Joining the growing exodus of talent at the Washington Post, media columnist Erik Wemple announced on Wednesday he has accepted a buyout offer and is leaving — and will be joining the New York Times business section in September.
In addition, Oliver Darcy reported Wednesday night that deputy editors Mike Semel, Ann Gerhart and Monica Norton, as well as deputy opinion editor Stephen Stromberg and sports columnist Sally Jenkins have also accepted buyouts and are leaving the publication. As of this writing none of them have publicly announced their exits.
Jenkins will be joining The Atlantic, that publication announced late Wednesday.
“After 14 very, very happy years writing opinions on media at the Washington Post, I am taking the newspaper’s buyout offer. In September, I will begin work at the New York Times covering media from Washington for the paper’s Business section,” Wemple wrote on social media.
Wemple joined the times in 2011 and among his notable work there, in 2020 he exposed numerous falsehoods in an Atlantic feature written by Ruth Shalit Barrett.
He’s only the latest of WaPo’s roster of stars to bolt as the paper’s opinion section and journalistic mission are being revamped to effectively reflect owner Jeff Bezos’ own political preferences. As part of this, CEO Will Lewis is actively encouraging anyone who disagrees with the new direction to leave.
Among those who have are fact checker Glenn Kessler, a 26-year Post veteran who announced Monday he had accepted a buyout offer. And last week, Columnists Catherine Rampell and Jonathan Capehart accepted buyouts, and Dave Jorgenson, WaPo’s “TikTok Guy,” also announced he was leaving.
They follow opinion editor David Shipley, who resigned immediately after the paper’s new direction was announced, and columnist Ruth Marcus, who quit after40 years when a column she wrote expressing skepticism about the new direction was, in her words, “spiked.”
