The Washington Post Does Not Want to Be Saved. Does It Deserve to Be?

By Jeffrey Blehar

Saturday, June 22, 2024

 

During the Spring and Autumn period of ancient China (ca. 470 B.C.), the kingdom of Yue was ruled by one Goujian, whose infamy preceded him in combat, quite literally: Yue’s most devoted warriors would march forward from the front ranks, stand before the opposing army on the battlefield, and demonstrate their implacable fearlessness by chopping off their own heads. The newsroom at the Washington Post may be getting there soon in its rebellion against self-control (they’re running out of better options), but not quite yet – first, the platoon has decided to frag its commanding officers instead.

 

For morale is low among the troops, my friends: The Post has lost half its readership since the heyday of “The Resistance” and Democracy Dying in Darkness. Now it is apparently dying of boredom, and it’s a war of attrition: The Post lost $77 million last year to go with all those missing eyeballs, and if the tone of their Gaza coverage in recent months is anything to go by, those readership numbers aren’t pulling out of their nosedive anytime soon.

 

The Washington Post has lost its way, as all can see. The sports section is a ghost of its former glory, local coverage of the DC/Maryland/Virginia area has become nearly nonexistent, their foreign coverage is written by interchangeable pro-Hamas bots, and even their national political coverage – so long the moneymaker during the high liberal dudgeon of the Trump administration – has sunk into tired predictability. (They retain a fairly interesting op-ed page, to be fair.)

 

And so since Jeff Bezos — the Amazon owner who bought the Post back in 2013 only to see it grow during the Obama and Trump era yet now collapse — doesn’t like losing money hand over fist, he’s brought in some new leadership from British media (always more carnivorous in its press sensibility) to shake things up. Fleet Street veteran Will Lewis was named publisher. Current executive editor Sally Buzbee was defenestrated, and in her stead Rob Winnett of the U.K. Telegraph was tasked with running the newsroom. A new era was about to dawn at the Post, a course-correction that would get it back on track after years of letting its purpose wander.

 

Or maybe not. Now we’re watching with mildly excited interest, wondering whether an entire newsroom really can hold its breath until it turns blue and asphyxiates. (It never works in real life, but do not underestimate the marvelous things people can achieve when they collectively malfunction together.)  For as Dylan Byers relates in his story about the turmoil at the Post, almost immediately after Lewis’s hiring and the naming of Winnett as executive editor the staffers at the Post’s foreign desk — outraged at the potential presence of Murdoch-ite interloper scum amongst the pure progressive crusader-journos of the Washington Post — set to targeting them with stories they knew might submarine them before they even got there to assume the reins.

 

The Post itself then began reporting out stories on their own boss with glee, specifically on Lewis’s relationship to a phone-tapping scandal during his days in the U.K. press. (It’s always phone-tapping scandals with Fleet Street journalists, leading one to believe journalism in London is conducted like intelligence gathering in East Germany.) Lewis is currently on the ropes — media coverage dubs this only the end of “Act I” in what is a new fantasy of long-term “resistance.” Rob Winnett could read the writing on the wall from all the way over in England: He announced he’d be remaining at the Telegraph in the position of deputy editor. And fair play to him, seeing as there’s little point in moving halfway across the globe and taking a nominal promotion only to have your own soldiers roll a grenade into your tent the first night you fall asleep. The Post reported on this, of course, with a nominally straight face and all the barely-concealed joy of a warrior claiming a scalp from a corpse.

 

At what point will Jeff Bezos say enough? This is a newsroom that emphatically does not want to be helped. All of the purported complaints from staff about “journalistic integrity” are so transparently stand-ins for “suspicious Murdoch ties and incorrect politics” that few if any are even bothering to conceal it at this point: The rabble has congealed into a braying mob within the paper. So when does Bezos just wash his hands of the whole mess, conceding he will not be able to rebuild its brand value?

 

I wonder if it’s coming. There seemed to be a point in the mid-2010s where Bezos had a notion to become a Washington, D.C. “power player” — he moved to the city, bought a posh mansion in Georgetown, started attending the right parties, etc. Now, since I was actually born in Washington, D.C. and raised five miles away, ­I can reliably inform you that nobody sane stays there without serious financial inducement; one suspects the massive regulatory advantages of hobnobbing with lawmakers instead played the major role. So, of course, did purchasing the official newspaper of the DC clerisy, the Washington Post. But now the Post is circling the bowl financially, Bezos is divorced, and is probably disinclined to read people making snarky remarks about his fiancée’s appearance at red carpet events. How long until he retires to some private island, mentally if not physically?

 

Whether that happens or not, Bezos is either going to have to fix the Washington Post or wash his hands of it. Either outcome is going to result in changes, because if nothing else is certain, it is this: What’s going on right now at the Post isn’t working. It’s not selling. It is unsustainable. So it is weird and sad but also richly hilarious to see the Washington Post‘s staff slit the throats of the only people who can save them — or want to — and in so doing cut their own.