The Washington Post just lost yet another Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist amid a growing staff revolt against the newspaper’s change in direction under the second MAGA administration.
After almost two decades at his desk, opinion columnist Jonathan Capehart has now taken a buyout, Axios reported Monday, while planning to continue his journalistic work as PBS political analyst and co-host of MSNBC’s The Weekend show.
He’s only the latest to go, with another five top members of the same section—Ann Telnaes, David Shipley, Ruth Marcus, Eugene Robinson and, just earlier this month, Joe Davidson—departing over concerns about a rightward editorial shift following Donald Trump’s inauguration earlier this year.
In February, Amazon’s billionaire CEO Jeff Bezos, who owns the newspaper, instructed the publication’s opinion writers to focus exclusively on issues related to “personal liberties and free markets,” telling them “viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”
Former executive editor Marty Baron was quick to blast the move as “craven” and “fearful of Trump,” with more than 400 staff members since signing a petition expressing “deep alarm” over the new direction and accompanying decline in reader trust.
The Daily Beast has approached Capehart for comment on his decision to take the buyout.
Though he has not yet spoken publicly on the matter, it comes weeks after he revealed the reason he resigned from the paper’s editorial board last year had been over an explosive row about the racial overtones of an op-ed run by fellow columnist Karen Tumulty.
More recently, his colleagues have cited similar grounds as reasons for leaving, although more directly tied to Bezos’ instructions concerning the newspaper’s opinion output.
Ann Telnaes, a fellow Pulitzer-winner and cartoonist, resigned after WaPo spiked one of her sketches that had been critical of Bezos and other tech broligarchs’ perceived obeisance to Trump, while Ruth Marcus left after decades at the paper because leadership had blocked her piece criticizing the opinion desk’s recent shift.
These issues have been further compounded by alleged internal discontent over managerial decisions taken by Will Lewis, appointed publisher and CEO by Bezos himself in 2024, as well as reports of staff concerns over the British journalist’s drinking.
The Daily Beast has contacted the Washington Post for comment on Capehart’s departure.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect the fact that Tumulty did not write the editorial that Capehart cited as a reason for his resignation from the Post’s editorial board last year. She was the deputy opinions editor in charge of the editorial board, and defended it as reflecting the view of the board.
