At 11 a.m. on Tuesday morning, senior editors at The Washington Post convened digitally for their weekly meeting. Instead of kicking things off as expected, their boss, Marty Baron, threw a curveball: He told them he would be retiring as the Post’s executive editor effective February 28. Baron kept his announcement brief because he needed to jump off and send out an email to the entire staff. “I’ll take my leave now,” he said.
The news was both not a surprise and a sudden shock. Baron’s editorship, almost all of it under the ownership of Jeff Bezos, was a transformational one, in which Baron presided over a widely celebrated journalistic renaissance at the Beltway paper of record while shaping a newsroom that nearly doubled in size. It was no secret that after nearly nine years on the job, he was planning on calling it a day. Post journalists originally expected him to step down right around this very time, after the frenzy of the election and the inauguration had subsided. More recently, though, some people had the distinct impression that Baron would be around for a while longer. As I reported last month, several sources said he had indicated that he didn’t want to step down before his staff could return to the newsroom, the present target date being June 1, depending on how the pandemic plays out. So when the words “February 28th” came out of Baron’s mouth on Tuesday, the assembled editors were “taken aback, a little shaken,” as one source put it. “Stunned,” said another.
Baron and Post publisher Fred Ryan had been discussing Baron’s exit for some time, and Baron had committed to staying on through the election. They touched base late last year, right before the holiday break, and agreed to speak within the first few days of the new year. It was during that conversation that they settled on the timing.
“I have worked in journalism without stop for nearly 45 years, leading magnificent news staffs in Miami, then Boston and now Washington, D.C., for 21,” Baron, formerly of the Miami Herald and The Boston Globe, wrote in the email announcing his departure. “The experience has been deeply meaningful, enriched by colleagues who made me a better professional and a better person. At age 66, I feel ready to move on.”
The question of who will get Baron’s job is now burning up the chat windows and text messages of journalists from Washington to New York to L.A. “The search will be a broad and inclusive one,” Ryan wrote in a separate email to Post staff, “considering both outstanding internal candidates as well as journalists at other publications with the vision and ability to build upon Marty’s success.”
Given that there are only 32 days, at the time of this writing, until Baron’s retirement takes effect, that means it’s either gonna be a super-fast process or that there will be an interim executive editor, perhaps Cameron Barr, currently one of the Post’s managing editors as well as someone who is theoretically in line for the top job. Ryan has told people that there won’t be pressure to lock things down by February 28, and that he’s looking for someone who could lead the newsroom for at least a decade.
The name that’s circulating more than any other is Kevin Merida. The theory de rigueur, several sources told me, is that it would behoove the Post to make a move on Merida rather quickly, considering that he’s also on the short list of editors for the Los Angeles Times. He previously worked at the Post for 22 years, rising up from congressional correspondent to managing editor for news and features, before joining Disney’s ESPN in 2015. He’s well regarded, highly respected, and a journalist of color to boot. As one source put it, “Kevin is widely viewed as the external favorite.”
Then again, at 64, Merida is only a couple years younger than Baron, and his stock at ESPN—where Merida is a senior vice president and editor in chief of The Undefeated—is soaring. Earlier this year Merida got an expanded brief reporting to ESPN chief Jimmy Pitaro, a role that involves developing film, TV, and music projects for The Undefeated across the Walt Disney Company’s platforms. As recently as this week, he’s told former Post colleagues that there has been no recruiting outreach from Post brass. “He’s almost everyone’s favorite candidate,” one of my Post sources said. “Just from the comfort of the newsroom, he’s by far the best choice.” Then the caveat: “But that doesn’t make it any more real.”
As for other potential candidates, all anyone has to go on so far is a churning cauldron of gossip, rumors, and speculation. (I’ve heard everyone from Steven Ginsberg and Anne Kornblut to John Harris, Susan Goldberg, Carolyn Ryan, and Sewell Chan.) “The central problem here, in all of this gossip-mongering, is that we don’t know who’s making this decision,” the same source said. “Will it be Fred Ryan? Bezos? Will Marty have a say? It’s a black box.”
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