Jen Rubin exits Washington Post, joins Norm Eisen to launch new outlet countering ‘authoritarian threat’

New York CNN — Veteran opinion columnist Jennifer Rubin is becoming the latest in a long list of Washington Post figures to leave the troubled institution. The startup’s tagline, “Not owned by anybody,” is a pointed reference to billionaire Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and other moguls who, in Rubin’s view, have “bent the knee” to President-elect Donald Trump. “The voices we’ll be featuring are diverse across parties and generations,” Eisen said in a statement, “connected by the shared belief that we need an unshackled media in order to meet this moment, as we face an existential threat to American democracy.” The Contrarian joins a growing group of publications – like The Bulwark and Zeteo, to name two – that are built on the Substack newsletter platform. A 14-year veteran of the Post’s opinion section, Rubin said she resigned because “the Post, along with most mainstream news outlets, has failed spectacularly at a moment that we most need a robust, aggressive free press.” “I fear that things are going from bad to worse at The Post,” she added. The Post’s opinion editor David Shipley defended his decision to nix the cartoon in an internal memo last Friday, calling it a “sound editorial decision” because other Post columns had referenced Bezos and Trump and “yet another piece in the span of a few days struck me as overkill.” Both the opinion and newsroom departments at the Post have, indeed, covered Bezos rigorously.