Jeff Bezos’ Ex-Employee Goes After Him After His $50M Wedding to Lauren Sanchez: ‘What’s Saddening Is… ‘
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A former Washington Post staffer has spoken out about Jeff Bezos‘ role in the esteemed newspaper. Former editor and chief writer of The Fact Checker column, Glenn Kessler, has been vocal about the direction of the publication and the state of the media landscape.
Kessler talked to Fox News Digital about how the publication is similar to a sinking ship and that it’s missing its captain, Jeff Bezos. “He has to be committed to it. If he’s not committed to it, he should find someone else to own it,” Kessler said. “I feel like he was kind of committed to it. And then he’s kind of an absentee owner, and he shouldn’t be because it’s, you know, one of the prime assets of American journalism.”
Kessler wrote his last column on July 31, 2025, after he accepted a buyout after the publication downsized. “What’s so saddening is that five years ago, I would not have imagined The Washington Post would be in this state,” he said about the state.
Kessler, who had worked at the publication for 27 years, recalled that the newspaper was in bad shape before Bezos bought the paper in 2011, and credited the Amazon founder with having a big hand in saving the paper.
“The Post was really at its high point [after Bezos’ purchase]— the amount of stories we’re producing, the quality of the stories was really significant. And then, traffic surged when Trump got elected and there was so much hunger and interest in the news we were producing. We kind of lost our way after that,” Kessler said. “And not only lost our way, we started losing oodles of money. A hundred million dollars one year, I think the last number I saw [in] 2023 was $77 million… I think even for a person as rich as Jeff Bezos, that counts as real money.”
“And now it is just… it’s like it hit an iceberg, and it’s kind of drifting there, and I don’t think there’s a plan to rescue it,” he continued. “Or at least a plan to, you know, turn the ship around and get it moving in the direction it was.”
Kessler later shared his thoughts about his final years at the paper. “And I have gotten the sense that he’s a bit of an absentee owner. He’s had other distractions, and he’s committed more to some of his other enterprises, such as a space company, than he is to The Washington Post, which is really just a tiny part of his business investments. And maybe, I don’t know, I hate to speculate, maybe you thought he gave us his best shot, and we blew it, and now we’ve got it muddled through,” he added.
Just weeks before The Washington Post‘s buyouts, Jeff Bezos married former journalist Lauren Sánchez in an estimated $55 million wedding in Venice, Italy. Guests of the wedding included: Kim and Khloé Kardashian; Kendall and Kylie Jenner, Kris Jenner, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Brady, Orlando Bloom, and fellow billionaire Bill Gates.
