This Huffington Post story – “Kaplan Tarnishes Washington Post Legacy” – could apply just as well to the Democratic Party of Virginia (DPVA), where a top lobbyist for this same industry is now presiding as chair! It’s almost unbelievable, really, when you think about it. Here are a few paragraphs from the Huffington Post story that make just as much sense if you replace “Don Graham” with “Brian Moran” and “Washington Post” with “DPVA”:
At the forefront of this lobbying effort is none other than Don Graham. This revered figure, the son of the most courageous publisher in the history of American journalism, is now applying his prestige and legacy toward protecting an enterprise that, by many indications, makes its money fleecing vulnerable people.
[…]
So how could this same man now spend his days defending the interests of Kaplan, a company that increasingly looks like a machine built to gobble up burgeoning quantities of federal financial aid dollars while selling students’ bogus dreams?
[…]
That is a hard proposition to swallow, an assertion that runs headlong into unfortunate truths–truths that the greatest family in journalism would surely be probing itself, were it not increasingly dependent on what looks like ill-gotten money to pay for the ink.
That’s exactly the situation we’re facing right now in the DPVA, with the chairman appearing on a national news expose to defend this indefensible industry, the same industry the Obama Administration is currently attempting to rein in. The only things that shock me about this situation is the lack of shock (and outrage), and the fact that it was ever allowed to get to this point in the first place. WTF?
UPDATE: See the “flip” for a graph on where the Kaplan Post gets its revenues. Note that the Washington Post is losing money by the boatload, while Kaplan is the big money-maker.
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