Washington power hostess and journalist Sally Quinn has lost her Washington Post style section column after she used her prized real estate to respond to rumors about wedding drama in her high-profile family, the Washington City Paper is reporting.
Speculation that Quinn’s much-maligned column was likely to end has been the buzz of the Washington Post newsroom all week but WaPo executive editor Marcus Brauchli finally confirmed to Eric Wemple that Quinn’s column was going back on-line to the safe confines of WaPo’s “On Faith,” which is edited by Quinn and Newsweek‘s Jon Meacham.
“Sally and I have agreed that the column will return to what had been its original focus on faith, family and entertaining and will appear online at “On Faith,” a section of washingtonpost.com that Sally guides,” Brauchli told Wemple.
Quinn–who is married to former WaPo executive editor Ben Bradlee–set off the firestorm after using her entertaining column on the front of the Friday Style Section to clarify that there was no drama behind the rumors that she had rescheduled her son’s wedding on the same day as Bradlee’s granddaughter’s wedding to further a family grudge.
The dueling wedding rumors were started by former WaPo gossip columnist Annie Groer who wrote for Politics Daily that Sally had moved up son Quinn Bradlee’s wedding after the bride announced she was pregnant. The only available day turned out to be the same day Greta Bradlee is supposed to get married in California. Although Sally and Ben had already said they weren’t attending Greta’s wedding because of tension between Ben and his son, Ben Bradlee Jr. who is divorced from Greta’s mom, ABC’s Martha Raddatz, Sally acknowledged the whole thing looked bad. She blamed the snafu on her husband for not putting Greta’s wedding date on his calendar.
The column turned into another black-eye for the Style section, long considered one of the WaPo’s premier sections. In November, a legendary editor and young-turk writer came to blows over the lack of quality in the Style section. Brauchli had to break up that fight, but many suggested it exemplified problems in leadership and editing in the features section.
One of Quinn’s colleagues in the Style section, Pulitzer Prize winner Gene Weingarten, blamed Sally’s editor for not killing the column and saving Quinn from harming herself and the paper. Politico‘s Michael Calderone reported that both Raddatz and Bradlee Jr. contacted Post publisher Katharine Weymouth to complain about their family issues being dragged into the Style section.
In addition to Quinn losing her column, Groer is speculating that Quinn is going to change her son’s wedding–again–in order to ease family drama. And where does she plan to announce his mea culpa? Groer says it may in her final regular column scheduled for Friday.
We can only hope.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
