Washington Post Columnist Resigns After Paper Spiked Criticism of Jeff Bezos

Ruth Marcus, a columnist and editor for The Washington Post’s opinion section, said she was leaving the newspaper after Will Lewis, the paper’s publisher, killed a column she wrote that was critical of the editorial pages’ new direction.

Ms. Marcus announced her resignation in an email to her colleagues at The Post, saying she had arrived at the decision to resign “with immense sadness.”

“I am taking this step, after more than 40 years at The Post, following Will’s decision to spike a column that I wrote expressing concern about the newly announced direction for the section and declined to discuss the decision with me,” Ms. Marcus wrote.

Ms. Marcus is the most prominent writer to leave The Post’s opinion section after Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon who owns the paper, changed its focus to “personal liberties and free markets.” David Shipley, the section’s editor, resigned as a result of that decision.

Olivia Petersen, a spokeswoman for The Washington Post, said in a statement that the newspaper was “grateful for Ruth’s significant contributions.”

“We respect her decision to leave and wish her the best,” the statement said.

Ms. Marcus declined to comment.

In her email to co-workers, Ms. Marcus enclosed a message she had sent to Mr. Bezos and Mr. Lewis. In the email, she told Mr. Lewis and Mr. Bezos that the shift for the opinion section “threatens to break the trust of readers that columnists are writing what they believe, not what the owner has deemed acceptable.”

“Will’s decision to not to run the column that I wrote respectfully dissenting from Jeff’s edict — something that I have not experienced in almost two decades of column-writing — underscores that the traditional freedom of columnists to select the topics they wish to address and say what they think has been dangerously eroded,” she wrote.