The Washington Post

The previous headquarters of The Washington Post on 15th Street NW in Washington, D.C.

The Washington Post is regarded as one of the leading daily American newspapers along with The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal.^[16] The Post has distinguished itself through its political reporting on the workings of the White House, Congress, and other aspects of the U.S. government. It is considered a newspaper of record in the U.S.^[10][11]

The Washington Post does not print an edition for distribution away from the East Coast. In 2009, the newspaper ceased publication of its National Weekly Edition due to shrinking circulation.^[17] The majority of its newsprint readership is in Washington D.C. and its suburbs in Maryland and Northern Virginia.^[18]

The newspaper is one of a few U.S. newspapers with foreign bureaus, which are located in Baghdad, Beijing, Beirut, Berlin, Brussels, Cairo, Dakar, Hong Kong, Islamabad, Istanbul, Jerusalem, London, Mexico City, Moscow, Nairobi, New Delhi, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, Tokyo and Toronto.^[19] In November 2009, it announced the closure of its U.S. regional bureaus in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, as part of an increased focus on Washington political stories and local news.^[20] The newspaper has local bureaus in Maryland (Annapolis, Montgomery County, Prince George's County, and Southern Maryland) and Virginia (Alexandria, Fairfax, Loudoun County, Richmond, and Prince William County).^[21]

The Post's average printed weekday circulation is 159,040, making it the fourth largest newspaper in the country by circulation.^[22]

For many decades, the Post had its main office at 1150 15th Street NW. This real estate remained with Graham Holdings when the newspaper was sold to Jeff Bezos' Nash Holdings in 2013. Graham Holdings sold 1150 15th Street (along with 1515 L Street, 1523 L Street, and land beneath 1100 15th Street) for $159 million in November 2013. The Post continued to lease space at 1150 L Street NW.^[23] In May 2014, The Post leased the west tower of One Franklin Square, a high-rise building at 1301 K Street NW in Washington, D.C.^[24]

Mary Jordan was the founding editor, head of content, and moderator for Washington Post Live,^[25][26] The Post's editorial events business, which organizes political debates, conferences and news events for the media company, including "The 40th Anniversary of Watergate" in June 2012 that featured key Watergate figures including former White House counsel John Dean, Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, and reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, which was held at the Watergate hotel. Regular hosts include Frances Stead Sellers^[27][28][29] Lois Romano was formerly the editor of Washington Post Live.^[30]

The Post has its own exclusive zip code, 20071.

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Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times, abbreviated as LA Times, is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the Los Angeles suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the United States. The publication has won more than 40 Pulitzer Prizes. It is owned by Patrick Soon-Shiong and published by the Times Mirror Company. The newspaper's coverage has evolved more recently away from U.S. and international headlines and toward emphasizing California and especially Southern California stories.

East Coast of the United States

East Coast of the United States

The East Coast of the United States, also known as the Eastern Seaboard, the Atlantic Coast, and the Atlantic Seaboard, is the coastline where the Eastern United States meets the North Atlantic Ocean. This region includes Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and the federal capital of Washington, D.C..

Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and the third most populous in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles. With a population of 2,746,388 in the 2020 census, it is also the most populous city in the Midwest. As the seat of Cook County, the city is the center of the Chicago metropolitan area, one of the largest in the world.

Los Angeles

Los Angeles

Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Southern California. Los Angeles is the largest city in the state of California, the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, and one of the world's most populous megacities. With a population of roughly 3.9 million residents within the city limits as of 2020, Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic and cultural diversity, being the home of the Hollywood film industry, and its sprawling metropolitan area. The majority of the city proper lies in a basin in Southern California adjacent to the Pacific Ocean in the west and extending partly through the Santa Monica Mountains and north into the San Fernando Valley, with the city bordering the San Gabriel Valley to its east. It covers about 469 square miles (1,210 km2), and is the county seat of Los Angeles County, which is the most populous county in the United States with an estimated 9.86 million residents as of 2022.

New York City

New York City

New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over 300.46 square miles (778.2 km2), New York City is the most densely populated major city in the United States and more than twice as populous as Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest city. New York City is located at the southern tip of New York State. It constitutes the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the U.S. by both population and urban area. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York is one of the world's most populous megacities, and over 58 million people live within 250 mi (400 km) of the city. New York City is a global cultural, financial, entertainment, and media center with a significant influence on commerce, health care and life sciences, research, technology, education, politics, tourism, dining, art, fashion, and sports. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy, and is sometimes described as the capital of the world.

Mary Jordan (journalist)

Mary Jordan (journalist)

Mary Catherine Jordan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, best-selling author and National Correspondent for the Washington Post.

John Dean

John Dean

John Wesley Dean III is an American former attorney who served as White House Counsel for U.S. President Richard Nixon from July 1970 until April 1973. Dean is known for his role in the cover-up of the Watergate scandal and his subsequent testimony to Congress as a witness. His guilty plea to a single felony in exchange for becoming a key witness for the prosecution ultimately resulted in a reduced sentence, which he served at Fort Holabird outside Baltimore, Maryland. After his plea, he was disbarred.

Ben Bradlee

Ben Bradlee

Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee was an American journalist who served as managing editor, then as executive editor of The Washington Post, from 1965 to 1991. He became a public figure when the Post joined The New York Times in publishing the Pentagon Papers and gave the go-ahead for the paper's extensive coverage of the Watergate scandal. He was also criticized for editorial lapses when the Post had to return a Pulitzer Prize in 1981 after it discovered its award-winning story was false.

