Controversial Washington Post technology columnist Taylor Lorenz left the left-leaning newspaper on Tuesday — weeks after she caused a stir by calling President Biden a “war criminal” on her Instagram account.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Lorenz, who had not published anything for the Jeff Bezos-owned broadsheet since Aug. 7, said she was leaving to launch her newsletter on the Substack platform.
Her newsletter, titled User Magazine, will “cover technology from the user’s side,” she told the media.
“It’s about who has power online and how that power is being used,” she said.
Lorenz — who has been at the center of controversy during a tumultuous career that has included stints at the New York Times and the Daily Beast — said she “just wanted out of legacy media.”
“I feel like it’s really, really hard to do the kind of reporting that I want to do online within these kinds of older institutions as a primary job,” she told THR.
The Washington Post said it launched an investigation into Lorenz after New York Post reporter Jon Levine posted on his X account an eyebrow-raising Instagram photo she uploaded while attending a White House event featuring Biden.
Lorenz took a selfie with Biden in the background and the caption “War Criminal” written below his image.
She shared the photo with a select circle of friends on Instagram, where she has a total of 143,000 followers.
Lorenz claimed the photo, which was not meant for public consumption, had been digitally altered, writing: “You people will fall for any stupid edit anyone makes.”
She told her editors at the Washington Post that the photo was a fake.
But National Public Radio confirmed the authenticity of the photo, validating Levine’s X post.
She removed the post an hour after it was shared with her friends on Instagram.
The Washington Post did not disclose the outcome of its investigation.
On Tuesday, a spokesman said: “We are grateful for the work that Taylor has produced at The Washington Post. She has resigned to pursue a career in freelance journalism and we wish her the best.”
Lorenz, who joined the paper in 2022, said she looks forward to having a “really interactive relationship with my audience.”
“I like to be very vocal online, of course. And I just think that all of that is really hard to do in the roles that are available in these legacy institutions,” she said.
Lorenz said that “legacy institutions … really struggled to cover the Internet in any meaningful way.”
“I write about the attention economy and I write about the content creator industry, and I just want complete autonomy to write and do and say whatever I want, and engage a little more directly with my readers, with the public, when it comes to my work”, she said.
In 2022, Lorenz was widely criticized for revealing the identity of social media personality “Libs of TikTok”.
Last week, Lorenz appeared on MSNBC and broke down in tears as she recalled how she faced “harassment” from online critics.
During her tenure as a technology reporter for the Times, she was sued by a businesswoman who claimed she was defamed by an allegation that she had released nude images of one of her clients.
Lorenz also came under fire for accusing tech mogul Marc Andreessen of using a derogatory term during a private chat on the Clubhouse app. The accusation turned out to be false.
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