025, editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned from The Washington Post and published a blog post titled Why I'm quitting the Washington Post, in which she criticized the paper for allegedly refusing to run a cartoon critical of the relationship between American billionaires and President Donald Trump, calling the decision dangerous for a free press. Telnaes' blog post and the nature of her cartoon sparked conversations about the paper's ownership under Bezos. In February 2025, Bezos announced that the opinion section of the Post would give voice only to opinions that support personal liberties and free markets and divergent opinions would not be published by the Post. Opinion Editor David Shipley decided to step away after Bezos offered him the chance to continue in his role but under this new editorial focus. Within two days of the announcement, it was reported that over 75,000 digital subscribers had canceled their subscriptions. In March 2025, Ruth Marcus, columnist and editor for The Washington Posts opinion section, resigned after 40 years with the organization when the paper's publisher, Will Lewis, killed a column she wrote that was critical of the new direction. The Post also fired columnist Karen Attiah in September 2025. The paper's political orientation was colored by the developing friendship of Phil and Kay Graham with the Kennedys, the Bradlees and the rest of the Georgetown Set, including many Harvard University alumni. Kay Graham's most memorable Georgetown soirée guest list included British diplomat and communist spy Donald Maclean. The Post is credited with coining the term McCarthyism in a 1950 editorial cartoon by Herbert Block. Depicting buckets of tar, it made fun of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's tarring tactics, i.e., smear campaigns and character assassination against those targeted by his accusations. Sen. McCarthy was attempting to do for the Senate what the House Un-American Activities Committee had been doing for years, investigating Soviet espionage in America. The HUAC made Richard Nixon nationally known for his role in the Hiss/Chambers case that exposed communist spying in the State Department. The committee had evolved from the McCormack-Dickstein Committee of the 1930s. Phil Graham's friendship with John F. Kennedy remained strong until their deaths in 1963. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reportedly told the new President Lyndon B. Johnson, I don't have much influence with the Post because I frankly don't read it. I view it like the Daily Worker. Ben Bradlee became the editor-in-chief in 1968, and Kay Graham officially became the publisher in 1969, paving the way for the aggressive reporting of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate scandals. The Post strengthened public opposition to the Vietnam War in 1971 when it published the Pentagon Papers. In the mid-1970s, some conservatives referred to the Post as Pravda on the Potomac because of its perceived left-wing bias in both reporting and editorials. Since then, the appellation has been used by both liberal and conservative critics of the newspaper. In the vast majority of U.S. elections, for federal, state, and local office, the Post editorial board has endorsed Democratic candidates. The paper's editorial board and endorsement decision-making are separate from newsroom operations. Until 1976, the Post did not regularly make endorsements in presidential elections. Since it endorsed Jimmy Carter in 1976, the Post has endorsed Democrats in presidential elections, and has never endorsed a Republican for president in the general election, although in the 1988 presidential election, the Post declined to endorse either Governor Michael Dukakis or Vice President George H. W. Bush. The Post editorial board endorsed Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012; Hillary Clinton in 2016; and Joe Biden in 2020. In 2024, the Post controversially announced that it would no longer publish presidential endorsements. Eleven days prior to the 2024 presidential election, CEO and publisher William Lewis announced that the Post would not endorse a candidate for 2024. It was the first time since the 1988 presidential election that the paper did not endorse the Democratic candidate. Lewis also said that the paper would not make endorsements in any future presidential election. Lewis stated that the paper was returning to our roots of not endorsing candidates, and explained that the move was a statement in support of our readers' ability to make up their own minds, and consistent with the values the Post has always stood for and what we hope for in a leader: character and courage in service to the American ethic, veneration for the rule of law, and respect for human freedom in all its aspects. Sources familiar with the situation stated that the Post editorial board had drafted an endorsement for Kamala Harris, but that it had been blocked by order of the Posts owner Jeff Bezos. The move was criticized by former executive editor Martin Baron, who considered it disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage, and suggested that Bezos was fearing retaliation from 2024 Republican candidate Donald Trump that could impact Bezos's other businesses if Trump were elected. Editor-at-large Robert Kagan and columnist Michele Norris resigned in the wake of the decision, and editor David Maraniss said that the paper was dying in darkness, a reference to the paper's current slogan. Post opinion columnists jointly authored an article calling the decision to not endorse a terrible mistake, and it was condemned by the Washington Post Guild, a union unit representing Post employees. More than 250,000 people, about ten percent of the Posts subscribers, cancelled their subscriptions, and three members of the editorial board left the board, though they remain with the Post in other positions. An endorsement of Harris was subsequently published by the paper's humorist Alexandra Petri, who explained that 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, and that I only know what's happening because our actual journalists are out there reporting, knowing that their editors have their backs, that there's no one too powerful to report on, that we would never pull a punch out of fear. Condemning the Posts decision, several columnists, including Will Bunch, Jonathan Last, Dan Froomkin, Donna Ladd and Sewell Chan, described it as an example of what historian Timothy Snyder calls anticipatory obedience. Snyder himself criticized the decision, asserting that do not obey in advance is the main lesson of the twentieth century. Andrew Koppelman, in an opinion piece for The Hill, sarcastically praised the Post for showing us a glimpse of the authoritarian dystopia that Trump wants.
