washington-post
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Margaret Sullivan Still Believes the Press Can Earn Its Keep
From a summer internship in Buffalo to the awkward chair of public editor at The New York Times, Sullivan has spent her career asking one durable question: does this journalism serve the public?
Catherine Rampell
Catherine Rampell is an economics journalist who turned spreadsheets into prime time. After 11 years as a Washington Post opinion columnist, she now runs the economics desk at The Bulwark, writes the 'Receipts' newsletter, and co-anchors 'The Weekend: Primetime' on MS NOW. Her trademark is data-driven argument: charts, receipts and footnotes deployed against political spin, on immigration, inflation, trade and the cost of living.
Jennifer Rubin
Jennifer Rubin is a political commentator, author, and editor-in-chief of The Contrarian, the Substack publication she co-founded with attorney Norm Eisen in January 2025 after resigning from The Washington Post. A former labor lawyer who graduated first in her class at UC Berkeley Law, she spent years as the Post's resident conservative voice writing the 'Right Turn' column before breaking sharply with the Republican Party over Donald Trump and registering as a Democrat in 2020. Today she writes daily commentary in defense of democracy and is an MSNBC contributor.
Megan McArdle
Megan McArdle is a Washington Post opinion columnist who writes at the seam where economics, business and public policy meet. She was blogging as 'Jane Galt' from a desk near Ground Zero before most journalists knew what a blog was, parlaying an English-lit degree and a Chicago MBA into a career that ran through The Economist, The Atlantic, Newsweek/Daily Beast and Bloomberg View. A self-described right-leaning libertarian known for steelmanning the other side, she wrote 'The Up Side of Down,' a book arguing that failing well is the real engine of success. In 2025 she added a contributing-writer role at The Dispatch and turned to podcasting with 'Central Air' and 'Reasonably Optimistic.'
Neil Irwin
Neil Irwin is the chief economic correspondent at Axios and lead author of the daily Axios Macro newsletter, decoding the Federal Reserve, inflation, and global markets for hundreds of thousands of readers. A former senior economic correspondent at The New York Times and a 13-year veteran of The Washington Post, he wrote the New York Times bestseller The Alchemists about the central bankers who fought the 2008 financial crisis, and How to Win in a Winner-Take-All World, a guide to building a durable career in the modern economy.
Ramesh Ponnuru
Ramesh Ponnuru is the editor of National Review, a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. A Princeton-trained historian who started at National Review as an intern and never really left, he has spent more than two decades as one of the most cited voices in American conservatism, championing 'reform conservative' ideas like expanding the child tax credit and rethinking monetary policy. He is also a contributing editor to the policy journal National Affairs and a frequent television commentator.
Wesley Lowery
Wesley Lowery is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author, and media critic whose decade of reporting on criminal justice, race, and policing in America has made him one of the most consequential voices in modern journalism. Best known for leading the Washington Post's 'Fatal Force' database - the first real-time national tracker of fatal police shootings - Lowery has written two landmark books, built a distinctive independent newsletter, and become an outspoken advocate for objective, truth-centered journalism that refuses false balance. His career spans the Washington Post, CBS News, The Marshall Project, and academia, and his 2016 book 'They Can't Kill Us All' remains essential reading on race, protest, and the limits of American democracy.
Taylor Lorenz
Taylor Lorenz is an independent journalist, author, and media operator who has spent her career documenting how the internet reshapes fame, culture, power, and everyday life. After stints at Business Insider, The Daily Beast, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, she left legacy media in October 2024 to run User Mag, her Substack-based publication covering tech and internet culture, which quickly grew to nearly 100,000 subscribers. Her 2023 book 'Extremely Online' is a landmark social history of the influencer economy. She is widely considered one of the most influential — and most harassed — tech journalists in America.
Timothy B. Lee
Timothy B. Lee is an independent AI journalist and newsletter writer who runs Understanding AI, a Substack newsletter with over 263,000 subscribers that explains how artificial intelligence actually works - minus the hype and minus the doom. Drawing on a rare combination of a computer science master's from Princeton, two decades of tech policy reporting at outlets like Ars Technica, the Washington Post, and Vox, and an instinct for clear, jargon-free prose, Lee has become one of the most-read independent voices in AI journalism. His superpower is translating complex machine learning concepts into accessible explainers that neither oversell nor undersell the technology.
Katherine Boyle
Katherine Boyle is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where she leads the American Dynamism practice - a $1.1B+ fund focused on startups that serve the national interest. A former Washington Post journalist turned VC, she champions defense tech, manufacturing, aerospace, and critical infrastructure companies. She sits on the boards of Anduril Industries and The Free Press, and is widely regarded as one of tech's most important bridges between Silicon Valley and Washington.