“CLUSTERF--K”: INSIDE THE WASHINGTON POST’S SOCIAL MEDIA MELTDOWN

A flurry of Twitter flare-ups and Slack spats involving Post journalists, along with a controversial suspension, have upended the newsroom and are presenting a major test for executive editor Sally Buzbee, who urged staff Tuesday to “be constructive and collegial.”

BY CHARLOTTE KLEIN

Image may contain Building Office Building Architecture Steeple Spire and Tower

The exterior of The Washington Post via Getty Images building at One Franklin Square on December, 16, 2015 in Washington, DC. BY BILL O'LEARY/THE WASHINGTON POST/GETTY IMAGES.

On Tuesday afternoon, Washington Post reporter Josh Dawsey tweeted that he was “proud” to work at the paper, a place “filled with many terrific people who are smart and collegial.” Four minutes later, reporter Rosalind Helderman, too, tweeted that she was “proud” to work at the Post, which is “always striving to be better than it was yesterday.” Six minutes later, another reporter, Amy Gardner, tweeted how she was “proud” to work at the paper, followed by other top journalists at the publication, such as Matt Viser, Carol Leonnig, and Dan Balz.

The public outpouring of Post pride—which I’m told political reporters were urging one another to take part in—followed executive editor Sally Buzbee’s memo reiterating workplace policies and promoting collegiality among staff. The memo dropped following a few days at the Post that have been, as one reporter described it, a “clusterfuck.” Dave Weigel, a national political correspondent, is, as of Monday, suspended without pay for the next month after retweeting a sexist tweet last week, which he then promptly unshared and apologized for after a colleague called him out both on the company Slack and publicly. Hours after news of Weigel’s suspension broke Monday, that colleague, political reporter Felicia Sonmez, was urging the paper to take action against a different colleague, Jose Del Real, who on Saturday took aim at Sonmez for “the cruelty you regularly unleash against colleagues.” (He made this point after commending Sonmez for “your bravery in sharing your story,” adding, “I support your fight against retribution for doing so.”)

Meanwhile, in another corner of Twitter on Saturday, Taylor Lorenz—the star Post tech writer and social media lightning rod—was explaining how a “miscommunication with an editor” resulted in an error in a recent Post piece while also hitting back against critics and CNN reporter Oliver Darcy, who was covering the incident.

The Post drama spilling out publicly onto Twitter has upended the newsroom, where there’s no shortage of opinions on the continued fallout. “I think Felicia initially was right—that was a gross Dave Weigel tweet, and we were all grateful she called attention to it,” one Post staffer told me. The problem, the staffer added, was in “continuing to make it an issue and go after more and more colleagues.” And as a reporter said of Lorenz: “Taylor is very talented, but her personal antics frequently overshadow her journalism.”

Sonmez, Lorenz, and Weigel declined to comment for this article.

The social media meltdown has turned the spotlight on Buzbee, who just last week celebrated her one-year anniversary as the paper’s top editor. Staff use of Twitter bedeviled Buzbee’s predecessor, Marty Baron, who took issue with how journalists, including Sonmez, used Twitter, but failed to enact a new social media policy. (Other legacy publications, such as The New York Times, have likewise been tested by the social media use of their reporters—something Dean Baquet talked about often, especially on his way out.) The consequences of that inaction are now falling on Buzbee, as the Post’s social media policy is “so intermittently enforced, or not at all, that it leaves it to the most extreme characters to end up getting us into these kinds of situations,” one reporter said.

In the Tuesday memo, Buzbee stated shared newsroom values and emphasized how employees should treat one another. “We do not tolerate colleagues attacking colleagues either face to face or online. Respect for others is critical to any civil society, including our newsroom,” she wrote. “The newsroom social media policy points specifically to the need for collegiality.”

“In the last year, we have enforced, through conversations, mediation and disciplinary measures, egregious violations of our social media policy, just as we have enforced our overall standards,” Buzbee added. “As we have said, we plan to update the social media policy. Until then, the current policy remains in effect. It states: When it comes to your colleagues, be constructive and collegial: If you have a question or concern about something that has been published, speak to your colleague directly. We respect and do not wish to inhibit any employee’s right to raise legitimate workplace issues. We know it takes bravery to call out problems. And we pledge to openly and honestly address problems brought to us. We moved quickly to show our intolerance for a sexist re-tweet sent by an employee last Friday.”

