Washington Post Veteran Ruth Marcus Quits in Protest

The Washington Post is losing a big name in protest of owner Jeff Bezos' policies. Veteran columnist and associate editor Ruth Marcus has resigned after her op-ed critical of Bezos was rejected, report NPR media writer David Folkenflik and Ben Mullin of the New York Times. The move comes after Bezos decreed that the newspaper opinion pieces must from now on focus on "personal liberties and free markets." Marcus addressed her resignation letter to Bezos and publisher Will Lewis:

• "Will's decision to not run the column that I wrote respectfully dissenting from Jeff's edict—something that I have not experienced in almost two decades of column-writing—underscores that the traditional freedom of columnists to select the topics they wish to address and say what they think has been dangerously eroded," she wrote.
• Marcus also complained that Bezos' rule "that the opinion section will henceforth not publish views that deviate from the pillars of individual liberties and free markets threatens to break the trust of readers that columnists are writing what they believe, not what the owner has deemed acceptable."

The newspaper has yet to comment on Marcus' resignation. She had been been at the paper since 1984 in a variety of roles, starting as a reporter before becoming an editor, according to her still-active Post bio. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2007. (She joins a growing list of other staffers to leave the newspaper or to voice concerns over Bezos' role. Friction ramped up when he killed an endorsement of Kamala Harris last year.)