Bob Woodward

Bob Woodward

Robert Upshur Woodward is an American investigative journalist. He started working for The Washington Post as a reporter in 1971 and now holds the title of associate editor.

Carl Bernstein

Carl Bernstein

Carl Milton Bernstein is an American investigative journalist and author. While a young reporter for The Washington Post in 1972, Bernstein was teamed up with Bob Woodward, and the two did much of the original news reporting on the Watergate scandal. These scandals led to numerous government investigations and the eventual resignation of President Richard Nixon. The work of Woodward and Bernstein was called "maybe the single greatest reporting effort of all time" by longtime journalism figure Gene Roberts.

Frances Stead Sellers

Frances Stead Sellers

Frances Stead Sellers is a senior writer at The Washington Post and frequent moderator for the newsroom’s live platform, Washington Post Live.

Lois Romano

Lois Romano

Lois Romano is a national journalist who was an editor, reporter and columnist for The Washington Post and Politico.

Arc XP is a department of The Washington Post, which provides a publishing system and software for news organizations such as the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times.^[31][32]

Founding and early period

The Washington Post building the week after the 1948 Presidential election. The "Crow-Eaters" sign is addressed to Harry Truman, after his surprise re-election.

The newspaper was founded in 1877 by Stilson Hutchins (1838–1912), and in 1880 it added a Sunday edition, becoming the city's first newspaper to publish seven days a week.^[33]

The Washington Post and Union masthead, April 16, 1878

In April 1878, about four months into publication, The Washington Post purchased The Washington Union, a competing newspaper which was founded by John Lynch in late 1877. The Union had only been in operation about six months at the time of the acquisition. The combined newspaper was published from the Globe Building as The Washington Post and Union beginning on April 15, 1878, with a circulation of 13,000.^[34][35] The Post and Union name was used about two weeks until April 29, 1878, returning to the original masthead the following day.^[36]

In 1889, Hutchins sold the newspaper to Frank Hatton, a former Postmaster General, and Beriah Wilkins, a former Democratic congressman from Ohio. To promote the newspaper, the new owners requested the leader of the United States Marine Band, John Philip Sousa, to compose a march for the newspaper's essay contest awards ceremony. Sousa composed "The Washington Post".^[37] It became the standard music to accompany the two-step, a late 19th-century dance craze,^[38] and remains one of Sousa's best-known works.

In 1893, the newspaper moved to a building at 14th and E streets NW, where it would remain until 1950. This building combined all functions of the newspaper into one headquarters – newsroom, advertising, typesetting, and printing – that ran 24 hours per day.^[39]

In 1898, during the Spanish–American War, the Post printed Clifford K. Berryman's classic illustration Remember the Maine, which became the battle-cry for American sailors during the War. In 1902, Berryman published another famous cartoon in the Post – Drawing the Line in Mississippi. This cartoon depicts President Theodore Roosevelt showing compassion for a small bear cub and inspired New York store owner Morris Michtom to create the teddy bear.^[40]

Wilkins acquired Hatton's share of the newspaper in 1894 at Hatton's death. After Wilkins' death in 1903, his sons John and Robert ran the Post for two years before selling it in 1905 to John Roll McLean, owner of the Cincinnati Enquirer. During the Wilson presidency, the Post was credited with the "most famous newspaper typo" in D.C. history according to Reason magazine; the Post intended to report that President Wilson had been "entertaining" his future-wife Mrs. Galt, but instead wrote that he had been "entering" Mrs. Galt.^[41][42][43]

When John McLean died in 1916, he put the newspaper in trust, having little faith that his playboy son Edward "Ned" McLean could manage his inheritance. Ned went to court and broke the trust, but, under his management, the newspaper slumped toward ruin. He bled the paper for his lavish lifestyle and used it to promote political agendas.^[44]

During the Red Summer of 1919 the Post supported the white mobs and even ran a front-page story which advertised the location at which white servicemen were planning to meet to carry out attacks on black Washingtonians.^[45]

Meyer–Graham period

In 1929, financier Eugene Meyer (who had run the War Finance Corp. since World War I^[46]) secretly made an offer of $5 million for the Post, but he was rebuffed by Ned McLean.^[47][48] On June 1, 1933, Meyer bought the paper at a bankruptcy auction for $825,000 three weeks after stepping down as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. He had bid anonymously, and was prepared to go up to $2 million, far higher than the other bidders.^[49][50] These included William Randolph Hearst, who had long hoped to shut down the ailing Post to benefit his own Washington newspaper presence.^[51]

The Post's health and reputation were restored under Meyer's ownership. In 1946, he was succeeded as publisher by his son-in-law, Philip Graham.^[52] Meyer eventually gained the last laugh over Hearst, who had owned the old Washington Times and the Herald before their 1939 merger that formed the Times-Herald. This was in turn bought by and merged into the Post in 1954.^[53] The combined paper was officially named The Washington Post and Times-Herald until 1973, although the Times-Herald portion of the nameplate became less and less prominent over time. The merger left the Post with two remaining local competitors, the Washington Star (Evening Star) and The Washington Daily News which merged in 1972, forming the Washington Star-News.^[54][55]

The Monday, July 21, 1969, edition, with the headline "'The Eagle Has Landed'‍—‌Two Men Walk on the Moon"

After Phil Graham's death in 1963, control of The Washington Post Company passed to his wife Katharine Graham (1917–2001), who was also Eugene Meyer's daughter. Few women had run prominent national newspapers in the United States. Katharine Graham described her own anxiety and lack of confidence as she stepped into a leadership role in her autobiography. She served as publisher from 1969 to 1979.^[56]

