FROLITICKS

In several previous blogs (search under “media”) I wrote about various current serious issues surrounding mainstream media in the U.S. Today, as in the recent past, another example of the potential demise of a newspaper has surfaced in the case of the Washington Post.  As reported by people with knowledge of the company’s finances, in 2022 the organization was on track to lose money after years of profitability.  At the time, The Post had fewer than the three million paying digital subscribers.  Moreover, despite the losses, The Post’s newsroom remained one of the most formidable in the country.  In 2013, Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, had become The Post’s owner.  Bezos said repeatedly since then that he wanted the company to break even, not to rely on his largess.  He initially invested heavily, and the company thrived for several years, with the newsroom doubling in size.  However, by this past year, The Post was running over $100 million in annual losses.  Consequently over the past two years, the newsroom shrank by nearly half to about the size it was when he bought it. 

Next came Donald Trump’s running for a second term as president.  Normally, Bezos stayed out of the paper’s day-to-day operations.  Apparently, he had not shown up in the newsroom since 2023.  However, in the past two years he has dipped in more forcefully.  His more direct involvement has resulted in a series of jarring upheavals in strategy and leadership at one of the country’s most decorated news organizations.  Problems at The Post started actually several years ago, when its audience diminished after expanding during the first Trump administration and the Covid-19 pandemic.  During the last presidential campaign, Bezos ended presidential endorsements, effectively killing a draft editorial that encouraged readers to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic opponent.  As a result, there was reader uproar, as reflected in thousands of cancelled subscriptions. 

Bezos insisted an independent newsroom should be self-sustaining.  However, for example, foreign reporting is expensive.  As a key beat for The Post, foreign reporting is essential to keeping The Post competitive on national security.  Wanting to reduce the number of staff reporters in order to cut costs, Bezos further insisted that the newsroom perform today at the same level as before but with fewer staff.  However, there is no way to hit their target without affecting the scope of the newsroom’s coverage.  This resulted in most international correspondents and editors being laid off, including those in the Middle East, just weeks before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran.

At recent meetings with a group of top Post journalists and business executives, Bezos reportedly remarked that the company had gotten off track years ago because of inattentive oversight, including from himself, and a sluggish response to changes in the media business.  Nevertheless, he reassured the group that he was committed to its future, and said he had spurned several offers to sell The Post.  The Washington Post represents one of the premier news outlets, along with such papers as The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.  The lost of The Post would be a great blow to mainstream media.  Increasingly Bezos, in light of his closer relationship with the Trump administration, has more frequently outlined his political and economic beliefs, which boil down to a mix of libertarian and pro-business policies.  Indeed, in January of last year, he traveled to Washington and was assigned a seat onstage near Trump at his inauguration.  Weeks later, Bezos’ reorientation of the paper’s opinion pages became official.  The fallout from the change was immediate.  Subscribers once again cancelled in droves.  Several Post Opinion employees resigned, including the opinion editor David Shipley.  Interestingly, Shipley now works as an editor at The Times.

As a result of the newsroom coverage of the Iranian war, Secretary of War (alias Peace), Pete Hegseth, has gone to war with the American press over Iran coverage.  He alluded to the administration’s belief that major news media are overly critical of the war’s objectives and daily operations.  Instead, he stated that American news media should reflect the war’s outcomes in more “patriotic” terms. This highly defensive reaction feels tone-deaf at a moment when the nation is at war — especially as polls show Americans largely disapproving of the conflict and are unclear about its rationale. 

One can only hope that news outlets such as the Washington Post, by invoking journalistic integrity, will continue to report the sequence of wartime events in unbiased and factual terms without undue interference from the White House.  Perhaps Bezos should adopt this principled stance and better support the independent work of his newsroom staff, rather than insisting that it reflect his own personal values and bias.

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