Post Traumatic Stress

On Wednesday morning, soon after Jeff Bezos astonished employees at The Washington Post by outlining a new directive for the newspaper’s opinion pages, David Shipley held a meeting with his worried staff. The opinion editor, who opted to resign instead of carrying out Bezos' jarring new order to slash the scope of viewpoints, gathered his troops for a final huddle. The meeting, I'm told, was charged with all sorts of emotion—anger, sadness, frustration, etcetera. But Shipley, ultimately, was not able to provide staffers with the clarity they sought about the future of the opinion division.

In the hours since that meeting, little insight has been offered on what Bezos' shock announcement—that The Post's opinion section will now be tasked with "writing every day in support and defense of" personal liberties and free markets without opposing viewpoints—means for the newspaper's stable of columnists. Will those who do not wish to write in favor of such ideals be shown the door? Does the mandate mean that criticism of capitalism's excesses will be prohibited from The Post's opinion section? Bezos said that the editorial pages will "cover other topics too," but how much latitude will those opinions be given? Will The Post's roster of columnists be forced to focus solely on the issues Bezos outlined even as Donald Trump and Elon Musk take a hatchet to the federal government and U.S. foreign policy is upended?