Graham took The Washington Post Company public on June 15, 1971, in the midst of the Pentagon Papers controversy. A total of 1,294,000 shares were offered to the public at $26 per share.^[57][58] By the end of Graham's tenure as CEO in 1991, the stock was worth $888 per share, not counting the effect of an intermediate 4:1 stock split.^[59]

During this time, Graham also oversaw the Post company's diversification purchase of the for-profit education and training company Kaplan, Inc. for $40 million in 1984.^[60] Twenty years later, Kaplan had surpassed the Post newspaper as the company's leading contributor to income, and by 2010 Kaplan accounted for more than 60% of the entire company revenue stream.^[61]

Executive editor Ben Bradlee put the newspaper's reputation and resources behind reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who, in a long series of articles, chipped away at the story behind the 1972 burglary of Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate complex in Washington. The Post's dogged coverage of the story, the outcome of which ultimately played a major role in the resignation of President Richard Nixon, won the newspaper a Pulitzer Prize in 1973.^[62]

In 1972, the "Book World" section was introduced with Pulitzer Prize-winning critic William McPherson as its first editor.^[63] It featured Pulitzer Prize-winning critics such as Jonathan Yardley and Michael Dirda, the latter of whom established his career as a critic at the Post. In 2009, after 37 years, with great reader outcries and protest, The Washington Post Book World as a standalone insert was discontinued, the last issue being Sunday, February 15, 2009,^[64] along with a general reorganization of the paper, such as placing the Sunday editorials on the back page of the main front section rather than the "Outlook" section and distributing some other locally oriented "op-ed" letters and commentaries in other sections.^[65] However, book reviews are still published in the Outlook section on Sundays and in the Style section the rest of the week, as well as online.^[65]

In 1975, the pressmen's union went on strike. The Post hired replacement workers to replace the pressmen's union, and other unions returned to work in February 1976.^[66]

Donald E. Graham, Katharine's son, succeeded her as a publisher in 1979.^[56]

In 1995, the domain name washingtonpost.com was purchased. That same year, a failed effort to create an online news repository called Digital Ink launched. The following year it was shut down and the first website was launched in June 1996.^[67]

Jeff Bezos era (2013–present)

Demolition of the 15th Street headquarters in April 2016

One Franklin Square, the current home of the Post

In late September 2013, Jeff Bezos purchased the Washington Post and other local publications, websites, and real estate^[68][69][70] for US$250 million,^[71][72][73] transferring ownership to Nash Holdings LLC, Bezos's private investment company.^[72] The paper's former parent company, which retained some other assets such as Kaplan and a group of TV stations, was renamed Graham Holdings Company shortly after the sale.^[74][75]

Nash Holdings, including the Post, is operated separately from technology company Amazon, which Bezos founded and where he is as of 2022^[update] executive chairman and the largest single shareholder, with 12.7% of voting rights.^[76][77]

Bezos said he has a vision that recreates "the 'daily ritual' of reading the Post as a bundle, not merely a series of individual stories..."^[78] He has been described as a "hands-off owner", holding teleconference calls with executive editor Martin Baron every two weeks.^[79] Bezos appointed Fred Ryan (founder and CEO of Politico) to serve as publisher and chief executive officer. This signaled Bezos' intent to shift the Post to a more digital focus with a national and global readership.^[80]

In 2015 the Post moved from the building it owned at 1150 15th Street to a leased space three blocks away at One Franklin Square on K Street.^[81] Since 2014 the Post launched an online personal finance section,^[82] a blog, and a podcast with a retro theme.^[83][84] The Post won the 2020 Webby People's Voice Award for News & Politics in the Social and Web categories.^[85]

In 2017, the paper hired columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered by Saudi agents in Istanbul in 2018.^[86][87]

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Stilson Hutchins

Stilson Hutchins

Stilson Hutchins was an American newspaper reporter and publisher, best known as founder of the broadsheet newspaper The Washington Post. Hutchins was also a Southern sympathizer and an outspoken racist against African Americans, Native Americans, and other immigrants.

Beriah Wilkins

Beriah Wilkins

Beriah Wilkins was an American politician and Civil War veteran who served three terms as a U.S. Representative from Ohio from 1883 to 1889.

United States Marine Band

United States Marine Band

The United States Marine Band is the premier band of the United States Marine Corps. Established by act of Congress on July 11, 1798, it is the oldest of the United States military bands and the oldest professional musical organization in the United States. Today, the Marine Band includes the Marine Chamber Orchestra and Marine Chamber Ensembles.

John Philip Sousa

John Philip Sousa

John Philip Sousa was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era known primarily for American military marches. He is known as "The March King" or the "American March King", to distinguish him from his British counterpart Kenneth J. Alford. Among his best-known marches are "The Stars and Stripes Forever", "Semper Fidelis", "The Liberty Bell", "The Thunderer", and "The Washington Post".

The Washington Post (march)

The Washington Post (march)

"The Washington Post" is a march composed by John Philip Sousa in 1889. Since then, it has remained as one of his most popular marches throughout the United States and many other countries.

Spanish–American War

Spanish–American War

The Spanish–American War began in the aftermath of the internal explosion of USS Maine in Havana Harbor in Cuba, leading to United States intervention in the Cuban War of Independence. The war led to the United States emerging predominant in the Caribbean region, and resulted in U.S. acquisition of Spain's Pacific possessions. It led to United States involvement in the Philippine Revolution and later to the Philippine–American War.

Clifford K. Berryman

Clifford K. Berryman

Clifford Kennedy Berryman was a Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist with The Washington Star newspaper from 1907 to 1949. He was previously a cartoonist for The Washington Post from 1891 to 1907.

Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt Jr., often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26th president of the United States from 1901 to 1909. He previously served as the 25th vice president under President William McKinley from March to September 1901 and as the 33rd governor of New York from 1899 to 1900. Assuming the presidency after McKinley's assassination, Roosevelt emerged as a leader of the Republican Party and became a driving force for anti-trust and Progressive policies.

Morris Michtom

Morris Michtom

Morris Michtom was a Russian-born businessman and inventor who, with his wife Rose, also a Russian Jewish immigrant who lived in Brooklyn, came up with the idea for the teddy bear in 1902 around the same time as Richard Steiff in Germany. They founded the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company which, after Michtom's death, became the largest doll-making company in the United States.

Reason (magazine)

Reason (magazine)

Reason is an American libertarian monthly magazine published by the Reason Foundation. The magazine has a circulation of around 50,000 and was named one of the 50 best magazines in 2003 and 2004 by the Chicago Tribune.

Edward Beale McLean

Edward Beale McLean

Edward Beale McLean was the publisher and owner of The Washington Post newspaper, from 1916 until 1933. His wife, Evalyn Walsh McLean, was a prominent Washington socialite. McLean was also a thoroughbred racehorse owner and purchaser of the Hope Diamond, which was traditionally believed to carry a curse. McLean was declared insane and died in a psychiatric hospital.

Eugene Meyer (financier)

Eugene Meyer (financier)

Eugene Isaac Meyer was an American financier and newspaper publisher. Through his public career, he served as the 5th chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1930 to 1933 and was the first president of the World Bank Group from June to December 1946. Meyer published The Washington Post from 1933 to 1946, and the paper stayed in his family throughout the rest of the 20th century.

1933–2000

When financier Eugene Meyer bought the bankrupt Post in 1933, he assured the public he would not be beholden to any party.^[88] But as a leading Republican (it was his old friend Herbert Hoover who had made him Federal Reserve Chairman in 1930), his opposition to FDR's New Deal colored the paper's editorial stance as well as its news coverage. This included editorializing "news" stories written by Meyer under a pseudonym.^[89][90][91] His wife Agnes Ernst Meyer was a journalist from the other end of the spectrum politically. The Post ran many of her pieces including tributes to her personal friends John Dewey and Saul Alinsky.^{[92][93][94][95]}

Eugene Meyer became head of the World Bank in 1946, and he named his son-in-law Phil Graham to succeed him as Post publisher. The post-war years saw the developing friendship of Phil and Kay Graham with the Kennedys, the Bradlees and the rest of the "Georgetown Set" (many Harvard alumni) that would color the Post's political orientation.^[96] Kay Graham's most memorable Georgetown soirée guest list included British diplomat/communist spy Donald Maclean.^[97][98]

The Post is credited with coining the term "McCarthyism" in a 1950 editorial cartoon by Herbert Block.^[99] Depicting buckets of tar, it made fun of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's "tarring" tactics, i.e., smear campaigns and character assassination against those targeted by his accusations. Sen. McCarthy was attempting to do for the Senate what the House Un-American Activities Committee had been doing for years—investigating Soviet espionage in America. The HUAC made Richard Nixon nationally known for his role in the Hiss/Chambers case that exposed communist spying in the State Department. The committee had evolved from the McCormack-Dickstein Committee of the 1930s.^[100]

Two United States soldiers and one South Vietnamese soldier waterboard a captured North Vietnamese prisoner of war. The publication of the image on the front cover of The Washington Post on 21 January 1968 led to the court-martial of one of the United States soldiers, although The Washington Post described waterboarding as "fairly common".^[101][102]

Phil Graham's friendship with JFK remained strong until their untimely deaths in 1963.^[103] FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reportedly told the new President Lyndon B. Johnson, "I don't have much influence with the Post because I frankly don't read it. I view it like the Daily Worker."^[104][105]

Ben Bradlee became the editor-in-chief in 1968, and Kay Graham officially became the publisher in 1969, paving the way for the aggressive reporting of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate scandals. The Post strengthened public opposition to the Vietnam War in 1971 when it published the Pentagon Papers.^[106] In the mid-1970s, some conservatives referred to the Post as "Pravda on the Potomac" because of its perceived left-wing bias in both reporting and editorials.^[107] Since then, the appellation has been used by both liberal and conservative critics of the newspaper.^[108][109]

2000–present

In the PBS documentary Buying the War, journalist Bill Moyers said in the year prior to the Iraq War there were 27 editorials supporting the Bush administration's ambitions to invade the country. National security correspondent Walter Pincus reported that he had been ordered to cease his reports that were critical of the administration.^[110] According to author and journalist Greg Mitchell: "By the Post's own admission, in the months before the war, it ran more than 140 stories on its front page promoting the war, while contrary information got lost".^[111]

On March 23, 2007, Chris Matthews said on his television program, "The Washington Post is not the liberal newspaper it was [...] I have been reading it for years and it is a neocon newspaper".^[112] It has regularly published a mixture of op-ed columnists, with some of them left-leaning (including E. J. Dionne, Dana Milbank, Greg Sargent, and Eugene Robinson), and some of them right-leaning (including George Will, Marc Thiessen, Michael Gerson and Charles Krauthammer).

