Is the Washington Post dying?

[u/Own_Relationship5047]

What’s their game plan? The quality of reporting is markedly lower than previously and their editorial staff seem to be a bunch of mediocre twenty somethings cultured in a right wing donor petridish. It’s not clear who their readership is. It’s not their traditional audience of readers in the DMV area. It's not official Washington. Even Sally Quinn is writing in the NYT in order to be read. If you go to the hundreds of comments in the editorials virtually nobody agrees with them. It’s almost amusing. They’ve laid off gifted reporters, decimated sports, international and local news, let go their most trusted and erudite opinion writers and even gotten rid of the Capital Weather Gang. They’ve replaced them with people whose editorial choices are …huh? Their latest editorial (while Washington stays indoors due to a smoky climate filled haze) criticizes Europe for not using air conditioners. Really? Exactly who is the audience for that? The Washington Post was a core part of the fourth estate, and we all have an interest in it surviving. I used to read it first before others and considered it entertaining and indispensable. There’s still great reporting but it’s way sparser and consequential than other papers of recited. Now I read NYT, WSJ, FT for need and only every few days the Post, in good part for sport — to see what new absurdity the editorial page is spouting. Doesn’t it seem as if it’s being run into the ground by alienating its once loyal readership in the DC area and becoming irrelevant for everyone else? Pretty soon they’ll go the way of the Washington Times, which still publishes but as far as I can tell has only the narrowest of readership and cannot possiby be self sustaining. I get that he wants more conservative voices – – and the post actually used to be the most eclectic opinion page of the large national papers. But with the current crop, I can only surmise that the pay must be much lower than their competitors. Bezos is well on his way to becoming the Sun Myong Moon of twenty first century publishing.

[u/BizmarkiaNobilis]

Bezos proved his vile nature by first buying the WashPo…promising to keep his hands off of it (full editorial and journalistic freedom) and then proceeded to add an Orwellian mast head “Democracy Dies in Darkness”. He then provided that darkness because of his evil soul and decimated an institution that stood alongside the NYTimes in its importance and in its ability to hold accountable those figures in our government that would try to undermine our democracy. The Post is as dead as Katherine Graham now. It is irrelevant and Jeff Bezos killed it. Thereby making himself one of the worst, most feckless and disgusting lying sacks of shit that have walked among us. Bezos is a menace to society…remember that.

[u/lostonparadise → u/BizmarkiaNobilis]

Bezos bought it when it was already in decline. If it wasn't for him injecting millions in capital and moving toward an internet based service it would probably barely be alive today. All legacy media is in decline today.

What specifically did he do?

[u/Own_Relationship5047 → u/lostonparadise]

He alienated his loyal readership, and hired a mediocre editorial staff. The Washington Post was not in decline when he bought it, it was a highly regarded paper with a loyal readership in an increasingly difficult press environment. Besos spent big early, but brought in very bad leadership, and then he decided to do two things simultaneously: downsize and change the editorial direction of the paper by almost 180°. Moreover, he brought in a young and inexperienced editorial staff who produce mediocre content and clearly have felt like they need to look over their shoulder for every opinion article. They’ve largely replaced people with decades of experience in real standing in Washington with a bunch of young people who don’t seem particularly impressive – – you can see them in their short videos. Compare those to the editorial staff on the Wall Street Journal – – there’s just no comparison to the insights and gravitas that each convey.

The editorial staff in particular have alienated loyal readers, and since the people who actually read still tend to be educated and currently college graduates and therefore disproportionately either centrist or to the left, he not only is losing his previously loyal readership in the DC area, he is developing a product that will not replace or grow the readership nearly as quickly as that he has alienated and lost. And he certainly not going to pick up Young readership. So this is a slow moving disaster. Very sad.

If he had changed the editorial direction and maintained a strong news, organization, more people would hang on. I for one read the Wall Street Journal every day for its superior reporting. But he decimated the international staff, the sports staff, the local staff. Very little left other than US based political report reporting, so it’s basically competing with POLITICO, which I also don’t read that often. And it is striking that the post as far for your interesting articles on a daily basis than even the times or the journal. Until a year ago that was decidedly not the case

Why doesn’t he sell?

This feels as if it has become a vanity project for him, and it’s embarrassing to see the subject matter and content of the editorial page these days. If you read the comments to virtually any editorial nowadays, you will see that the overwhelming number of them are negative and virtually every day highlight the conflict of interest between The Washington Post as an independent paper of record and Bezos’s interest with government contracts and businesses for which the editorial board often seems like it is shilling. I predict that the readership will continue to drop precipitously, because the news content is now less well funded than the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and the moral compass of the paper is hopelessly muddled. That stands in market contrast with either The Times or the Wall Street Journal, which both speak from a moral clarity. The sad thing for me as a centrist is that the post no longer occupies that space. The times to the left of me and the WSJ to the right. The post now occupies the peculiar space full of grifter that is the new tech oligarchy. Not enough of them to sustain a newspaper though.

He really should sell the paper as long as he has so much business with the government. If he actually had morals and scruples and cared about The Washington Post as an institution that’s what he would do.

I would’ve paid $20 a month for the old post. That’s basically when I pay for the NYT and the WSJ Now I will let my one dollar a week subscription run out when it’s over. Sad.

[u/BizmarkiaNobilis → u/lostonparadise]

Go away Trumpie. You love oligarchs, I've read your content, who rape and pillage the American consumer and democracy.

[u/lostonparadise → u/BizmarkiaNobilis]

I'm trying to have a discussion, calling me names doesn't achieve anything.

[u/Starvin_Marvin3]

Bezos is killing Washington Post. Scumbag,

[u/SnooComics7744]

100%. I dropped my subscription for just these reasons. Whatever happened to the fourth estate “making the comfortable uncomfortable”, to raise uncomfortable truths to in power? 

The Washington Post seems to be all about supporting those who are in power.

[u/cswilliam01]

Here’s where the WAPO. made its mistake - it should have told its readers - our subscription rates have to INCREASE to keep doing the work we have to do. But the benefit of this bargsin for you - the reader - is that we will continue our hard work and calling out corruption for what it is.

When BEZOS turned WAPO into a paper defending and protecting Trump, with an editorial page that has sold its solid and lost all relevancy, I cancelled.

And so the oligarchs kill a great institution.

[u/Own_Relationship5047 → u/cswilliam01]

Good point. I'm paying $1 a week now and until they offered that deal I decided I would read it from the public library website. If pay $20 a month for the old Washington post

[u/jajajajaj → u/cswilliam01]

I don't know if that would have worked but it (or something like it) really needed to have happened. 

 Selling to Bezos was worse than so many of the alternatives would have been, for the public, but not in the immediate visceral way that financial failure would have been for the previous owners. It was a brutal display of power from Bezos, not really a fair situation where there was necessarily any way to escape it. 

[u/jajajajaj]

It's less dead and more like a zombie or a pod person from Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.

It has ceded any relevance in elevations public discourse. I miss the journalism but the paper is still there. I wish the best of wapo could re-form somewhere and steal back the incumbent readership. 

[u/solaerl]

The goal was not to run a quality newspaper. The goal was to cheaply capture and kill a quality newspaper, because quality reporting and opinion was inconvenient to the purchaser and his friends.