WaPo shakeup
Washington Post executive editor Sally Buzbee has stepped down in a sign that things are not going well for the media institution. Despite the fact that it’s an election year and there is no shortage of news, the paper’s readership is down.
It’s been known for months now that the Post has a cash flow problem, but this is the first high-level management change to be made public.
It seems to be a case of “get woke, go broke.” They’re trying to stop the bleeding:
According to FOX News, the paper’s publisher and CEO, Matt Lewis, recently had a meeting with staffers that involved some tough love:
… “Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis had a blunt message for his staff during a tense meeting following the sudden ouster of executive editor Sally Buzbee, according to the paper’s own reporting.
“‘We are going to turn this thing around, but let’s not sugarcoat it. It needs turning around,’ Lewis told the paper. ‘We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.'”
My guess is that they’ll move only ever-so-slightly to the right.
The new permanent executive editor, who comes from the London Telegraph, won’t start until after the November election. He may be good, but I wonder if it isn’t too little, too late for the WaPo’s reputation. They’d have to be actual newspeople for quite some time before I’d begin trusting their reporting.
It’s the same everywhere. I’ll bet that the Wa Po did all the things that have led the L.A. Times to becoming a joke:
1. Deciding that not enough women and minorities were reading, so they switched from a model of “a robbery occurred at 123 Main St. at approximately…” to “so and so knew something was wrong when…”.
2. Getting rid of interesting local writers in favor of running wire service stories from the AP.
3. Forgetting that sports is entertainment and escapism, and allowing politics and activism to bleed into the sports section.
4. Blurring the lines between hard news coverage and editorial opinion.
5. And the one that caused me stop reading my old hometown newspaper, the Orange County Register: disabling anonymous or pseudonymous commenting, making people comment through their social media accounts with their real names. I can tell you that the comments section of the OCR got boring in a big hurry.
As I said at Ace; only a heart of stone could read this story without laughter.
Yes, I know it’s not original. But very appropriate.
The corpse is rotting, but new meat is only months away. Lovely
https://youtu.be/kdW6oBPao4Y?si=d8qeAgUJL1n0DZnZ
Appropriate!
“We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff.”
That would be the ‘stuff’ that Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis is an advocate for… so his real complaint is that his staffers aren’t lying persuasively enough.
“If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” Abraham Lincoln, 1854
I have subscribed to the WaPo since 1987. Sgt+Joe+Friday’s comments are, in my opinion,
1. Frequently correct
2. Not using too many AP stories, but they have gotten rid of their experienced local writers and especially columnists, and are writing most every story from a national perspective. Even when it has local implications we are seldom told what they might be.
3. Oh yes. Not so much with the “hard sports” stories, but some of the columnists are very woke.
4. Oh yes. For example, every time there is a story about someone challenging the 2020 election results, it is de rigeur to include the phrase “without evidence” or something similar.
5. Don’t know, I seldom read the comments.
Sgt.+Joe+Friday
Getting rid of interesting local shows in favor of the national was a similar factor in my disenchantment with a local NPR station.
Even multi-billionaires (I call them gazillionaires) like Bezos don’t like losing money. How much has the WaPo run in the red since Bezos bought it? My guess is $50-$100 million a year.
While the WaPo has forfeited more moderate subscribers in favor of the far-left sentiments of its staff, it may have a problem if it tacks to the right, on two fronts. Those more moderate subscribers who abandoned the WaPo may not come back. See Bud Light. Moreover, by tacking to the right, the WaPo may alienate those far left/progressive/moonbat subscribers. Between a rock and a hard place…Can’t say I feel sorry for Jeff Bezos.
One point about the WaPo subscription base is that it had been declining for years, until Trump came on the scene. Greater interest in politics due to Trump gave the WaPo a big boost in its subscription base. Attacking Trump was a good financial decision for the WaPo. Less Trump, less interest in subscribing to the WaPo.
That is, the decline in the WaPo’s subscription base since 2020 may not be due so much to the WaPo’s hard-core lefty narrative, but because Trump was no longer President, WaPo subscribers were not as interested in political news.
I remember i picked up the post in college and later when i was in dc for a trip
It had gotten progressively worse in 15 years now its totally unreadable mostly infected by the nutroots klein yglesias and co
Lorenz*came later as did others who were part of the russian hoax
*the first time i came across her was charlottesville
Yes they need a foil like trump in office
otherwise they wither on the vine
I can image what would happen to me if I had done a direct assault on my Bosses like some the “reporters” did at the WP. A box to put my stuff in and shoved out the door.
They really have become blank pages with the post narrowly worst than the times
It’s possible to be a jerk on line. But why? Take what you want, God said to the wolf. Take what want, and pay for it. It’s what it’s going to cost later
“My guess is that they’ll move only ever-so-slightly to the right.”
“My guess is that they’ll appear to move only ever-so-slightly to the right.”
Fixed it for you.
“…move…slightly to the right…”
What does that mean?
Start telling the truth from time to time…?
The WaPo is hopeless, no “shakeup” can save it.
I hope and pray it goes out of business. That would be the best thing that has happened to our country since V-J day. Even better if The NY Times went down with it.
The brand is trashed. Just shut it down. The few honest people producing its editorial matter might be able to migrate to better publications or to Substack.
==
Not sure there’s enough of a paying constituency for the sort of services newspapers used to provide to make it commercially viable. You want to sell those services to normal people, you provide reportage (which some British papers still do). You want to sell to partisan Democrats, you provide emotional validation (which requires deception and falsehood). You cannot sell to both at the same time and it’s a reasonable wager that there are few people writing for The Post or editing it who are at all fit for talking to anyone but their own.
You can tell if the new management of the Washington Post is serious if they get rid of the God awful Taylor Lorenz.
[…]the God awful Taylor Lorenz.
Come on, try to be nicer to the elderly.
Another one they need to get rid of is the fake conservative (and terrible writer) Jennifer Rubin. I get it – she is not a fan of Trump’s (neither am I!) but she parrots the Liberal line on just about every subject.