In November 2007, the newspaper was criticized by independent journalist Robert Parry for reporting on anti-Obama chain e-mails without sufficiently emphasizing to its readers the false nature of the anonymous claims.^[113] In 2009, Parry criticized the newspaper for its allegedly unfair reporting on liberal politicians, including Vice President Al Gore and President Barack Obama.^[114]

Responding to criticism of the newspaper's coverage during the run-up to the 2008 presidential election, former Post ombudsman Deborah Howell wrote: "The opinion pages have strong conservative voices; the editorial board includes centrists and conservatives; and there were editorials critical of Obama. Yet opinion was still weighted toward Obama."^[115] According to a 2009 Oxford University Press book by Richard Davis on the impact of blogs on American politics, liberal bloggers link to The Washington Post and The New York Times more often than other major newspapers; however, conservative bloggers also link predominantly to liberal newspapers.^[116]

In mid-September 2016, Matthew Ingram of Forbes joined Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, and Trevor Timm of The Guardian in criticizing The Washington Post for "demanding that [former National Security Agency contractor Edward] Snowden ... stand trial on espionage charges".^{[117][118][119][120]}

In February 2017, the Post adopted the slogan "Democracy Dies in Darkness" for its masthead.^[121]

Since 2011, the Post has been running a column called "The Fact Checker" that the Post describes as a "truth squad".^[122] The Fact Checker received a $250,000 grant from Google News Initiative/YouTube to expand production of video fact checks.^[122]

Political endorsements

In the vast majority of U.S. elections, for federal, state, and local office, the Post editorial board has endorsed Democratic candidates.^[123] The paper's editorial board and endorsement decision-making are separate from newsroom operations.^[123] Until 1976, the Post did not regularly make endorsements in presidential elections. Since it endorsed Jimmy Carter in 1976, the Post has endorsed Democrats in presidential elections, and has never endorsed a Republican for president in the general election,^[123] although in the 1988 presidential election, the Post declined to endorse either Governor Michael Dukakis (the Democratic candidate) or Vice President George H. W. Bush (the Republican candidate).^[123][124] The Post editorial board endorsed Barack Obama in 2008^[125] and 2012;^[126] Hillary Clinton in 2016;^[127] and Joe Biden for 2020.^[128]

While the newspaper predominantly endorses Democrats in congressional, state, and local elections, it has occasionally endorsed Republican candidates.^[123] While the paper has not endorsed Republican candidates for governor of Virginia,^[123] it endorsed Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich's unsuccessful bid for a second term in 2006.^[123][129] In 2006, it repeated its historic endorsements of every Republican incumbent for Congress in Northern Virginia.^[130] The Post editorial board endorsed Virginia's Republican U.S. Senator John Warner in his Senate reelection campaign in 1990, 1996 and 2002; the paper's most recent endorsement of a Maryland Republican for U.S. Senate was in the 1980s, when the paper endorsed Senator Charlies "Mac" Mathias Jr.^[123] In U.S. House of Representatives elections, moderate Republicans in Virginia and Maryland, such as Wayne Gilchrest, Thomas M. Davis, and Frank Wolf, have enjoyed the support of the Post; the Post also has endorsed some Republicans, such as Carol Schwartz, in some D.C. races.^[123]

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Herbert Hoover

Herbert Hoover

Herbert Clark Hoover was an American politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933. He was a member of the Republican Party, holding office during the onset of the Great Depression in the United States. A self-made man who became rich as a mining engineer, Hoover led the Commission for Relief in Belgium, served as the director of the U.S. Food Administration, and served as the U.S. Secretary of Commerce.

New Deal

New Deal

The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs and agencies included the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), the Farm Security Administration (FSA), the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA) and the Social Security Administration (SSA). They provided support for farmers, the unemployed, youth, and the elderly. The New Deal included new constraints and safeguards on the banking industry and efforts to re-inflate the economy after prices had fallen sharply. New Deal programs included both laws passed by Congress as well as presidential executive orders during the first term of the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Opinion piece

Opinion piece

An opinion piece is an article, usually published in a newspaper or magazine, that mainly reflects the author's opinion about a subject. Opinion pieces are featured in many periodicals.

John Dewey

John Dewey

John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the first half of the twentieth century.

Saul Alinsky

Saul Alinsky

Saul David Alinsky was an American community activist and political theorist. His work through the Chicago-based Industrial Areas Foundation helping poor communities organize to press demands upon landlords, politicians, economists, bankers and business leaders won him national recognition and notoriety. Responding to the impatience of a New Left generation of activists in the 1960s, Alinsky – in his widely cited Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer (1971) – defended the arts both of confrontation and of compromise involved in community organizing as keys to the struggle for social justice.

Alumni

Alumni

Alumni are former students of a school, college, or university who have either attended or graduated in some fashion from the institution. The feminine plural alumnae is sometimes used for groups of women. The word is Latin and means "one who is being nourished". The term is not synonymous with "graduate"; one can be an alumnus without graduating. The term is sometimes used to refer to a former employee or member of an organization, contributor, or inmate.

Donald Maclean (spy)

Donald Maclean (spy)

Donald Duart Maclean was a British diplomat who conveyed government secrets to the Soviet Union.

McCarthyism

McCarthyism

McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion and treason, especially when related to anarchism, communism, and socialism, and especially when the accusations are false or unproven and are made in a public and attention-grabbing manner.

Joseph McCarthy

Joseph McCarthy

Joseph Raymond McCarthy was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of a period in the United States in which Cold War tensions fueled fears of widespread communist subversion. He is known for alleging that numerous communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers had infiltrated the United States federal government, universities, film industry, and elsewhere. Ultimately, he was censured for refusing to cooperate with, and abusing members of, the committee established to investigate whether or not he should be censured. The term "McCarthyism", coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices, was soon applied to similar anti-communist activities. Today, the term is used more broadly to mean demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents.

