By Liam Reilly, CNN

(CNN) — Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos on Wednesday announced a “significant shift” to the publisher’s opinion page that led David Shipley, the paper’s editorial page editor, to leave the paper. The changes upended precedent and rattled a media company that has already been shaken by years of turmoil and leadership turnover.

As part of the overhaul, the Post will publish daily opinion stories on two editorial “pillars”: personal liberties and free markets, Bezos teased in an X post on Wednesday morning after announcing the change in a company-wide email. The Post’s opinion section will cover other subjects, too, Bezos wrote, but “viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”

“I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America,” Bezos wrote. “I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.”

In announcing the shift, the billionaire media mogul championed the changes as based in American principles anchored in “freedom.” This freedom, Bezos emphasized, “is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.”

As a basis for the change, Bezos noted that legacy opinion sections have become outdated and have been replaced by the internet.

“There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views,” Bezos said via X. “Today, the internet does that job.”

David Shipley leaves the Post

Bezos also shared that David Shipley, the Post’s editorial page editor, would part ways with the company. Shipley had been offered a role in leading Bezos’ planned changes but decided to step away instead.

“I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter,” Bezos wrote on X. “I suggested to him that if the answer wasn’t ‘hell yes,’ then it had to be ‘no.’ After careful consideration, David decided to step away. This is a significant shift, it won’t be easy, and it will require 100% commitment — I respect his decision.”

Bezos said the Post will search for a new opinion editor to “own” the paper’s new editorial direction.

In an email to the Post’s editorial team obtained by CNN, Shipley noted his decision to leave the publisher was reached “after reflection on how I can best move forward in the profession I love.”

“I will always be thankful for the opportunity I was given to work alongside a team of opinion journalists whose commitment to strong, innovative, reported commentary inspired me every day — and was affirmed by two Pulitzer Prizes and two Loeb Awards in two short years,” Shipley wrote in the email.

Shipley’s departure comes after spending four months navigating increasing criticism of the Post from subscribers and its own journalists. During that time, he defended the Post’s decision to not run a cartoon from Ann Telnaes that featured Jeff Bezos – and led to her resignation.

“Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force,” Shipley said in January. “My decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled another column — this one a satire — for publication. The only bias was against repetition.”

Post staffers lash out

Bezos’ announcement was immediately met with hostility by some Post staffers who publicly took issue with the move.

Jeff Stein, the publisher’s chief economics reporter, called the overhaul a “massive encroachment by Jeff Bezos” that makes it clear “dissenting views will not be published or tolerated there.”

“I still have not felt encroachment on my journalism on the news side of coverage, but if Bezos tries interfering with the news side I will be quitting immediately and letting you know,” Stein said on X.

Amanda Katz, who stepped down from her role on the Post’s opinion team at the end of 2024, called the change “an absolute abandonment of the principles of accountability of the powerful, justice, democracy, human rights, and accurate information that previously animated the section in favor of a white male billionaire’s self-interested agenda.” And columnist Philip Bump, who pens the Post’s weekly “How to Read This Chart” newsletter, pithily said “what the actual f**k” on Bluesky.

Meanwhile, conservatives are celebrating Bezos’ changes. Charlie Kirk, the Turning Point USA founder, hailed the change as “the culture (…)changing rapidly for the better.” And Elon Musk, whose SpaceX is a direct rival of Bezos’ Blue Origins, succinctly applauded on X, saying “Bravo, @JeffBezos!”

Following the transformation’s internal announcement, Will Lewis, the paper’s publisher and chief executive, noted in an internal email obtained by CNN that the “recalibrate(ion)” was “not about siding with any political party,” but, rather, about “being crystal clear about what we stand for as a newspaper.”

“Doing this is a critical part of serving as a premier news publication across America and for all Americans,” Lewis wrote to Post staffers.

As Shipley exits the Post on Friday, Lewis said he would put together an interim arrangement, adding that the editorial page editor’s replacement would be announced in “due course” — and be “someone who is wholehearted in their support for free markets and personal liberties.”

In the early afternoon, Matt Murray, the Post’s executive editor, chimed in to respond to the “questions” he had received from concerned staffers. In an email obtained by CNN, Murray toed Bezos’ line, reminding staffers that opinion sections are “traditionally the provenance of the owner at news organizations.”

