David Shipley, who has spent the last two-and-a-half years running the Washington Post's editorial page, has stepped down from his position over new demands being made by Post owner Jeff Bezos.
In a letter sent out to staff members obtained by New York Times media reporter Ben Mullin, Bezos said that Shipley stepped down because he could not go along with Bezos's plan to ban editorials in his paper that were critical of "personal liberties and free markets," which he described as "two pillars" of American society.
"Viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others," Bezos informed staff members. "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."
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He said Shipley was offered the chance to oversee the new editorial direction, but if his "answer wasn't 'hell yes,' it would have to be 'no.'"
Bezos said that he would begin searching for a new editorial page editor who would "own this new direction" he was demanding and concluded by arguing that pro-free market viewpoints "are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion."
The Post in recent months has been plagued by multiple resignations from both opinion page writers and straight news reporters, some of whom have asserted that Bezos has been improperly meddling with the paper's coverage.
