For generations of Washington Post readers, daily editorials were an essential pairing to the news section; they complemented news articles with perspective, reason, and persuasion.

But Post management has decided there’s not much interest in gentle third-person opinions in today’s angry, elbows-first world of discourse. Last year, the paper started drastically scaling back the amount of space in the A section devoted to sharing its own opinions.

Without any note or explanation to readers, the Post stopped printing three editorials each day and instead opted to publish only one. That upended generations of tradition at a paper where the Opinions Section was long considered one of its crown jewels. The page nurtured generations of writers and had the power to shift world events—just as most newspapers did in the days before the internet when there were fewer outlets for opinions alongside information.

The Post also upended the membership of its Editorial Board and opted not to replace the team of former local reporters that historically focused on Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. issues. Rather, management doubled down on hiring former Bloomberg writers.

It’s a seismic shift in operation for a newspaper that believed under Donald Graham and previous owners in its obligation to speak up on matters of public interest and play a role in guiding policy—especially local policies. That was especially true in D.C., where historic discrimination and the continued lack of statehood put the city at a disadvantage that still plays out today.

The dramatic decline in local and regional perspective on the Editorial Page is most noticeable among regular readers—and it rankles observers who valued the steady and relevant local commentary that the paper used to dish up nearly every day.

“The Washington Post editorial board used to be a driver of the local conversation,” says At-Large Councilmember Christina Henderson, noting that the board frequently ignores important local topics including major legislation about safer streets that was just passed by the D.C. Council, amendments to the tipped wage bill, and student truancy. “It’s a bit disheartening,” she adds.

It’s particularly troubling for those who were reading the Post during the years when it was a strong advocate for regionalism, delivering opinions and recommendations on a daily basis about local topics and what’s consumed in the corridors of power.

“A good editorial is supposed to be an important conversation starter, even when you don’t agree with it,” says Pedro Ribeiro, who worked in Congress and later as the District’s spokesperson from 2011 to 2014. “Having a well reasoned and thoughtful opinion piece can help you cut through the clutter and not having those anymore is a shame.”

To understand the scale of the shift at today’s Editorial Board, it’s useful to reflect on the history of the page.

(The Editorial Page, as opposed to the op-ed page, features unsigned opinion pieces that represent the view of the paper as an institution. Op-eds and columns are the spaces devoted to signed commentary from a wide range of experts, influencers, and others sharing their ideas and causes each day.)

The Editorial Page can be the place for the views of the owner (if they opt to use that perch), though more often it was a spot for the collection of writers to hash out their own feelings on the big issues of the day.

At the Post, the best known leader of the Editorial Page was the late Meg Greenfield, who spent 30 years crafting opinions on behalf of the paper—winning herself a Pulitzer Prize along the way for her own commentary.

Greenfield famously acknowledged that “There is a little Mussolini in every editorial writer … Pompous, meddlesome, pretentious, a figure of fun to everyone but himself … issuing grandiose orders that have no effect on anything at all.”

In more recent history, the central figure at the Editorial Board was the late Fred Hiatt, a D.C.-born career newspaperman who took over the Board’s responsibilities after Greenfield died and soon became the heart and soul of the paper’s broad world of commentary.

Hiatt came to the Post in 1981 from the Washington Star, which died when this city became a one-newspaper town. Hiatt’s journalism career focused on Fairfax County and Virginia politics, so when he was put in charge of the Post’s Opinions in 2000, he was grounded in his past work and the belief that local news was essential to the paper.

In those days, the Post still viewed itself as a paper of national significance and impact, while also serving readers with its deep commitment to D.C. and the surrounding communities. When the Post ran three editorials each day, at least one of them often would engage about something local—from Prince George’s County schools and Falls Church development to Gaithersburg politics and Haymarket crime. The paper’s strong regional reporters covered everything, and the Editorial Page matched that energy with near-daily editorials on all of those topics.

At the heart of the D.C. coverage was Colby King, himself a Pulitzer winner, who first came to the Post under Greenfield and who she invited to write about local issues three times a week starting back in 1990.

King was a sharp contrast to the stuffy shirts and Harvard dandies who characterized much of the Post leadership then (and now).

King attended D.C. public schools and graduated from Dunbar High School, where he participated in Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps—wearing a uniform and practicing Army drills. He went to Howard University and spent time as a Volunteers in Service to America volunteer and in the U.S. Army before also working at Riggs National Bank and the World Bank. Most notably, King worked as a staffer in Congress helping to write the District of Columbia Home Rule Act when there were still committees solely dedicated to overseeing the governance of the city.

When he came to the Post, King took over the responsibilities of writing about D.C. issues from Robert Asher, himself a D.C. native who had started at the paper way back in 1959. Asher transitioned from D.C. issues to writing about Maryland and Virginia, spending as much time in the field as reporters and taking pride in knowing as much about the issues as the news staff.

“Bob Asher had his fingers on the pulse of the entire region,” says Tom Davis, a former congressman from Northern Virginia who still wields influence in the region. “The whole Editorial Board knew what was going on and they were very committed to calling balls and strikes.” (Disclosure: I was, until a few years ago, married to Asher’s daughter.)