“The independent and unbiased work of The Post’s newsroom remains unchanged, and we will continue to pursue engaging, impactful journalism without fear or favor,” Murray wrote.

Though Murray and Lewis have supported Bezos’ transformation with staffers, New York magazine reports that Lewis’ tune is quite different behind the scenes, having warned Bezos that the changes would likely negatively impact the publication.

Already, Lewis’ private predictions appear to be manifesting. Since the announcement, two former top Post editors have come out against the move. As reported by the Daily Beast, Marty Baron, the Post’s former executive editor, said he was “sad and disgusted” by Bezos’ demands, emphasizing that the Amazon and Blue Origin founder “has prioritized those commercial interests over The Post, and he is betraying The Post’s longstanding principles to do so.”

Meanwhile, Cameron Barr, a former senior managing editor for the Post, said in a LinkedIn post that he would end his “professional association” with the newspaper, saying Bezos’ changes represent “an unacceptable erosion of its commitment to publishing a healthy diversity of opinion and argument.” And David Maraniss, a longtime Post editor and Pulitzer Prize winner, said on Bluesky that he would “never write for (the Post) again as long as (Bezos is) the owner.”

Bezos and the Post’s new direction

The divisive overhaul comes months after Bezos blocked the opinion page’s endorsement of former Vice President Kamala Harris at the eleventh hour, ending decades of precedent. Shipley was among the chorus of voices that sought to convince Bezos not to bar the endorsement, telling staffers in October that “I failed” to do just that.

Since Bezos’ action to block the op-ed, a chain reaction has hounded the Post, with 250,000 Post readers canceling their subscriptions and several opinion staffers resigning in protest. The Post has also hemorrhaged reporters, who have signed with rival publications rather than remain at the ailing outlet.

The massive changeup comes months after Bezos admitted in his defense of the op-ed block that his Amazon and Blue Origin business interests have served as a “complexifier for the Post.”

In the run-up to November’s election, Silicon Valley media moguls were seen cozying up to then-candidate Donald Trump, hedging their bets in the event of a conservative presidential victory. Critics said Bezos was trying to change the Post’s editorial strategy to gain favorability with Trump, who has grown close to Elon Musk, whose SpaceX is a direct rival of Bezos’ own business. Bezos pushed back on those accusations in a rare October op-ed.

“When it comes to the appearance of conflict, I am not an ideal owner of The Post,” Bezos wrote. “You can see my wealth and business interests as a bulwark against intimidation, or you can see them as a web of conflicting interests.”

“Only my own principles can tip the balance from one to the other,” he wrote in October.

Bezos’ “appearance of conflict” is issued from his numerous holdings, which include his Amazon and spacefaring company, Blue Origin. Bezos’ Amazon is also still facing a lawsuit from the FTC and 17 states, who accuse the company of abusing its economic dominance and harming fair competition.

Bezos attended President Trump’s January inauguration. Although Bezos was not the only tech billionaire present, his attendance as the Post’s owner did little to dispel the appearance of conflict.

Most recently, the Post opted to not publish an anti-Musk wrap ad for its print edition; while the Post did greenlight an internal anti-Musk ad, it has not yet clarified the grounds on which the wrap was denied and did not comment when asked whether Bezos was involved with the decision.

Post staffers also have for some time also been discontented with Bezos over his appointment of Lewis as publisher and chief executive. After taking the top job in early 2024, reports quickly emerged of Lewis’ involvement in several controversies, including accusations that he used fraudulent and unethical methods to acquire reporting for articles while working at the Sunday Times. Lewis also came under fire for allegedly attempting to kill a story about his alleged involvement in the phone hacking scandal coverup. Lewis has denied the accusations.

Dissatisfaction with Lewis reached a peak in June, when two Pulitzer Prize-winning Post journalists called for a leadership change amid the reports that questioned Lewis’ journalistic integrity, undermining the Post’s reputation and reporting alike.

Though, as Murray notes, the opinion section is the “provenance” of the Post’s owner — meaning Bezos — the billionaire’s last change resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of subscribers, worsening the Post’s financial woes. As the overhaul exacerbates longstanding issues at the storied publication and current and former Post staffers publicly decry the changes, the Post appears to find itself in an emergency.

CNN’s Brian Stelter contributed to this report.

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