Smear campaign

Smear campaign

A smear campaign, also referred to as a smear tactic or simply a smear, is an effort to damage or call into question someone's reputation, by propounding negative propaganda. It makes use of discrediting tactics.

House Un-American Activities Committee

House Un-American Activities Committee

The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having either fascist or communist ties. It became a standing (permanent) committee in 1945, and from 1969 onwards it was known as the House Committee on Internal Security. When the House abolished the committee in 1975, its functions were transferred to the House Judiciary Committee.

Soviet espionage in the United States

Soviet espionage in the United States

As early as the 1920s, the Soviet Union, through its GRU, OGPU, NKVD, and KGB intelligence agencies, used Russian and foreign-born nationals, as well as Communists of American origin, to perform espionage activities in the United States, forming various spy rings. Particularly during the 1940s, some of these espionage networks had contact with various U.S. government agencies. These Soviet espionage networks illegally transmitted confidential information to Moscow, such as information on the development of the atomic bomb. Soviet spies also participated in propaganda and disinformation operations, known as active measures, and attempted to sabotage diplomatic relationships between the U.S. and its allies.

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"Jimmy's World" fabrication

In September 1980, a Sunday feature story appeared on the front page of the Post titled "Jimmy's World" in which reporter Janet Cooke wrote a profile of the life of an eight-year-old heroin addict.^[131] Although some within the Post doubted the story's veracity, the paper's editors defended it, and assistant managing editor Bob Woodward submitted the story to the Pulitzer Prize Board at Columbia University for consideration.^[132] Cooke was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing on April 13, 1981. The story was subsequently found to be a complete fabrication, and the Pulitzer was returned.^[133]

Private "salon" solicitation

In July 2009, in the midst of an intense debate over health care reform, The Politico reported that a health-care lobbyist had received an "astonishing" offer of access to the Post's "health-care reporting and editorial staff."^[134] Post publisher Katharine Weymouth had planned a series of exclusive dinner parties or "salons" at her private residence, to which she had invited prominent lobbyists, trade group members, politicians, and business people.^[135] Participants were to be charged $25,000 to sponsor a single salon, and $250,000 for 11 sessions, with the events being closed to the public and to the non-Post press.^[136] Politico's revelation gained a somewhat mixed response in Washington^{[137][138][139]} as it gave the impression that the parties' sole purpose was to allow insiders to purchase face time with Post staff.

Almost immediately following the disclosure, Weymouth canceled the salons, saying, "This should never have happened." White House counsel Gregory B. Craig reminded officials that under federal ethics rules, they need advance approval for such events. Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli, who was named on the flier as one of the salon's "Hosts and Discussion Leaders", said he was "appalled" by the plan, adding, "It suggests that access to Washington Post journalists was available for purchase."^[140][135]

China Daily advertising supplements

Dating back to 2011, The Washington Post began to include "China Watch" advertising supplements provided by China Daily, an English language newspaper owned by the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party, on the print and online editions. Although the header to the online "China Watch" section included the text "A Paid Supplement to The Washington Post", James Fallows of The Atlantic suggested that the notice was not clear enough for most readers to see.^[141] Distributed to the Post and multiple newspapers around the world, the "China Watch" advertising supplements range from four to eight pages and appear at least monthly. According to a 2018 report by The Guardian, "China Watch" uses "a didactic, old-school approach to propaganda."^[142]

In 2020, a report by Freedom House titled "Beijing's Global Megaphone" was also critical of the Post and other newspapers for distributing "China Watch".^[143][144] In the same year, 35 Republican members of the U.S. Congress wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice in February 2020 calling for an investigation of potential FARA violations by China Daily.^[145] The letter named an article that appeared in the Post, "Education Flaws Linked to Hong Kong Unrest", as an example of "articles [that] serve as cover for China's atrocities, including ... its support for the crackdown in Hong Kong."^[146] According to The Guardian, the Post had already stopped running "China Watch" in 2019.^[147]

Employee relations

In 1986, five employees (including Newspaper Guild unit chairman Thomas R. Sherwood and assistant Maryland editor Claudia Levy) sued The Washington Post for overtime pay, stating that the newspaper had claimed that budgets did not allow for overtime wages.^[148]

In June 2018, over 400 employees of The Washington Post signed an open letter to the owner Jeff Bezos demanding "fair wages; fair benefits for retirement, family leave and health care; and a fair amount of job security." The open letter was accompanied by video testimonials from employees, who alleged "shocking pay practices" despite record growth in subscriptions at the newspaper, with salaries rising an average of $10 per week, which the letter claimed was less than half the rate of inflation. The petition followed on a year of unsuccessful negotiations between The Washington Post Guild and upper management overpay and benefit increases.^[149]

In August 2022, The Post suspended its media reporter Paul Farhi for five days without pay after he tweeted in March 2022 about the publication's policy of removing bylines and datelines off stories filed by staff in Russia. The Post refused to address Farhi’s suspension in arbitration, as the company’s contract with the employee's union (Post Guild) expired June 30, allowing the company to claim that it had no obligation to address the grievance.^[150][151]

