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A high-profile columnist who left The Washington Post amid the paper’s ongoing editorial upheaval is joining a growing anti-Trump digital news startup.
Former Washington Post opinion columnist Catherine Rampell is joining The Bulwark, where she will write a weekly economics and policy-focused newsletter while contributing to the company’s podcasts and YouTube channels. In a telephone interview on Friday, Rampell said that although she had spent her career at traditional media institutions like The New York Times and the Post, she was encouraged by The Bulwark’s growth and felt committed to its editorial mission, which emphasizes supporting America’s democratic principles and institutions.
“It’s very mission-oriented as an institution, and within that mission, there’s obviously room for a lot of other views,” Rampell said. “All of those things were appealing, and it’s a pretty kickass group of people.”
“The Bulwark is a written, video, and audio product. And as we grow, we are looking for people who can excel across all those mediums,” CEO Sarah Longwell said in a statement. “Catherine is not just one of those people — she’s one of the best of those people. She also brings a unique expertise in economics and a mission aligned worldview. We’re beyond thrilled she’s decided to join us.”
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Rampell was part of a wave of departures from the Post after the paper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, announced it would be narrowing the focus of the paper’s opinion section to pieces defending “personal liberties and free markets.”
Rampell said that Post leaders indicated that they wanted her to stay, arguing that her editorial worldview broadly matched Bezos’. Instead, she took a buyout earlier this year. She told Semafor that while she’s still rooting for the Post from afar, she was concerned that her readers may no longer trust her, knowing she would have to abide by the strict parameters Bezos outlined.
“I was worried about being censored going forward. And even if I was never censored, … if I did write something that was in favor of free markets or criticizing regulations — or criticizing the left, for that matter, as I sometimes do — would anyone believe that those were really my views rather than opinions enforced and ordered from above?” she said. “On the one hand, maybe they would censor me. On the other hand, even if they didn’t censor me, would people believe that I was writing the things that did fit with [Bezos’] twin pillars, because I genuinely held those beliefs? Credibility matters to me.”
Max’s view
Rampell’s decision to leave the Post for a startup demonstrates the challenges facing the DC paper as it tries to reshape its opinion coverage.
Hundreds of thousands of the paper’s readers abandoned it last year when Bezos decided not to endorse in the presidential election and to overhaul the opinion section. In the time since, the Post has shed much of its former staff, some of whom have found success producing the same content on other platforms. Jennifer Rubin’s new independent media outlet, The Contrarian has been one of the surprise hits of the year on Substack, registering in the fifth spot on Substack’s politics leaderboard — behind The Bulwark and The Free Press, which both have well over 100,000 paid subscribers.
The rebrand clearly cost the paper subscribers and readers. It’s unclear whether the Post’s decision to chart a new course will win over the moderate, pro-business readers Bezos seems to want to cultivate.
The paper has also decided to chart a very different course on editorials from its closest competitor. While the New York Times has significantly cut back on its unsigned editorial board pieces, the Post appears to be moving in the opposite direction. Under its new editor, the paper has leaned into unsigned editorials with a centrist bent, publishing nearly one editorial board piece every day.
As Semafor noted last week, Post leadership and some staff have felt that while the paper is on a roll of important scoops (including several major pieces last week), media critics and competitors have largely ignored the work and instead continued to focus on departures — and the scoops that departing journalists are publishing in the pages of Post rivals.
But some of those wounds have been self-inflicted.
Last week, the paper announced it was hiring a slate of new opinion writers, including three conservative writers from outlets including The National Review and The Spectator. But that announcement was quickly overshadowed by a series of cuts the paper made to senior staff, including the paper’s longtime local opinion columnist. The organization also decided to end the contract of editorial writer David Hoffman, he confirmed to Semafor on Sunday. Hoffman won his second Pulitzer Prize last year for editorial writing.
Post employees were also frustrated by the manner in which staff were informed that they were losing their jobs. According to two Post staffers, some Jewish staffers were told they were losing their jobs on the religion’s day of atonement, Yom Kippur.