Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis is being denounced this week after the end of the short-lived tenure of Executive Editor Sally Buzbee and delivering a truth bomb to the staff. Lewis told them that they have lost their audience and “people are not reading your stuff.” It was a shot of reality in the echo chambered news outlet and the response was predictable. However, Lewis just might save this venerable newspaper if he follows his frank talk with meaningful reforms to bring balance back to the Post.
As someone who once wrote for the Washington Post regularly, I have long lamented the decline of the paper following a pronounced shift toward partisan and advocacy journalism. There was a time when the Post valued diversity of thought and steadfastly demanded staff write not as advocates but reporters. That began to change rapidly in the first Trump term.
Suddenly, I found editors would slow walk copy, contest every line of your column, and make unfounded claims. In the meantime, they were increasingly running unsupported legal columns and even false statements from authors on the left. When confronted about columnists with demonstrably false statements, the Post simply shrugged.
One of the most striking examples was after its columnist Philip Bump had a meltdown in an interview when confronted over past false claims. After I wrote a column about the litany of such false claims, the Post surprised many of us by issuing a statement that they stood by all of Bump’s reporting, including false columns on the Lafayette Park protests, Hunter Biden laptop and other stories. That was long after other media debunked the claims, but the Post stood by the false reporting.
The decline of the Post has followed a familiar pattern. The editors and reporters simply wrote off half of their audience and became a publication for largely liberal and Democratic readers. In these difficult economic times with limited revenue sources, it is a lethal decision. Yet, for editors and reporters, it is still professionally beneficial to embrace advocacy journalism even if it is reducing the readership of your own newspaper.
Lewis, a British media executive who joined the Post earlier this year, reportedly got into a “heated exchange” with a staffer. Lewis explained that, while reporters were protesting measures to expand readership, the very survival of the paper was now at stake:
“We are going to turn this thing around, but let’s not sugarcoat it. It needs turning around,” Lewis said. “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.”
Other staffers could not get beyond the gender and race of those who would be overseeing them. One staffer complained “we now have four White men running three newsrooms.”
The Post has been buying out staff to avoid mass layoffs, but reporters are up in arms over the effort to turn the newspaper around.
The question is whether, after years of creating a culture of advocacy journalism and woke reporting, the Post is still capable of reaching a larger audience. If you want to read about certain stories, you are not likely to go to the Post, NPR or other outlets.
Likewise, with reporters referring to the January 6th riot as an “insurrection,” there is little doubt for the reader that the coverage is a form of advocacy. Again, such stories can affirm the bona fides for reporters, but they also affirm the bias for readers.
I truly do hope that the Washington Post can recover. The newspaper has played a critical role in our history and a towering example of journalism at its very best from the Pentagon Papers to Watergate. If you want people to “read your stuff,” you need to return to being reporters and not advocates; you need to start reaching an audience larger than yourself and your friends.
As I previously wrote, the mantra “Let’s Go Brandon!” was embraced by millions as a criticism as much of the media as President Biden. It derives from an Oct. 2 interview with race-car driver Brandon Brown after he won his first NASCAR Xfinity Series race. During the interview, NBC reporter Kelli Stavast’s questions were drowned out by loud-and-clear chants of “F*** Joe Biden.” Stavast quickly and inexplicably declared, “You can hear the chants from the crowd, ‘Let’s go, Brandon!’”
Stavast’s denial or misinterpretation of the obvious instantly became a symbol of what many Americans perceive as media bias in favor of the Biden administration. Indeed, some in the media immediately praised Stavast for her “smooth save” and being a “quick-thinking reporter.” The media’s reaction has fulfilled the underlying narrative, too, with commentators growing increasingly shrill in denouncing its use. NPR denounced the chant as “vulgar,” while writers at the Washington Post and other newspapers condemned it as offensive; CNN’s John Avalon called it “not patriotic,” while CNN political analyst Joe Lockhart compared it to coded rhetoric from Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and ISIS.
The more the media has cried foul, however, the more people picked up the chant.
