Many Task & Purpose employees and contributors, like Iscol and Weinstein, are also veterans. Weinstein, who served in the Navy and was an Army contractor in Iraq from 2008 to 2009, made a name for himself in journalism reporting on national-security matters for Mother Jones and Gawker before coming to Task & Purpose.

In the six months since Katzenberg left to join the Times, Task & Purpose has yet to find a stable pick for the top editor position. Katzenberg’s replacement, Sam Fellman, lasted just five months before leaving to join Business Insider, and now his replacement, Weinstein, is gone in just two months.

While some readers say they have sensed a subtle change in Task & Purpose as Iscol wrestled with criticism from conservatives, numerous staff members and contributors say they were taken aback by learning that interference in the newsroom had precipitated Weinstein’s resignation.

“I was shocked,” Andrea Goldstein, a longtime Task & Purpose contributor, a Navy veteran, and the CEO of Service to School, a nonprofit that helps veterans go to college and graduate school, said in a phone interview. “I did not see it coming.”

“I was surprised and I was disheartened by it,” said McCoy, the Marine veteran and former contributor. “In recent months there’s been a great deal of targeted right-wing smear campaigns against Task & Purpose generally—people like myself and also Zach Iscol.” He said his “instinct” is that Iscol let bogus liberal-bias allegations affect his judgement.

SOFREP, a more overtly conservative veterans’ site, published a podcast in June that Goldstein called a “hit piece” against many at Task & Purpose, including Iscol, McCoy, and others, accusing the website of having a liberal bias and calling its personnel “social-justice warriors.” Goldstein said she only listened because she was personally named.

“There’s such a fear of being accused of having a particular bias,” Goldstein said, that newsroom independence can be comprised to influence coverage and mollify critics. “I’m not saying it’s necessarily my opinion, but this is the conversation that’s going on,” she said. “The perspective is that Task & Purpose tried to overcorrect because [it] has been accused as being a more liberal voice in the space.”

Weinstein said Iscol’s perceptions of the site were often skewed. “In my discussions with our [editorial] staff there was often a lot of concern over whether Zach actually read the site from day to day or whether he got his information about the site from vets who didn’t like us on Twitter,” Weinstein said.

He also said Iscol essentially saw himself both as the publisher and the editor of the site. “Zach told me and other people on the editorial staff more than once that he considered himself the editor in chief,” said Weinstein. “That was the reason that every top editor on the site before me was called the managing editor, because he wanted to reserve that title for himself.”