53-Year-Old Washington Post Editor Christopher Shea Dies by Suicide

The Washington Post reported yesterday that editor Christopher Shea died by suicide after a battle with depression, according to his sister.

Shea’s death occurred on Sunday according to the news outlet, who listed his credentials while employed as an editor.

According to his bio, Shea joined the Post Outlook section, as an assistant editor, in August 2018.

Before that, he ran the Perspectives section at Vox.com and he has also written columns about the world of ideas for the Boston Globe Ideas section and the Wall Street Journal Review.

A longtime freelance writer and editor, Shea also worked for NPR, Bloggingheads.tv and Lingua Franca, his bio stated.

Shea began his career at the Chronicle of Higher Education, which is a newspaper and website that presents news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty and student affairs professionals.

In his final tweet, Shea shared a Slate article that was titled, “Can you totally avoid catching COVID? These people have.”

Shea appeared to indicate that he also had not contracted COVID at any point in the tweet as he asked, “Are we so rare we are now worthy of feature stories?”

“Seems like a mixture of caution and dumb luck, to me,” Shea quipped.

Are we so rare we are now worthy of feature stories? Seems like a mixture of caution and dumb luck, to me. https://t.co/KQAq04M1ER via @slate

— Christopher Shea (@cshea4) July 19, 2022

Shea’s colleague, White House economics reporter Jeff Stein, shared Shea’s Washington Post obituary and called him, “One of the most gentle, thoughtful, and compassionate editors you could ever hope to find.”

“RIP Chris Shea — the Post will be immeasurably poorer without you,” Stein lamented.

One of the most gentle, thoughtful, and compassionate editors you could ever hope to find.

RIP Chris Shea — the Post will be immeasurably poorer without youhttps://t.co/UWoNKhbqbY

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) July 27, 2022