The Scandals That Shook the Newsroom
The Washington Post has faced numerous controversies that have tested its reputation and integrity. In September 1980, a Sunday feature story appeared on the front page of the Post titled Jimmy's World in which reporter Janet Cooke wrote a profile of the life of an eight-year-old heroin addict. Although some within the Post doubted the story's veracity, the paper's editors defended it, and assistant managing editor Bob Woodward submitted the story to the Pulitzer Prize Board at Columbia University for consideration. Cooke was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing on the 13th of April 1981. The story was subsequently found to be a complete fabrication, and the Pulitzer was returned. In July 2009, in the midst of an intense debate over health care reform, Politico reported that a health-care lobbyist had received an astonishing offer of access to the Posts health-care reporting and editorial staff. Post publisher Katharine Weymouth had planned a series of exclusive dinner parties or salons at her private residence, to which she had invited prominent lobbyists, trade group members, politicians, and business people. Participants were to be charged $25,000 to sponsor a single salon, and $250,000 for 11 sessions, with the events being closed to the public and to the non-Post press. Almost immediately following the disclosure, Weymouth canceled the salons, saying, This should never have happened. White House counsel Gregory B. Craig reminded officials that under federal ethics rules, they need advance approval for such events. Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli, who was named on the flier as one of the salon's Hosts and Discussion Leaders, said he was appalled by the plan, adding, It suggests that access to Washington Post journalists was available for purchase. In 2020, The Post suspended reporter Felicia Sonmez after she posted a series of tweets about the 2003 rape allegation against basketball star Kobe Bryant after Bryant's death. She was reinstated after over 200 Post journalists wrote an open letter criticizing the paper's decision. In July 2021, Sonmez sued The Post and several of her top editors, alleging workplace discrimination; the suit was dismissed in March 2022, with the court determining that Sonmez had failed to make plausible claims. In June 2022, Sonmez engaged in a Twitter feud with fellow Post staffers David Weigel, criticizing him over what he later described as an offensive joke, and Jose A. Del Real, who accused Sonmez of engaging in repeated and targeted public harassment of a colleague. Following the feud, the newspaper suspended Weigel for a month for violating the company's social media guidelines, and the newspaper's executive editor Sally Buzbee sent out a newsroom-wide memorandum directing employees to Be constructive and collegial in their interactions with colleagues. The newspaper fired Sonmez, writing in an emailed termination letter that she had engaged in misconduct that includes insubordination, maligning your co-workers online and violating The Posts standards on workplace collegiality and inclusivity. The Post faced criticism from the Post Guild after refusing to go to arbitration over the dismissal, stating that the expiration of the Post's contract does not relieve the Post from its contractual obligation to arbitrate grievances filed prior to expiration. In 2019, Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann filed a defamation lawsuit against the Post, alleging that it libeled him in seven articles regarding the January 2019 Lincoln Memorial confrontation between Covington students and the Indigenous Peoples March. A federal judge dismissed the case, ruling that 30 of the 33 statements in the Post that Sandmann alleged were libelous were not, but allowed Sandmann to file an amended complaint as to three statements. After Sandmann's lawyers amended the complaint, the suit was reopened on the 28th of October 2019. In 2020, The Post settled the lawsuit brought by Sandmann for an undisclosed amount. Several Washington Post op-eds and columns have prompted criticism, including a number of comments on race by columnist Richard Cohen over the years, and a controversial 2014 column on campus sexual assault by George Will. The Posts decision to run an op-ed by Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, a leader in Yemen's Houthi movement, was criticized by some activists on the basis that it provided a platform to an anti-Western and antisemitic group supported by Iran. In 2022, actor Johnny Depp successfully sued ex-wife Amber Heard for an op-ed she wrote in The Washington Post where she described herself as a public figure representing domestic abuse two years after she had publicly accused him of domestic violence. Speaking on behalf of President Nixon, White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler infamously accused The Washington Post of shabby journalism for their focus on Watergate only to apologize when the damning reporting on Nixon was proved correct. 45th/47th president Donald Trump repeatedly spoke out against The Washington Post on his Twitter account, having tweeted or retweeted criticism of the paper, tying it to Amazon more than 20 times since his campaign for president by August 2018. In addition to often attacking the paper itself, Trump used Twitter to blast various Post journalists and columnists. During the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, Senator Bernie Sanders repeatedly criticized The Washington Post, saying that its coverage of his campaign was slanted against him and attributing this to Jeff Bezos' purchase of the newspaper. Sanders' criticism was echoed by the socialist magazine Jacobin and the progressive journalist watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Washington Post executive editor Martin Baron responded by saying that Sanders' criticism was baseless and conspiratorial. An investigation by The Intercept, The Nation, and DeSmog found that The Washington Post is one of the leading media outlets that publishes advertising for the fossil fuel industry. Journalists who cover climate change for The Washington Post are concerned that conflicts of interest with the companies and industries that caused climate change and obstructed action will reduce the credibility of their reporting on climate change and cause readers to downplay the climate crisis.
