Washington Post Magazine killed piece after publisher Weymouth said advertisers ‘wanted happier stories’

By Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post:

A freelance article about a quadruple amputee was killed by the Washington Post Magazine after the newspaper’s publisher, Katharine Weymouth, said advertisers “wanted happier stories, not ‘depressing’ ones,” the piece’s author wrote in an online posting.

Marcus Brauchli, the Post’s executive editor, said the sequence of events was “an unfortunate coincidence, ” but denied that Weymouth directed editors to spike the piece by journalist Matt Mendelsohn. The article chronicled a year in the life of Lindsay Ess, a Richmond resident who lost her arms and legs after a routine surgery led to sepsis.

A Post Magazine editor encouraged Mendelsohn to pursue the story after reviewing his photos of Ess. But the atmosphere apparently soured after Weymouth told Mendelsohn at a birthday brunch in her honor that this was not the sort of piece that she favored for the magazine. Weymouth has been telling editors that there have been too many stories similar to the one last November about a 13-year-old dwarf undergoing surgery to lengthen her legs.

In the sports photography blog interview, Mendelsohn said, without naming Weymouth or The Post : “To label Lindsay’s life ‘depressing,’ especially as if she needs to make some advertiser comfortable, is, well, depressing in its own right.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 12:07 pm and is filed under NOT2BEMISSED, media, personal stories, public attitudes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post