Tag: flee

Two top Washington Post reporters have defected from the Jeff Bezos-owned paper as it continues to reel following the billionaire’s decision to kill an endorsement of Kamala Harris.

Political correspondents Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer were poached by The Atlantic — owned by Laurene Powell Jobs — and will join the left-leaning magazine ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s second inauguration, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.

Their departures comes on the heels of a report Monday by Puck News that White House correspondent Tyler Pager and investigative reporter Josh Dawsey have been “mulling a transfer or have already decided to exit.”

The Beltway broadsheet has suffered an exodus of top talent — and a reported loss of more than 200,000 subscribers — since Bezos blocked the editorial board from endorsing the Democratic candidate just weeks before the election.

Three Opinions section members — David Hoffman, Molly Roberts and Robert Kagan — quit following the decision not to endorse any candidate for the first time in decades.

Bezos, the second-richest person in the world with a net worth valued by Bloomberg Billionaires Index at $241 billion, was a frequent target of Trump during his first term in office — mainly due to the Washington Post’s coverage of his administration.

He defended his decision shortly after the initial outcry from staff that it was based on him trying to toady up to Trump.

“Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, ‘I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.’ None,” he wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post.

The fury among staffers was brewing long before his decision, as editors clashed over a planned reorganization by the paper’s new CEO Will Lewis, who took the helm in January.

Sally Buzbee, WaPo’s first female executive editor, abruptly resigned in June — instead of accepting a new role as head of the social media division.

Others who have since jumped ship include managing editor Matea Gold, who was hired away by the Times, and staff writer Shane Harris, who left for The Atlantic.

The Washington Post did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The paper has made a few key hires from the Wall Street Journal this past month, adding Warren Strobel as an intelligence reporter and Karen Pensiero as standards editor.

Last week, tech reporter Kara Swisher was said to be working toward assembling a group of investors to purchase the paper from Bezos.

“The Post can do better … it’s so maddening to see what’s happening. … Why not me? Why not any of us?” Swisher told Axios.

The Atlantic, meanwhile, has enjoyed success in recent years with a growing number of digital subscribers, and is in talks to add more Washington Post reporters to its team, two sources told the Times.

It is looking to hire about a dozen new reporters and editors in anticipation of Trump’s inauguration, according to the report.

“We believe in accountability journalism,” Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor in chief, told the Times. “We want to cover the incoming administration rigorously. I want to build our team with the best political reporters and editors I can find.”