Owner Jeff Bezos blocked The Washington Post of supporting a presidential candidate less than two weeks before Election Day. The editorial team had written a recommendation for Kamala Harris.

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Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

The Washington Post has been rocked by a tidal wave of digital subscriber cancellations and a series of columnist resignations as the paper grapples with the fallout from owner Jeff Bezos’ decision to block Vice President Kamala Harris’ endorsement for president.

More than 200,000 people had canceled their digital subscriptions by midday Monday, said two newspaper employees familiar with internal affairs. Not all cancellations will take effect immediately. Still, that figure represents about 8% of the newspaper’s paid circulation, which has about 2.5 million subscribers, including print circulation. The number of cancellations continued to increase on Monday afternoon.

A company spokesman declined to comment, citing Washington Post Co.’s status as a private company.

“That’s a colossal number,” said the former post Editor-in-Chief Marcus Brauchli told NPR. “The problem is that people don’t know why the decision was made. We fundamentally know the decision was made, but we don’t know what led to it.”

CEO and publisher Will Lewis on Friday explained the decision in this year’s presidential campaign or in future elections as a return to support postThe roots of: The newspaper has described itself as an “independent newspaper” for years.

Few people at the paper believe that reasoning given the timing, just days before a head-to-head race between Harris and former President Donald Trump.

Former editor-in-chief Marty Baron expressed this skepticism in an interview with NPR Morning edition on Monday.

“If this decision had been made three years ago, two years ago, maybe even a year ago, that would have been fine,” Baron said. “It is certainly a sensible decision. But this was made within a few weeks of the election and there was no serious substantive consultation with the newspaper’s editorial team. It was clearly made for other reasons, not high principles.”

In fact, it says so in his own opinion piece published by the post On Monday evening, Bezos admitted that the timing was not ideal.

“This was inadequate planning and not a deliberate strategy,” he wrote.

post Reporters have repeatedly uncovered instances of misconduct and allegations of illegality by Trump and his associates. The separately operating editorial page described Trump as a threat to the American experiment in democracy. Several post Journalists say that their relatives are also among those who canceled their subscriptions.

The mass cancellations “point to the polarization of the times we live in and the energy that people feel about these issues,” says Brauchli. “It gave people a reason to respond to that sentiment.”

Brauchli has publicly asked people not to cancel their trip post Subscriptions in protest.

“It’s a way to send a message to the owners, but it shoots you in the foot if you’re interested in the kind of in-depth, quality journalism post produced,” he said. “There aren’t many organizations that can do that.” post does. The scope and depth of reporting by the Posts Journalists are among the best in the world.”

Even with rivals New York TimesWith a much higher circulation there could be a significant protest in the lower thousands. Earlier this year, Lewis, the post The editor had described the newspaper’s net profit of 4,000 subscribers as remarkable.

Three of the ten most viewed stories on the Posts Website Sunday articles were written by post Employees outraged by Bezos’ decision. The top spot went to humor columnist Alexandra Petri Pieceheadlined: “It has fallen to me, the humor columnist, to support Harris for president.” More than 174,000 people read it online.

Resignations follow Bezos’ decision

The decision by Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, was first reported by NPR on Friday. In the days since, two columnists have resigned from the paper and two writers have resigned from the editorial board.

One of those authors, Molly Roberts, warned of the potential consequences of the last-minute decision to remain silent rather than publish the editorial endorsing Harris. “Donald Trump is not yet a dictator,” she wrote in a statement posted on social media. “But the quieter we are, the closer he gets.”

The other author is David Hoffman, who accepted a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing on Thursday, a day before Bezos’ decision was made public. The Pulitzer judges recognized him “for a compelling and well-researched series about new technologies and the tactics that authoritarian regimes use to suppress dissent in the digital age, and how to combat them.”

“For decades, The Washington Post editorials have been a beacon signaling hope to dissidents, political prisoners and the voiceless,” Hoffman wrote in a letter Monday explaining his decision to leave the editorial board. “When victims of repression were harassed, exiled, imprisoned and murdered, we ensured that the whole world knew the truth.

“I believe that with Donald Trump’s candidacy we face a very real threat of autocracy,” Hoffman added in his letter to editorial page editor David Shipley, obtained by NPR. “I find it untenable and incomprehensible that we have lost our voice.”

Hoffman says he wants to stay at the paper and said he “refuses to give up The Post, where I spent 42 years.” He writes that several projects have been launched, including “expanded efforts to support press freedom on the whole world”.

Shipley held a contentious meeting Monday afternoon with numerous opinion staffers who asked the editorial director difficult questions and, among other things, urged Bezos to answer them.

As recently as last week, Shipley said, according to a person present, that he had tried to dissuade Bezos from his decision. Shipley added: “I failed.”

Questions about the timing and motives of Bezos

Former columnist Robert Kagan, editor-in-chief, explained his decision to resign from the newspaper on CNN Friday evening.

“We’re actually bowing down to Donald Trump because we’re afraid of what he’s going to do,” Kagan said, noting that officials at Bezos’ aerospace company Blue Origin met with Trump hours after the decision was made public .

Blue Origin has a multi-billion dollar contract with NASA. During the Trump administration, Amazon sued the government after claiming it blocked a $10 billion cloud computing services contract with the Pentagon because of the then-president’s anger over Pentagon reporting postthat Bezos personally owns.

Still, Bezos strongly supported staff reporting during the Trump presidency (and did not interfere with reporting on his own business interests or personal life).

Bezos: “I am not an ideal owner of The Post”

Bezos publicly broke his own silence late Monday. In his opinion piece, he described his decision to stop supporting the president as an attempt to avoid a “perception of bias” and “non-independence.” He dismissed claims that he was trying to appease Trump or protect his other business interests.

“This is not a quid pro quo whatsoever,” he wrote, adding that he did not consult any candidate or inform him of his decision.

Bezos said he was unaware of the meeting between Blue Origin executives and Trump on Friday – the same day the newspaper announced its decision.

“I sighed when I found out because I knew it would provide ammunition to those who would want to portray this as anything other than a principled decision,” he said.

He acknowledged that his involvement in other companies – and their lucrative government contracts – complicate things for the company post.

“When it comes to the appearance of conflict, I am not an ideal owner of The Post,” he wrote. “I assure you that my views here are indeed principled, and I believe my track record as owner of The Post since 2013 bears this out.”