Gold Rush

The Washington Post’s newsroom is in low spirits.

On Monday morning, Matea Gold, the newspaper's highly respected and well-liked managing editor, formally announced that she will decamp The Post for The New York Times. Her decision to leave for The Post's arch-rival, which we first reported Sunday, came after it was made clear to her last week that she was not going to be appointed as the newspaper's next top editor, which she had been a candidate for.

That Gold was not selected for the role is not all that surprising given the type of person publisher Will Lewis and owner Jeff Bezos are on the hunt for. Both Lewis and Bezos are looking for a so-called "change agent" to radically rethink what The Post should look like as it moves into the future. Gold was thought of as someone who represented the institution as it has been, not a candidate who can carry out their vision of transformative change. At the end of the process, she never even received so much as an opportunity to make her case to Bezos in an interview setting, I’m told.

In any case, Gold's decision to exit has tremendously saddened and worried staffers at The Post about what it portends for their own futures. People are both "gutted and worried," one staffer told me Monday. Some of that emotion bled out into the open, with Posties sending Gold off to The Times with kind and frank words. Losing Gold "is devastating," columnist and associate editor Karen Tumulty posted on X. It's a "profound loss," added editor Nick Parker. She will be "sorely missed," wrote reporter John Hudson. It's a "huge loss for us," added critic Gene Park.