This is really, really clearly incestuous tech media stuff as part of a pressure campaign. Sam is the darlin of tech media and he's clearly instigated this reporting because they're reporting his thoughts and not the Board's in an article that purports to know what the Board is thinking, the investors who aren't happy (the point of a non-profit is that they are allowed to make investors unhappy in pursuit of the greater mission!) have an obvious incentive to join him in this pressure campaign, and then all he needs for "journalism" is one senior employee who's willing to leave for Sam to instead say to the Verge that the Board is reconsidering. Boom, massive pressure campaign and perception of the Board flip flopping without them doing any such thing. If they had done any such thing and there was proof of that, the Verge could have quoted the thoughts of anyone on the Board, stated it had reviewed communications and verified they were genuine, etc.
Moreover, there is an impartiality issue here in the tech press. A lot of the tech press disagree with the OpenAI Charter and think that Sam's vision of OpenAI as basically Google but providing consumer AI products is superior to the Charter, which they view in incredibly derogatory terms ("people who think Terminator is real"). That's fine, people can disagree on these important issues!
But I think as a journalist it's not engaging fairly with the topic to be on Sam's political side here and not even attempt to fairly describe the cause of the dispute, which is the non-profit Board accusing Sam Altman of violating the OpenAI charter which they are legally obligated to uphold. This is particularly important because if you actually read the OpenAI Charter, it's really clear to see why they've made that decision! The Charter clearly bans prioritising commercialisation and profit seeking, and demands the central focus be building an AGI, and I don't think a reasonable observer can look at OpenAI Dev Day and say it's not reasonable to view that as proof that OpenAI is no longer following its charter.
Basically, if you disagree with the idea of the non-profit and its Charter, think the whole thing is science-fiction bunk and the people who believe in it are idiots, I think you should argue that instead of framing all of this as "It's a coup" without even disclosing that you don't support the non-profit Charter in the first place.
I think you might have better luck grasping the situation if you put a little bit more effort into understanding it rather than jumping to put words in the mouths of others. Nobody said whether they support the non-profit charter or not in the first place, and as far as the phenomena of what's happening right now, the non-profit charter has nothing to do with it.
550 of 700 OpenAI employees have just told the board to resign. Altman is going to MSFT and taking his org with him. Regardless of what the board says, who do you think really has the power here -- the person who has and already had the full support of the org he built around him, or a frankly amateurish board that is completely unequipped for executing on a highly public, high stakes governance task presented in front of it?
Unfortunately, not only can you cannot charter public opinion, but those who try often see it backfiring by making clear their air of moral superiority rather than leaning on their earned mandate to govern the rank and file they are supposed to represent. The board, and it seems you, will simply be learning that lesson the hard way.