Felicia Sonmez

In 2020, The Post suspended reporter Felicia Sonmez after she posted a series of tweets about the 2003 rape allegation against basketball star Kobe Bryant after Bryant's death. She was reinstated after over 200 Post journalists wrote an open letter criticizing the paper's decision.^[152] In July 2021, Sonmez sued The Post and several of its top editors, alleging workplace discrimination; the suit was dismissed in March 2022, with the court determining that Sonmez had failed to make plausible claims.^[153] In June 2022, Sonmez engaged in a Twitter feud with fellow Post staffers David Weigel (criticizing him over what he later described as "an offensive joke") and Jose A. Del Real (who accused Sonmez of "engaging in repeated and targeted public harassment of a colleague").^[154] Following the feud, the newspaper suspended Weigel for a month for violating the company's social media guidelines, and the newspaper's executive editor Sally Buzbee sent out a newsroom-wide memorandum directing employees to "Be constructive and collegial" in their interactions with colleagues.^[154] The newspaper fired Sonmez, writing in an emailed termination letter that she had engaged in "misconduct that includes insubordination, maligning your co-workers online and violating The Post's standards on workplace collegiality and inclusivity."^[155] The Post faced criticism from the Post Guild after refusing to go to arbitration over the dismissal, stating that the expiration of the Post’s contract “does not relieve the Post from its contractual obligation to arbitrate grievances filed prior to expiration.”^[150]

Lawsuit by Covington Catholic High School student

In 2019, Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann filed a defamation lawsuit against the Post, alleging that it libeled him in seven articles regarding the January 2019 Lincoln Memorial confrontation between Covington students and the Indigenous Peoples March.^[156][157] A federal judge dismissed the case, ruling that 30 of the 33 statements in the Post that Sandmann alleged were libelous were not, but allowed Sandmann to file an amended complaint as to three statements.^[158] After Sandmann's lawyers amended the complaint, the suit was reopened on October 28, 2019.^[159][160] In 2020, The Post settled the lawsuit brought by Sandmann for an undisclosed amount.^[161]

Controversial op-eds and columns

Several Washington Post op-eds and columns have prompted criticism, including a number of comments on race by columnist Richard Cohen over the years,^[162][163] and a controversial 2014 column on campus sexual assault by George Will.^[164][165]

The Post's decision to run an op-ed by Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, a leader in Yemen's Houthi movement, was criticized by some activists on the basis that it provided a platform to an "anti-Western and antisemitic group supported by Iran."^[166] The headline of a 2020 op-ed titled "It's time to give the elites a bigger say in choosing the president" was changed, without an editor's note, after backlash.^[167]

In 2022, actor Johnny Depp successfully sued ex-wife Amber Heard for an op-ed she wrote in The Washington Post where she described herself as a public figure representing domestic abuse two years after she had publicly accused him of domestic violence.^[168][169]

Criticism by elected officials

Former president Donald Trump repeatedly railed against The Washington Post on his Twitter account,^[170] having "tweeted or retweeted criticism of the paper, tying it to Amazon more than 20 times since his campaign for president" by August 2018.^[171] In addition to often attacking the paper itself, Trump used Twitter to blast various Post journalists and columnists.^[172]

During the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, Senator Bernie Sanders repeatedly criticized The Washington Post, saying that its coverage of his campaign was slanted against him and attributing this to Jeff Bezos' purchase of the newspaper.^[173][174] Sanders' criticism was echoed by the socialist magazine Jacobin^[175] and the progressive journalist watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.^[176] Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron responded by saying that Sanders' criticism was "baseless and conspiratorial".^[177]

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Janet Cooke

Janet Cooke

Janet Leslie Cooke is an American former journalist. She received a Pulitzer Prize in 1981 for an article written for The Washington Post. The story was later discovered to have been fabricated and Cooke returned the Pulitzer, the only person to date to do so, after admitting she had fabricated stories. The Pulitzer was instead awarded to Teresa Carpenter, a nominee who had lost to Cooke.

Bob Woodward

Bob Woodward

Robert Upshur Woodward is an American investigative journalist. He started working for The Washington Post as a reporter in 1971 and now holds the title of associate editor.

Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism

Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism

The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is located in Pulitzer Hall on the university's Morningside Heights campus in New York City.

Health care reforms proposed during the Obama administration

Health care reforms proposed during the Obama administration

There were a number of different health care reforms proposed during the Obama administration. Key reforms address cost and coverage and include obesity, prevention and treatment of chronic conditions, defensive medicine or tort reform, incentives that reward more care instead of better care, redundant payment systems, tax policy, rationing, a shortage of doctors and nurses, intervention vs. hospice, fraud, and use of imaging technology, among others.

Katharine Weymouth

Katharine Weymouth

Katharine Bouchage Weymouth is an American lawyer and businesswoman who from 2008 to 2014 was publisher of The Washington Post and chief executive officer of Washington Post Media.

Gregory B. Craig

Gregory B. Craig

Gregory Bestor Craig is an American lawyer and former White House Counsel under President Barack Obama, from 2009 to 2010. A former attorney at the Washington, D.C. law firm of Williams & Connolly, Craig has represented numerous high-profile clients. Prior to becoming White House Counsel, he served as assistant to the President and special counsel in the White House of President Bill Clinton, where he directed the team defending Clinton against impeachment. Craig also served as a senior advisor to Senator Edward Kennedy and to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Honest Leadership and Open Government Act

Honest Leadership and Open Government Act

The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 is a law of the United States federal government that amended parts of the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995. It strengthens public disclosure requirements concerning lobbying activity and funding, places more restrictions on gifts for members of Congress and their staff, and provides for mandatory disclosure of earmarks in expenditure bills. The bill was signed into law by President George W. Bush on September 14, 2007.

Marcus Brauchli

Marcus Brauchli

Marcus W. Brauchli is a journalist, media investor and advisor. He was executive editor of The Washington Post from 2008 to 2012, overseeing the Post's print and digital news operations. He succeeded Leonard Downie, Jr. and preceded Martin Baron. He previously served as the top editor of The Wall Street Journal before Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. acquired the Journal's parent company, Dow Jones.

