• by Ray Schultz , December 10, 2024

The departure of Matea Gold from her job as a managing editor of The Washington Post to move to The New York Times apparently has led to tension in the newsroom.

Matt Murray, the acting executive editor, said the paper should not cover itself—thus Gold’s departure has not been reported in the Post, according to NPR.

NPR continues that Gold was in the running to head the Post newsroom, but Post publisher Will Lewis apparently was prepared to pass her by.  

On Monday, the Times announced that it had hired Gold as Washington editor. She joins Dick Stevenson, who was named as Washington bureau chief at the Times in November.

It is a bad precedent to set to not cover a high-level departure, especially given that most papers probably would cover it if a high-level editor was fired and replaced. It was not known at deadline if the Gold story did make the Post.  

Gold helped create a package on the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol that won the Pulitzer Prize in Public Service, and has supervised coverage that led to three other Pulitzers. She served as a managing editor at the Post for 15 months, and before that was national editor.