Crazy times in this country, including in the media. This morning, per the NY Times: “The Washington Post told employees on Wednesday that it was beginning a widespread round of layoffs.” Also: “WaPo’s Matt Murray told staff the paper is shuttering sports, moving remaining staff to features, shrinking foreign coverage, restructuring metro, closing books coverage, suspending Post Reports podcast.”
Crazy shit; I mean, at this point, what’s even the point of publishing the newspaper? Also, why is Bezos doing this? I think that Neera Tanden’s explanation makes a lot of sense:
“The truth about the Washington Post: Bezos made decisions to curry favor with Trump that made a lot of Washington Post readers distrust the newspaper. It then lost a lot of subscriptions, which lost money. And now he’s doing layoffs. He should sell the paper to someone who will make better decisions and avoid layoffs.”
Still, I’m puzzled as to why Bezos doesn’t just sell the paper to someone who cares about journalism. I mean, even if the WaPo is losing money, it’s nothing to someone with hundreds of billions of dollars – losing millions per year would be the equivalent of you or me losing a few hundred dollars per year or whatever. Also, I really don’t get why anyone in the DC area would continue to subscribe to a paper whose metro and sports coverage have been gutted, along with the style section, international news, etc. Certainly, there’s no reason to get home delivery of this paper anymore, right?
Anyway, here are a few more reactions:
- Dan Pfeiffer: “The fact the Bezos and Will Lewis can’t make local sports work is such proof of their indifference and incompetence. Washington Post sports was the home of Wilbon, Kornheiser, Jenkins, Feinstein etc” (and Tom Boswell!)
- Keith Boykin: “After laying off 16,000 workers at Amazon, Jeff Bezos is now launching sweeping layoffs at the Washington Post. Meanwhile, he’s been giving money to Trump for his inauguration and his $400 million ballroom.”
- The Wrap: “Bezos has appeared to ingratiate himself with Trump in the second term, sitting alongside other tech titans at the president’s inauguration. Amazon also donated to Trump’s inauguration fund, along with his White House ballroom project; most recently, the company reportedly paid $75 million to procure and market a documentary on Melania Trump. On Monday, Bezos played host to the Defense Secretary at Blue Origin’s space facilities in Florida. Meanwhile, Bezos has been notably silent in response to the shocking FBI search of a Post reporter’s home, a move that prompted outrage from journalists and press freedom groups. He also appeared distant in the face of private and public pleas from staff not to make steep cuts.”
- Tim Miller: “If the WaPo really leans in hard to anti-woke takes then maybe they could get a valuation as big as $150million from a billionaire looking to curry favor with the administration.”
- Glenn Kessler: “Bezos is not trying to save The Washington Post. He’s trying to survive Donald Trump…I don’t think the layoffs have much to do with saving money. Amazon, after all, just spent $75 million buying and promoting a documentary about Melania Trump. It’s about power and influence in Donald Trump’s second term.”
- John Seymour: “First Unforced Error: The Post’s Decision Not to Endorse Kamala Harris for President.”; “Second Unforced Error: The Post’s Decision Not to Print Ann Telnaes’s Cartoon”; “Game, Set, and Match: The Post’s Decision to Embrace Censorship”
- Marty Baron: “This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world’s greatest news organizations…Loyal readers, livid as they saw owner Jeff Bezos betraying the values he was supposed to uphold, fled The Post. In truth, they were driven away, by the hundreds of thousands.”
- David Folkenflik: “What if Democracy dies in indifference? Deep cuts at behest of Bezos. Exec Editor Matt Murray announces: Sports desk killed. Metro desk down to about a dozen (previously 40+) Hope to keep presence in 12 foreign bureaus (currently 70+ staffers)”
- Sara Fischer: “Once considered a historic newspaper success story, the Post has devolved into a shell of itself as it tried to reinvent its brand.”
- Jen Rubin: “…what a disaster, what a fucking failure Bezos and Lewis are- give it away! Sell it! You have destroyed a once great newspaper. Instead support independent media , which is EXPANDING”
I’d just add a few thoughts of my own:
- I will never forgive the Washington Post for its coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign, specifically its constant, above-the-fold, “HER EMAILS!!!!” bullshit, that helped to destroy Hillary Clinton and elect Donald Trump, thus leading to the disaster we now find ourselves in. Oh, and then in 2024, the WaPo was even worse in many ways, completely whitewashing/sanewashing Trump, ignoring/sanitizing his insane speeches at rallies, then having Bezos kill the paper’s Kamala Harris endorsement. Just f’ing disgraceful on every level, and totally unforgivable.
- I also will never forgive the Washington Post for relentlessly whitewashing Glenn Youngkin in 2021 as some sort of “moderate,” while basically ignoring his ugly (demagogic, fear mongering, appealing to bigotry, etc.) campaign. And it’s not like the Washington Post stopped doing this; to the contrary, they continued for the entirety of Youngkin’s governorship, even touting him as a potential GOP presidential nominee, ignoring his enthusiastic embrace of extremists like Kari Lake, and simply failing to do its job of holding powerful people to account (one of the main reporters who did that has now gone to work for a conservative Republican VA State Senator, so…yeah, that’s what we’re dealing with).
- Since I started the blog “Raising Kaine” in 2005, I noticed a few things about the Washington Post: 1) arrogance, even as the rise of Craigslst, Google, Facebook, blogs and other ways of getting political news, etc. started to destroy their entire business model; 2) an attitude of “journalistic ethics apply to YOU, but not to us, because we are amazing and you’re a nobody”; 3) lazy, stenographic “reporting”; 4) concern above all else with maintaining “acces” and not pissing off powerful political figures (e.g., the exact opposite of how journalism should be conducted); 4) an editorial page that was a hot mess, even before Bezos got his hands on it, with tons of endorsements over the years for supposed “moderate” and conservative Virginia Republicans for U.S. House, State Senate, House of Delegates, etc., and some really stupid/nonsensical endorsements in Democratic primaries (e.g., Harris Miller over Jim Webb? seriously? LOL); 5) a sharp decline in home delivery – “below 100,000 for the first time in 55 years”…
- The thing is, as much as I’ve found the Washington Post to be maddening in many, many ways, I didn’t want it to be DESTROYED, I wanted to see it revamped, strengthened, focused on actually making sure that democracy doesn’t “die in darkness,” etc. Instead, they went in the opposite direction, sold out to the devil (Bezos), cowered in fear of Trump (and the right wing more broadly), and in the end got the worst of all worlds, while betraying everything they claimed to stand for. Pathetic.
