The Washington Post’s plan for lobbyist-sponsored, off-the-record meetings with high-level government officials was “an ethical lapse of monumental proportions,” Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander wrote in a Post op-ed Sunday.

The newspaper’s publisher, Katharine Weymouth, Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli and other top editors “were all aboard a fast-moving vehicle that, over a period of months, roared through ethics stop signs and plowed into a brick wall,” Alexander wrote. A Washington Post Co. spokeswoman did not return calls for comment.