While a number of Post journalists turned to Twitter to praise the paper, one I spoke to was less than impressed with Buzbee’s memo, as it not only felt like a read-out of preexisting social media policies but also failed to explain the inconsistency—why Weigel had been suspended but not Sonmez or Del Real, both of whom had arguably violated the nondisparagement rule she cited in the email.

And it was immediately clear that Buzbee’s email had no effect on Sonmez, who hours later was not only still going at Del Real but also deploying Buzbee’s own language to do so. “So I hear The Washington Post is a collegial workplace,” she said, with a screenshot showing Del Real had blocked her. Followed by: “These tweets falsely accusing me of ‘clout chasing,’ ‘bullying,’ ‘cruelty’ and directing an ‘eager mob’ to carry out ‘a barrage of online abuse’ are still up … even after I repeatedly raised them to management and noted that I’ve been receiving threats and abuse. Collegial!” To which Lisa Rein, another reporter at the Post, responded, “Please stop.”

Buzbee’s memo raises questions about whether additional Post staffers may be disciplined. Addressing the overall situation in recent days, the Post’s communications chief, Kris Coratti, told me Wednesday: “While we have not commented publicly, this is being addressed directly with the individuals involved.”

Sonmez has a history of taking the paper to task. Last year she sued the Post and some of its highest-ranking newsroom members for temporarily preventing her from covering sexual-misconduct stories after she publicly identified herself as a sexual assault victim; the case was later dismissed. Lorenz was also known for mixing it up on social media prior to the Post scooping her away from the Times earlier this year.

But the two Twitter-fueled controversies playing out simultaneously emphasize the extent to which social media policy, or lack thereof, has become a headache for the Post. The paper has barely updated its social media guidelines since they were issued more than a decade ago, despite management acknowledging the need to do so. Meanwhile, the flurry of tweets and Slack messages, as well as staff assurances and apologies, suggests there isn’t an effective channel for raising concerns about inappropriate behavior at the Post, or at least not one staff are utilizing.

Here’s how things played out: On Friday afternoon, Sonmez called Weigel out for his tweet, first in an internal Slack channel and then, two minutes later, on Twitter. Within 90 minutes, Weigel had apologized and taken down the tweet, and National editor Matea Gold (who replaced Steven Ginsberg, whom Sonmez named as a defendant in her suit) had, in the same Slack channel, put out a note to “assure all of you that The Post is committed to maintaining a respectful workplace for everyone” and “we do not tolerate demeaning language or actions.”

Twenty-four hours later, Sonmez was still tweeting about a lack of accountability. “Imagining a world where news organizations evenly enforce their social media policies, rather than allowing certain reporters to feel entitled to tweet racist/sexist things without fear of repercussions, thus turning their colleagues into targets of online hate when they object,” she wrote. Minutes later, Del Real got involved. “Dave’s retweet is terrible and unacceptable. But rallying the internet to attack him for a mistake he made doesn’t actually solve anything. We all mess up in some way or another.” Buzbee on Sunday morning sent a memo to staff that said, without mentioning Sonmez or Del Real by name, to be respectful and to bring issues to H.R. or leadership—a response that one reporter called “meaningless,” and that Sonmez said on Twitter “provide[d] fodder for *more* harassment.”

Come Monday morning, some staffers were waiting to see if there’d be a firmer message from leadership. Meanwhile, another staffer, video technician Breanna Muir, who three months ago was misidentified on Twitter as Breonna Taylor by a colleague (who publicly and privately apologized for the error), had replied-all to Buzbee’s Sunday memo. Her note to the entire newsroom included a screenshot of that tweet, as well as one of Weigel’s retweet, and praised Sonmez “for speaking out against harassment, discrimination and sexism.” Meanwhile, Sonmez was still tweeting. Hours later, news of Weigel’s punishment broke. The reaction was mixed among journalists. Some praised Sonmez for demanding accountability. Others felt like the Post caved to pressure or, at the very least, overreacted in the heat of the moment. “The paper has put optics and politics before ethics and fairness,” tweeted New York magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi.

