A veteran Washington Post reporter also defected from the major newspaper owned by Jeff Bezos on Tuesday, joining a talent exodus after management surged support for former Vice President Kamala Harris. .
CNN announced Tuesday that Philip Rucker, a Pulitzer Prize winner and longtime national editor of The Washington Post, will join the network as senior vice president of editorial strategy and news.
Mr. Rucker's resignation follows a wave of departures in recent weeks due to growing dissatisfaction with The Washington Post's leadership.
Rucker spent 20 years at WaPo, earning a reputation as one of the most respected chroniclers of President Trump's first term.
He co-authored two best-selling books about the presidency.
A spokesperson for the Washington Post confirmed Rucker's resignation and told the New York Post that they wish him well.
In his new role at CNN, Rucker will play a pivotal role in shaping the network's coverage of the second Trump administration.
He will oversee political news gathering efforts and help integrate coverage across CNN's various platforms, including digital broadcasts.
“I look forward to working with CNN's world-class journalists to chart a new era of digital transformation,” Rucker said in a statement.
His resignation comes after more than 400 Washington Post employees sent a letter to Bezos pleading with him to intervene in the paper's direction.
Bezos, the Amazon founder who bought the venerable Beltway paper in 2013, and Will Lewis, the company's CEO and publisher, agreed that the editorial board would endorse Harris in the weeks before the Nov. 5 election. The article was prevented from being published.
The move sparked widespread anger among readers, of whom a reported 250,000 canceled their subscriptions in response.
The decision also led to the departure of a number of high-profile staffers, including Jennifer Rubin, a veteran opinion columnist and outspoken Trump critic, who last week posted a letter to a startup newsletter founded by former Obama official Norm Eisen. announced that he would participate.
Several other journalists also resigned from the editorial board. In the weeks that followed, many of the paper's top reporters and editors left, including Ashley Parker and Josh Dorsey.
Parker and Michael Scherer, senior political reporters, left the Washington Post to join the Atlantic, a left-leaning publication owned by billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs.
Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Ann Ternas resigned after the newspaper refused to publish a cartoon mocking Bezos and other tech titans kneeling before Trump.
She criticized the decision as harmful to press freedom.
Rucker will be based in CNN's Washington bureau and will start on February 10th.
Rucker's hiring comes at a pivotal time for CNN.
The network's confrontational approach to reporting during the Trump years was a defining element of its approach to political reporting.
Under the leadership of network chief Mark Thompson, CNN is said to be seeking a more balanced tone.
A sign of change came last week when it was reported that Thompson wanted to move anti-Trump anchor Jim Acosta to the graveyard shift.
The Post has reached out to CNN for comment.
