Washington Post opinion editor to exit paper after just one year, staff completely 'blindsided'

Washington Post opinion editor Adam O'Neal announced his exit from the paper on Friday after roughly just one year on the job.

"I’m writing to announce that I have decided to leave The Washington Post. My last day will be August 31," O'Neal told staff in a memo obtained by Fox News Digital.

"I joined The Post to lead the opinion section as it began a new chapter, and we have made dramatic changes over the past year. We quickly embraced our mission of championing free markets and personal liberties while simultaneously putting Post Opinions on a sustainable footing. Our work has become more relevant, accessible and consequential. We regularly publish world-class journalism that finds the audience where it is," O'Neal wrote before touting improvements in the opinion section's page views and time spent on the site.

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"I want to thank Jeff Bezos, Jeff D’Onofrio and the entire leadership team. And I especially want to thank everyone in Post Opinions. It has been an honor to have worked with such exceptional people at such an exceptional institution. While this was not an easy decision, I am leaving proud of how far the opinion section has come and optimistic that its best days lie ahead," he added.

Jeff D’Onofrio, The Washington Post's acting CEO and publisher, thanked O'Neal and crediting him for making the opinion section "more balanced in perspective, more financially sustainable and more accessible to readers than ever before," adding that a leadership transition will be in the works leading up to his Aug. 31 departure.

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A source familiar with O'Neal's exit told Fox News Digital that Post leadership was "blindsided" by the decision and there were no tensions between him and D’Onofrio and owner Jeff Bezos.

O'Neal held an all-hands meeting with staff where he revealed it was a "personal decision" to leave The Post and that everyone in the room was "incredibly surprised," according to a staffer who attended the meeting.

O'Neal did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.

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O'Neal joined The Post last July after serving as a correspondent for the British outlet The Economist and as an editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal. He was tasked to carry out Bezos' directive that The Post's editorial pages would promote "personal liberties and free markets," something that sparked intense backlash both among staffers in the newsroom and liberal critics. 

Bezos' edict led to the immediate resignation of O'Neal's predecessor, David Shipley. 

In his first interview as The Post opinion editor, O'Neal told Fox News Digital in September he felt "a tremendous responsibility to get this right."

"Our readers are overwhelmingly liberal, right?" O'Neal conceded. "And they're all overwhelmingly located in blue states. And just a few blue states. And they're over-represented on the coasts. And so, one way to look at it would be to say, 'Well, if you're non-partisan, and you have a highly partisan readership, they may be offended by that.' And maybe that's true. But looking forward as I rebuild, I really just see it as an opportunity to expand our reach."

He continued, "And frankly, a lot of people don't trust The Post. And they don't trust the mainstream media more broadly. And so my mission is to hire the kinds of people from throughout the U.S. with different kinds of backgrounds, intellectual diversity, who can appeal and rebuild that trust. And I think that a lot of folks have a poor view of The Post because they don't feel that they've been well served by it."