The Washington Post is looking for a new Op-Ed editor. From their website:
The Washington Post is seeking a versatile op-ed editor for its Opinion Department. This editor will be responsible for working with columnists as well as developing subject-specific op-ed articles and prospecting for new writers. The editor will also play a role in developing creative strategies for effective publishing.
The ideal candidate will be well-versed in commissioning and shaping persuasive coverage based on reporting and expertise. They should be comfortable with a variety of multimedia formats and how to translate arguments in different forms. They will also have the opportunity to establish regular thematic features, elevate new talent and contribute unsigned editorials to the Editorial Board.
Here’s some advice for the Post, which is now emphasizing pro-liberty and free market ideas under owner Jeff Bezos. It’s easy to find a qualified editor. Just make sure that the person is the opposite of everything represented by former Post Deputy Editorial Editor Ruth Marcus.
Marcus worked for the Post from 1984 to 2025. She was the Deputy Editorial Page Editor for the last few decades, leaving last year when she disapproved of the new Bezos regime. If the new opinion editor is an antipode to everything Marcus is and was, the Post might have a chance in recovering some of the millions of readers who’ve abandoned the paper.
Bezos needs to read Marcus’ CV and hire the person who did the opposite. Marcus never worked a real day in her life. She went to Yale and then Harvard Law School. She never played an organized sport, which teaches toughness and humility. (No journalists are former athletes anymore.) She’s lousy with facts. Her bias is toxic.
The Post needs to say no to Ivy League hires, which are a hangover from the post-Watergate days when every elitist in America wanted to be Woodward and Bernstein. Find someone more like Carl Kolchak, the reporter from The Night Stalker who treats sources and subjects fairly.
In her book Supreme Ambition: Brett Kavanaugh and the Conservative Takeover, Marcus makes it clear that she, like so much of the Washington press corps, has no business being a reporter. Supreme Ambition is about the 2018 Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. As I recount in my book The Devil’s Triangle, I was a target during that dark time. Christine Blasey Ford accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault, and claimed I was in the room when it happened. The whole thing was a set-up.
A question I raise in The Devil’s Triangle is one that Marcus doesn’t even attempt to answer. Why didn’t Ford contact me at any time in the summer of 2018? In her book, Marcus glancingly addresses this: “One possibility: Ford would call Mark Judge, remind Judge of what had happened, tell him to call Kavanaugh, and advise him to spare his family the ordeal. She dug up Judge’s Twitter handle but wasn’t sure how to go about contacting him.”
What? “She dug up Judge’s Twitter handle but wasn’t sure how to go about contacting him.”
I’m a journalist who grew up in D.C. Ford didn’t know how to contact me? Incredibly, Marcus doesn’t follow up. This one detail reveals everything that’s wrong with Marcus and the Post. Any reporter with street smarts would call bullshit on Ford right then and there. We live in the age of social media and global connectivity and you’re claiming you “didn’t know how” to contact Mark Judge? But then, Marcus has long been lodged in the back passage of Sally Quinn and the rest of the elite DC press clique.
Marcus did once follow up with me. She sent my lawyer this email in 2018.
November 27, 2018
Hi, I know this is a long shot but I’m on leave from my job as columnist/deputy editorial page editor at The Post to write a book about Justice Kavanaugh and I wanted to ask about the prospect of speaking with Mark Judge. My pitch is: there are going to be a number of books about and continued interest in what did or didn’t happen. I am truly hopeful that what I produce will both interest contemporary readers and serve as the definitive, at least initially, historical account. I am open-minded about what transpired and determined to write as full and fair a book as possible. To that end, it would obviously be great from my point of view to hear directly from Mr. Judge, but perhaps there is some way in which it might serve his interest as well to have his perspective more fully related than was possible or advisable in the heat of the moment. I’d be happy to talk about this further, and of course to speak with you or him, on whatever basis is most comfortable. My cell is *******, and I appreciate your consideration,
Best,
Ruth
I didn’t reply to Marcus right away. I was working on The Devil’s Triangle, and knew Marcus would censor what I’d discovered about the hit put on Kavanaugh and me. When my book was published in 2022, I did contact Marcus. I’ve called her several times. She never picks up the phone.