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Jeff Bezos. (Amazon Photo)
Jeff Bezos is shaking up the opinion pages at The Washington Post again, telling employees Wednesday morning that the section would now focus on supporting and defending what he called “two pillars” — personal liberties and free markets.
The move by the billionaire Amazon founder and owner of the newspaper led to the resignation of David Shipley, the Post’s opinion editor.
“I am of America and for America, and proud to be so,” Bezos wrote in his memo, which he posted on social media. “Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.”
Bezos said he offered Shipley the chance to lead the new direction, but Shipley, who led the opinion section since 2022, declined.
“I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter,” Bezos wrote. “I suggested to him that if the answer wasn’t ‘hell yes,’ then it had to be ‘no.’ After careful consideration, David decided to step away.”
The New York Times noted an apparent rightward shift for the Post opinion page, echoing what it referred to as the informal tagline of The Wall Street Journal’s conservative opinion pages: “Free markets, free people.”
“There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job,” Bezos wrote.
Bezos bought the Post in 2013, and during President Donald Trump’s first term he and the newspaper clashed with the president as Trump threatened antitrust action against Amazon.
Bezos’ latest action comes in the wake of his decision last fall to end the newspaper’s tradition of endorsing candidates for president — including a reported spiking of the Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris. The action cost the Post more than 200,000 digital subscribers and a wave of backlash during the contentious run-up to Trump’s re-election.
Since the election, Bezos has joined other tech leaders in expressing a willingness to work with the Trump administration. Bezos was among those who attended the presidential inauguration.
Elon Musk cheered the move by the Post on Wednesday: “Bravo @JeffBezos!” he wrote on X.
