The Washington Post’s chief executive told the newsroom Friday that it would no longer endorse presidential candidates, breaking with decades of precedent at the newspaper.

“The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election,” wrote Will Lewis, the Post’s chief executive. “Nor in any future presidential election. We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.”

The Post has endorsed presidential candidates since 1976, Lewis wrote, when it gave its stamp of approval to Jimmy Carter, who went on to win the election. Before that, it generally did not make presidential endorsements, though it made an exception in 1952 to back Dwight Eisenhower.

Questions about whether the Post would endorse a candidate this year have spread for days. Some people have speculated, without any proof, that the paper’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, was being cowed by a prospective Trump administration because his other businesses have many federal government contracts.

Bezos made the decision not to endorse presidential candidates after a debate among senior Post leaders, according to a person familiar with the talks.

Lewis, in his note to the staff, said little about how the Post arrived at its decision, adding only that it was not “a tacit endorsement of one candidate,” or “a condemnation of another.” He referenced an editorial the paper published in 1960 that it was “wiser for an independent newspaper in the Nation’s Capital” to avoid an endorsement.

A spokesperson for Bezos did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Bezos has told others involved with the Post that he is interested in expanding the Post’s audience among conservatives, according to a person familiar with the matter. He has appointed Lewis — a chief executive who previously worked at the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal — and has informed Lewis that he wants more conservative writers on the opinion section, the person said.

The Washington Post’s editorial writers had already drafted an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president, according to four people who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive newsroom matters.

The Post’s move follows unfurling tumult at The Los Angeles Times, where the head of the editorial board and two of its writers have resigned this week to protest the decision by the Times’ owner, billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, to block a planned presidential endorsement.