China Daily

China Daily

China Daily is an English-language daily newspaper owned by the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party.

James Fallows

James Fallows

James Mackenzie Fallows is an American writer and journalist. He is a former national correspondent for The Atlantic. His work has also appeared in Slate, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker and The American Prospect, among others. He is a former editor of U.S. News & World Report, and as President Jimmy Carter's chief speechwriter for two years was the youngest person ever to hold that job.

Freedom House

Freedom House

Freedom House is a non-profit organization group in Washington, D.C. It is best known for political advocacy surrounding issues of democracy, political freedom, and human rights. Freedom House was founded in October 1941, and Wendell Willkie and Eleanor Roosevelt served as its first honorary chairpersons. It describes itself as a "clear voice for democracy and freedom around the world". The organization was 66% funded by grants from the U.S. government in 2006, a number which has increased to 86% in 2016. It also receives funds from other governments and various semi-public and private foundations.

Claudia Levy

Claudia Levy

Claudia Dale Levy was an American journalist and union activist who worked at The Washington Post in the 1980s and 1990s.

Major stockholders

1. Stilson Hutchins (1877–1889)
2. Frank Hatton and Beriah Wilkins (1889–1905)
3. John R. McLean (1905–1916)
4. Edward (Ned) McLean (1916–1933)
5. Eugene Meyer (1933–1948)
6. The Washington Post Company (1948–2013)
7. Nash Holdings (Jeff Bezos) (2013–present)

Publishers

1. Stilson Hutchins (1877–1889)
2. Beriah Wilkins (1889–1905)
3. John R. McLean (1905–1916)
4. Edward (Ned) McLean (1916–1933)
5. Eugene Meyer (1933–1946)
6. Philip L. Graham (1946–1961)
7. John W. Sweeterman (1961–1968)
8. Katharine Graham (1969–1979)
9. Donald E. Graham (1979–2000)
10. Boisfeuillet Jones Jr. (2000–2008)
11. Katharine Weymouth (2008–2014)
12. Frederick J. Ryan Jr. (2014–present)

Executive editors

1. James Russell Wiggins (1955–1968)
2. Ben Bradlee (1968–1991)
3. Leonard Downie Jr. (1991–2008)
4. Marcus Brauchli (2008–2012)^[178]
5. Martin Baron (2012–2021)^[179]
6. Sally Buzbee (2021–present)^[180]

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Stilson Hutchins

Stilson Hutchins

Stilson Hutchins was an American newspaper reporter and publisher, best known as founder of the broadsheet newspaper The Washington Post. Hutchins was also a Southern sympathizer and an outspoken racist against African Americans, Native Americans, and other immigrants.

Beriah Wilkins

Beriah Wilkins

Beriah Wilkins was an American politician and Civil War veteran who served three terms as a U.S. Representative from Ohio from 1883 to 1889.

John W. Sweeterman

John W. Sweeterman

John William Sweeterman (1907–1998) was an American newspaperman who was publisher of The Washington Post from 1961 to 1968, and who helped engineer the Post's 1954 acquisition of the Washington Times-Herald, which improved the Post's struggling financial situation. Born in Celina, Ohio, he attended the University of Dayton and started at the Dayton Journal-Herald as an office boy, eventually becoming the vice president and general manager. He moved to Washington, D.C., in 1950 to work for the Post where he became business manager and then general manager under owner and publisher Phil Graham. Sweeterman became publisher in 1961 until his retirement in 1968, when he persuaded then owner Katharine Graham to take over the role of publisher. He served as vice chairman of the Washington Post Company from 1968 to 1971. He also was a director of the American Security and Trust Company and president of the Community Welfare Council. He received an honorary degree from Saint Joseph's College, Indiana, in 1969.

Boisfeuillet Jones Jr.

Boisfeuillet Jones Jr.

Boisfeuillet "Bo" Jones Jr. was president and chief executive officer of MacNeil/Lehrer Productions in Arlington, Virginia. He was former Vice Chairman of The Washington Post Company and Chairman of The Washington Post board from 2008 until December 31, 2011. From 2000 to 2008 he was publisher and chief executive officer of The Washington Post.

Fred Ryan

Fred Ryan

Frederick Joseph Ryan Jr. is an American media proprietor, political adviser, and lawyer who serves as the publisher and chief executive officer of The Washington Post. He was the president and chief operating officer of Allbritton Communications Company and founding chief executive officer and president of Politico. He was the chief of staff for former President Ronald Reagan from 1989 to 1995, and is chairman of the board of trustees of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.

Leonard Downie Jr.

Leonard Downie Jr.

Leonard "Len" Downie Jr. is an American journalist who was executive editor of The Washington Post from 1991 to 2008. He worked in the Post newsroom for 44 years. His roles at the newspaper included executive editor, managing editor, national editor, London correspondent, assistant managing editor for metropolitan news, deputy metropolitan editor, and investigative and local reporter. Downie became executive editor upon the retirement of Ben Bradlee. During Downie's tenure as executive editor, the Washington Post won 25 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper had won during the term of a single executive editor. Downie currently serves as vice president at large at the Washington Post, as Weil Family Professor of Journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, and as a member of several advisory boards associated with journalism and public affairs.

Martin Baron

Martin Baron

Martin Baron is an American journalist who was editor of The Washington Post from December 31, 2012, until his retirement on February 28, 2021. He was previously the editor of The Boston Globe from 2001 to 2012.