The Washington Post said Wednesday that it had hired Adam O’Neal, a correspondent from The Economist, to be its next opinion editor.
Mr. O’Neal will be charged with carrying out a new direction for the section laid out by Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Washington Post: to champion “personal liberties and free markets.” Before joining The Economist, Mr. O’Neal was an editorial page writer at The Wall Street Journal, where the opinion pages are reliably conservative.
Mr. O’Neal, 33, introduced himself to readers in a brief video posted by The Post’s public relations account, saying he had “been a journalist for a while,” adding that the section would be “unapologetically patriotic” and use “technology to improve our journalism.”
“Odds are, you’ve probably never heard of me and you might be wondering: Who am I?” Mr. O’Neal said.
Mr. O’Neal replaces David Shipley, who resigned this year after Mr. Bezos decided to adjust the section’s ideological range. The Post’s opinion section has a history of publishing a plurality of political views, but Mr. Bezos sought to narrow its focus to emphasize economic and personal liberty.
The Post’s opinion section has been in tumult for much of the past year. Just before the presidential election in November, The Post ended its tradition of endorsing presidential candidates, a decision that drew outcry from readers and several opinion staffers. Soon after, The Post’s Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, Ann Telnaes, quit after a cartoon critical of Mr. Bezos was spiked. Next came Mr. Shipley’s departure, another jolt to the staff.
Will Lewis, the chief executive of The Post, said in a memo to employees that Mr. O’Neal “embodies our core values” and recognized “the importance of ensuring our opinion coverage is relevant, accessible and consequential for readers who feel underserved.”
“Our new direction is not a short-term shift nor is it aligned to any political party,” Mr. Lewis wrote.
The Washington Post has recently been exploring a plan to sharply increase the number of opinion columns posted on its website. Known internally as Ripple, the project calls for The Post to publish content from other news organizations, Substack authors and even nonprofessional writers. A later stage of the plan calls for contributors to create columns with guidance from an A.I. editing tool called “Ember,” which has not yet debuted. The new project will operate separately from the traditional opinion section that Mr. O’Neal will oversee.
