Washington Post Kills Sally Quinn's Column in Print Edition

"The Party" is over.

The weekly Washington Post column on gracious entertaining that Sally Quinn wrote from late November until Feb. 19 has been axed from the paper's Style section. It will appear only online as part of the feature she co-founded to explore matters moral and spiritual.

"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," said Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli in a statement that first ran Wednesday night in Erik Wemple's "City Desk" blog for the Washington City Paper. Quinn did not respond to my e-mail request for comment.

Brauchli's single sentence belies the turmoil that has rocked the Post since Quinn's Feb. 19 column, which ran under the headline, "The Kids Are All Right. It's Mom Who's to Blame." It was part apology, part estranged-family payback and part rebuttal to my Feb. 16 Politics Daily posting about dueling weddings: The long-planned April 10 California marriage of Greta Bradlee, the firstborn granddaughter of former Post executive editor Ben Bradlee, who is Quinn's husband, and the Washington nuptials of the couple's son, Quinn Bradlee, whose wedding to Pary Williamson was recently rescheduled from Oct. 10 to April 10 because of Williamson's pregnancy.

After Quinn's 800-word piece was published, the California bride's divorced parents -- Ben Bradlee Jr. and Martha Raddatz -- complained to Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth about Sally Quinn using the newspaper to air private family matters, Politico's Michael Calderone reported. Bradlee also complained to Brauchli.

"The column is killed from the print edition," Wemple wrote in City Paper. "That's not to say that if Quinn gins up an incredible piece, it won't appear in the dead-tree version. But at the Washington Post, at least, a move to online-only counts as a significant demotion."