Woodward vs. Bezos

The Washington Post’s “most famous employee,” Bob Woodward, is publicly breaking with Post owner Jeff Bezos, prompting responses from the paper’s management.

“After more than a half-century breaking stories about Washington, one of the scoops in Mr. Woodward’s new memoir is his own breakup in all but name with Mr. Bezos,” the NYT’s Peter Baker reports.

The 592-page memoir, titled “Secrets,” comes out November 24. Baker’s story for the Times and this Craig Whitlock story for the Post were like the sound of a starting gun. The book has already cracked the top 100 on Amazon’s bestsellers list.

“Woodward devotes one chapter in ‘Secrets’ to his disappointment” in Bezos, Whitlock reports.

While Bezos “delivered on his word, initially,” Woodward writes, and there were many good years, the decision to spike the Post’s Kamala Harris endorsement in 2024 made it look like “Bezos and the newspaper were capitulating to Trump.”

And it didn’t end there. Per Whitlock, “Woodward writes that he grew more dismayed after Bezos made several other decisions: to prominently appear at Trump’s inauguration; to revamp The Post’s opinion pages so they would promote personal liberties and free markets, without publishing dissenting viewpoints; to cut the newsroom’s budget and lay off about 30 percent of its staff; and to remain silent in response to Trump’s attacks on the press.”

“It is not too late for media owners to prioritize moral courage over financial gain,” Woodward writes in the book, clearly pained that Bezos hasn’t spoken out.