The Post’s guild responded Tuesday to the disputes playing out online. “Guild leadership has tried hard to run our union in a way that centers kindness, respect, fairness, and empathy while holding people and institutions we care about accountable. It’s our hope that all Washington Post employees keep that in mind when one of us makes a mistake and we are tasked with being part of the accountability process,” Katie Mettler, who has been cochair of the Post Guild for more than three years, told me. “In the last few years, hundreds of guild members—often led by women and people of color—have worked relentlessly and thoughtfully together to advocate for more fair and inclusive systems at the Post.” She added, “We are doing the work to hold all our institutions and ourselves to a high standard, and we will keep doing that work in ways big and small, public and private.”

In the past, Sonmez has had widespread support in the newsroom; hundreds of colleagues signed a letter on her behalf in 2020, after Baron suspended her for tweeting an article detailing a rape allegation against NBA legend Kobe Bryant shortly after his death. (A “newsroom revolt” is how this publication described it at the time.) Soon after the paper’s guild sent that letter to management, she was reinstated. But since then, there have been multiple instances of Sonmez calling out the paper publicly—and she has done so internally in response to a staff email as well.

About two weeks ago, Gold, the National editor, sent out an email urging colleagues to “take time to assess how you are doing” and “seek help if you need to talk to someone” in the wake of the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde and the anniversary of George Floyd’s murder. “Just a reminder that I was punished after I told an editor that I had to take a walk around the block after reading a difficult story,” Sonmez replied—to the entire National staff—according to emails reviewed by Vanity Fair. One reporter noted that Sonmez has said both publicly and privately that she’s still at the Post because she wants to help fix things. “Discouraging reporters at the Post from seeking help they need—that’s actively being part of the problem,” they told me. “This idea that she’s fighting for sexism and gender, while that might have felt true at some point, now just rings disingenuous, even for people who want to give her the benefit of the doubt.”

On Thursday, after the initial publication of this article, Sonmez responded on Twitter: “I stand by what I wrote in that email. In 2018, I was punished after I told my editors I needed to take a walk around the block after reading a difficult story. Other colleagues have been punished for their trauma far more recently, but their stories aren’t mine to tell. I’m not ‘discouraging reporters at the Post from seeking help they need.’ Far from it. The Washington Post’s own actions are doing that. I care deeply about my colleagues, and I want this institution to provide support for all employees. Right now, the Post is a place where many of us fear our trauma will be used against us, based on the company’s past actions.”

The thrust of Sonmez’s critique over the past few days has been about how the Post holds different journalists to different standards, and what message that sends about the Post’s values. Sonmez tweeted Sunday that Del Real had “publicly attacked” her for highlighting Weigel’s sexist retweet, writing, “When women stand up for themselves, some people respond with even more vitriol.” In another tweet in the thread, she dismissed the idea that objecting to sexism was “clout chasing”—Del Real’s words—and tagged Buzbee and Gold to ask if the paper agreed with her. On Monday and Tuesday, she was once again urging management, via Twitter, to intervene.

“Working at a huge news organization—the Post, The New York Times, CNN—is like living in a big city where there are always emergencies,” one staffer said. An embarrassing correction for the Styles desk might be a fire; a story the Times beats the Post on, a flood. “As a colleague, you probably should be trying to help fund the fire department or city services and make it a better place to live; at worst, you’re not paying your taxes,” they continued. “And then you have Felicia, who is essentially pouring gasoline on every fire and inviting people to watch.”

Sonmez responded Thursday on Twitter: “To borrow an analogy, working at a big news organization is like living in a big city. Emergencies like corrections come up every day. That’s normal. Are sexist or racist tweets ‘normal’ emergencies? Is the denigration of a class of people a ‘normal’ emergency? Or are those things a sign of deeper problems within a newsroom rife with unequal treatment?”

This article was updated after publication to incorporate comments made by Sonmez on Twitter.