The Future of a Newspaper in Darkness
The Washington Post faces an uncertain future as it grapples with declining circulation, financial challenges, and internal turmoil. In 2023, the Post had 130,000 print subscribers and 2.5 million digital subscribers, both of which were the third-largest among American newspapers after The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. In 2025, the number of print subscribers had declined to below 100,000 for the first time in 55 years. The Post has lost around 500,000 subscribers since the end of 2020 and was set to lose $100 million in 2023, according to The New York Times. The layoffs prompted Dan Froomkin of Presswatchers to suggest that the decline in readership could be reversed by focusing on the rise of authoritarianism instead of staying strictly neutral, which Froomkin says places the paper into an undistinguished secondary role in competition with other contemporary media. In May 2024, CEO and publisher William Lewis announced that the organization would embrace artificial intelligence to improve the paper's financial situation, telling staff it would seek AI everywhere in our newsroom. In June 2024, Axios reported the Post faced significant internal turmoil and financial challenges. The new CEO, Lewis, has already generated controversy with his leadership style and proposed restructuring plans. The abrupt departure of executive editor Buzbee and the appointment of two white men to top editorial positions have sparked internal discontent, particularly given the lack of consideration for the Post's senior female editors, as well as allegations that in March 2024 Lewis put pressure on Buzbee to bury a story about his involvement in a British phone-hacking scandal. Additionally, Lewis' proposed division for social media and service journalism has met with resistance from staff. Recent reports alleging Lewis' attempts to influence editorial decisions, including pressuring Buzbee to drop a story about his past ties to a phone hacking scandal, and offering NPR's media correspondent an exclusive interview about the Posts future in exchange for not publishing similar allegations, have further shaken the newsroom's morale. Staffers also became worried about Lewis' drinking and uninvolved role in the newsroom. Lewis continues to grapple with declining revenue and audience on the business front, seeking strategies to regain subscribers lost since the Trump era. Later that month, the paper ran a story allegedly exposing a connection between incoming editor Robert Winnett and John Ford, a man who admitted to an extensive career using deception and illegal means to obtain confidential information. Winnett withdrew from the position shortly thereafter. In January 2025, the Post announced it will layoff 4% of its staff, less than 100 people. Newsroom employees will not be affected. On the 14th of January 2026, the FBI raided the apartment of a Post journalist, Hannah Natanson, and seized her phone, two laptops, and a smartwatch. Investigators said to Natanson that the focus of the probe was not her but Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a system administrator with top-secret security clearance, under investigation for taking home classified intelligence reports. The day after, the Post's editorial board called the search an aggressive attack on the press freedom of all journalists. In January 2025, editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned from The Washington Post and published a blog post titled Why I'm quitting the Washington Post, in which she criticized the paper for allegedly refusing to run a cartoon critical of the relationship between American billionaires and President Donald Trump, calling the decision dangerous for a free press. Telnaes' blog post and the nature of her cartoon sparked conversations about the paper's ownership under Bezos. In February 2025, Bezos announced that the opinion section of the Post would give voice only to opinions that support personal liberties and free markets and divergent opinions would not be published by the Post. Opinion Editor David Shipley decided to step away after Bezos offered him the chance to continue in his role but under this new editorial focus. Within two days of the announcement, it was reported that over 75,000 digital subscribers had canceled their subscriptions. In March 2025, Ruth Marcus, columnist and editor for The Washington Posts opinion section, resigned after 40 years with the organization when the paper's publisher, Will Lewis, killed a column she wrote that was critical of the new direction. The Post also fired columnist Karen Attiah in September 2025. The paper's political orientation was colored by the developing friendship of Phil and Kay Graham with the Kennedys, the Bradlees and the rest of the Georgetown Set, including many Harvard University alumni. Kay Graham's most memorable Georgetown soirée guest list included British diplomat and communist spy Donald Maclean. The Post is credited with coining the term McCarthyism in a 1950 editorial cartoon by Herbert Block. Depicting buckets of tar, it made fun of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's tarring tactics, i.e., smear campaigns and character assassination against those targeted by his accusations. Sen. McCarthy was attempting to do for the Senate what the House Un-American Activities Committee had been doing for years, investigating Soviet espionage in America. The HUAC made Richard Nixon nationally known for his role in the Hiss/Chambers case that exposed communist spying in the State Department. The committee had evolved from the McCormack-Dickstein Committee of the 1930s. Phil Graham's friendship with John F. Kennedy remained strong until their deaths in 1963. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reportedly told the new President Lyndon B. Johnson, I don't have much influence with the Post because I frankly don't read it. I view it like the Daily Worker. Ben Bradlee became the editor-in-chief in 1968, and Kay Graham officially became the publisher in 1969, paving the way for the aggressive reporting of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate scandals. The Post strengthened public opposition to the Vietnam War in 1971 when it published the Pentagon Papers. In the mid-1970s, some conservatives referred to the Post as Pravda on the Potomac because of its perceived left-wing bias in both reporting and editorials. Since then, the appellation has been used by both liberal and conservative critics of the newspaper. In the vast majority of U.S. elections, for federal, state, and local office, the Post editorial board has endorsed Democratic candidates. The paper's editorial board and endorsement decision-making are separate from newsroom operations. Until 1976, the Post did not regularly make endorsements in presidential elections. Since it endorsed Jimmy Carter in 1976, the Post has endorsed Democrats in presidential elections, and has never endorsed a Republican for president in the general election, although in the 1988 presidential election, the Post declined to endorse either Governor Michael Dukakis or Vice President George H. W. Bush. The Post editorial board endorsed Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012; Hillary Clinton in 2016; and Joe Biden in 2020. In 2024, the Post controversially announced that it would no longer publish presidential endorsements. Eleven days prior to the 2024 presidential election, CEO and publisher William Lewis announced that the Post would not endorse a candidate for 2024. It was the first time since the 1988 presidential election that the paper did not endorse the Democratic candidate. Lewis also said that the paper would not make endorsements in any future presidential election. Lewis stated that the paper was returning to our roots of not endorsing candidates, and explained that the move was a statement in support of our readers' ability to make up their own minds, and consistent with the values the Post has always stood for and what we hope for in a leader: character and courage in service to the American ethic, veneration for the rule of law, and respect for human freedom in all its aspects. Sources familiar with the situation stated that the Post editorial board had drafted an endorsement for Kamala Harris, but that it had been blocked by order of the Posts owner Jeff Bezos. The move was criticized by former executive editor Martin Baron, who considered it disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage, and suggested that Bezos was fearing retaliation from 2024 Republican candidate Donald Trump that could impact Bezos's other businesses if Trump were elected. Editor-at-large Robert Kagan and columnist Michele Norris resigned in the wake of the decision, and editor David Maraniss said that the paper was dying in darkness, a reference to the paper's current slogan. Post opinion columnists jointly authored an article calling the decision to not endorse a terrible mistake, and it was condemned by the Washington Post Guild, a union unit representing Post employees. More than 250,000 people, about ten percent of the Posts subscribers, cancelled their subscriptions, and three members of the editorial board left the board, though they remain with the Post in other positions. An endorsement of Harris was subsequently published by the paper's humorist Alexandra Petri, who explained that 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, and that I only know what's happening because our actual journalists are out there reporting, knowing that their editors have their backs, that there's no one too powerful to report on, that we would never pull a punch out of fear. Condemning the Posts decision, several columnists, including Will Bunch, Jonathan Last, Dan Froomkin, Donna Ladd and Sewell Chan, described it as an example of what historian Timothy Snyder calls anticipatory obedience. Snyder himself criticized the decision, asserting that do not obey in advance is the main lesson of the twentieth century. Andrew Koppelman, in an opinion piece for The Hill, sarcastically praised the Post for showing us a glimpse of the authoritarian dystopia that Trump wants.