Asher eventually handed over the Maryland and Virginia coverage to Lee Hockstader, while King handed over responsibilities for writing all of the D.C. editorials in 2007 to Jo-Ann Armao. Separately, King continued to write a signed, three-times-a-week column about D.C. issues, though now it’s down to once a week.

Both Hockstader and Armao immersed themselves in the local and regional ecosystem; it was well known that during endorsement season they would meet candidates at the Parkway Deli in Silver Spring and stack hours of interviews one on top of another.

Political leaders of all stripes were invited in to meet with Post Editorial Board members and the staff weighed in on everything that they noticed—prompted often by Don Graham himself, who loved the District and the region and made sure that the paper covered those topics.

Graham, though a spokesperson, declined to comment for this story.

Hockstader and Armao, along with the rest of the board, continued to write often and with passion about Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. topics. Armao, Asher, King, and others were known to pick up the phone frequently and talk with people from across the DMV, doing their own independent reporting before writing their editorials.

Moreover, the Post in those days had a “Close to Home” section that provided a special platform for local residents to express their viewpoints. That section was discontinued in November 2022, according to a Post editor. To add even more local flavor for Post readers, there was a “Local Opinions” section reserved just for local issues, running every Sunday. That also was discontinued after Hiatt died.

Between Hiatt, his deputy Jackson Diehl, and the combination of Hockstader and Armao, the Post had a deep bench of knowledge about the area combined with an abiding respect for the value of serving local readers.

Each was not without their critics. Hockstader was known to spend a lot of time in Paris and some readers in Maryland and Virginia were miffed that he wasn’t actually experiencing the traffic and local issues that he wrote about.

For Armao, the heat was even more intense. Famously a resident of Maryland, Armao was variously criticized for leaning too heavily into the agenda of whomever occupied the executive’s suite: Anthony Williams, Adrian Fenty, Vince Gray, and especially Muriel Bowser.

Under Armao, the Post championed Fenty’s school takeover plan and defended former DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee at every turn. More recently, Armao’s editorials frequently sided with Bowser rather than her opponents at the time—usually her political rivals. To her critics, Armao was a cheerleader for Bowser; supporters of Armao would point out that the Post has a long history of deferring to the executive branch at federal, state, and local levels.

Armao was deeply enmeshed in local perspective, and did extensive research; she wrote about education, and she was the driving force in the Post’s influential coverage of Hera McLeod, the woman whose child was beaten to death by her estranged partner so he could collect a life insurance payout.

Armao retired in 2022, but her critics persist.

“Jo-Ann didn’t know much … she read the Post Metro section and talked to people who agreed with her and wrote her opinions,” says former D.C. councilmember David Catania, who derides Armao as the “oracle of Sunnybrook Drive,” a reference to her home in Montgomery County.

Catania complains that Armao would retaliate in the pages of the Post against anyone who didn’t agree with her, though he acknowledged that he had some very spirited debates with her over the years.

Tommy Wells, who served multiple elected roles in the District before reinventing the city’s Department of the Environment, says he felt Armao was “a suburban scold” who viewed the city through the prism of her Maryland lifestyle.

Hockstader and Armao both declined to comment for this column. And when I contacted King about the Post’s declining focus on District issues, he also declined to comment. But without any formal announcement, the new leadership of the Editorial Board has clearly opted to drop much of its Maryland, Virginia, or D.C. coverage in favor of a cross section of specialists on global topics.

David Shipley, who assumed leadership of the Editorial Page following Hiatt’s death in 2021, declined to comment on how or where future Post coverage about the region will be parceled out. Other members of the board and the Post’s official spokespeople also declined to comment.

Besides Shipley, the current roster of the Post Editorial Board includes Charles Lane, Stephen Stromberg, Mary Duenwald, Shadi Hamid, David E. Hoffman, James Hohmann, Heather Long, Mili Mitra, Eduardo Porter, Keith B. Richburg, and Molly Roberts.

Most of the 12 people are new as of just a few years ago when the Editorial Board included Hiatt, Diehl, King, Hockstader, Sebastian Mallaby, Ruth Marcus, and Tom Toles—none of whom are there today.

Under Shipley, there are additional former Bloomberg writers and a handful of Harvard graduates on the board. But don’t go looking for former reporters who covered Richmond, Annapolis, or the inside of the Wilson Building.

A year ago, Shipley briefly assigned former City Paper editor Erik Wemple, who is now a media critic for the Post, to serve as a temporary ringer for the Editorial Board to cover District-related topics. But that assignment is over, and Wemple is no longer writing for the board; he declined to comment on any questions about the board’s priorities.

Given all the shuffling, it is unlikely that the Post will ever return to in-depth editorial coverage of local and regional issues. According to multiple people who have spoken to Hohmann, he runs point on D.C.-related topics, though the paper isn’t looking for content about the city very often. Lately it averages about one local editorial every few weeks, or less. Hohmann did not respond to requests for comment.

Last Sunday, the Post’s one and only editorial was about the sourcing of guacamole.

Out of Ink covers media issues relevant to the DMV. Please send tips, suggestions, or feedback to vmorris@washingtoncitypaper.com and connect with him on X @vincentmorris.