It was the public response to how many in the media have embraced advocacy journalism and rejected objectivity in reporting; in their view, readers and viewers are now to be educated rather than merely informed. That included the rejection of “both-sidesism,” the need to offer a balanced account of the news.
Many of us hope that Lewis will rescue the Post from itself in the coming months. It will not be easy after years of orthodoxy and advocacy in the ranks. Yet, the Washington Post is a national treasure worth fighting for. People are still longing for old-fashioned, reliable news. As with the Field of Dreams, if you re-build it, “they will come” back to the Post.
@Upstate Farmer
“What they, the so-called journalists, need to experience is a dose of reality ”
Upstate, as we recognize, newspapers exist to make money for their owners. The news has to be appealing to its customers, not its ownership. We can go back in time and see Yellow Journalism. Sensationalism existed at the time of
George Washington. That is one way of attracting an audience.
The owners of Wapo must prioritize understanding their target audience and whether that audience is willing to support their type of journalism. Wapo’s decision to cut off half its audience was a missed opportunity to understand and cater to their needs. They also needed to recognize the existing competition that competes for that audience.
With the advent of the Internet, Wapo’s audience has been steadily declining, a trend that was exacerbated by the decision to alienate a significant portion of the readership. It’s crucial for Wapo to understand that dismissing any segment of its readers, whether left-leaning or right-leaning, is a mistake. If Wapo truly aspires to be an inclusive newspaper, it’s the managers who refuse to consider the target audience and instead focus on their own preferences that should be let go. We should think of Friedman’s “Free to Choose”.
You have chosen the Free Press, started by Bari Weiss. That is one of the directions the news media needs to consider. I subscribe to no mainstream newspapers and use consolidators from where I can link to articles. I also use topic-specific news.
There is so much news to sift through that the power has shifted from the newspapers to the people who choose who should provide their news. Wapo and the NYT should start to recognize this shift and adapt their strategies accordingly.
Bari Weiss is a partisan propagandist for her own hobby horses and a cancel culture advocate against those who disagree. Just as Ben Shapiro was revealed to be by his Candace Owens cancel.
So youre a Jew hater, a Lesbian hater, a hater of women and….. why bother. Youre as predictable as WahPutz
It sounds like the village idiot is taking up another name. Provide facts demonstrating Bari Weiss is a propagandist. You can’t, so the name village idiot is appropriate.
You likely are a fascist anti-Semite without knowing what the terms mean. Was Owens canceled? I don’t think by Shapiro. I don’t think so because Owens said, paraphrasing, ‘Ben doesn’t have the power to fire me.’
S. Meyer,
Well said.
Any seeming return to objectivity will likely be “sugarcoated” by the advocate “journalists” and eventually exposed. The sure way to change the direction of the paper would be to fire the advocate journalists and hire new, objective ones, if any still exist. It looks to me like the beginning of a death spiral.
Dear Mr. Turley, Thank you for your great article on the ” Washington Post”. However, it just isn’t the Post who is suffering from one-sidedness in journalism. Even the small local papers I used to read are infected. The Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, Wisconsin) and the Janesville Gazette (Janesville, Wisconsin) only printed negative stories on the Republican candidates going way back to John McCain and Sarah Palin. It only continued to become worse. I do not remember a single positive article regarding President Trump. Nor do I recall anything negative about Hunter Biden’s laptop, or President Biden keeping classified documents in unsecured place for years. Readership has dropped for these two papers as well. The Gazette only prints Monday through Friday with Friday’s edition call “The Weekend” where they used to print every day. I think it is the same for the Wisconsin State Journal. I do not feel sorry for them as they have held sway over the public for years. Someone once told me “You cannot believe everything you read”. I understood why the Russian people would read their newspapers from back to front. I hope the print media will clean up their act and allow for the Right to have positive articles written about them.
I live in a red section of a pretty red state and my local paper reads like the WAPO or the Times. They utilize AP and USA Today and it is a complete rag. How can they expect to prosper when they cater to the 35% of their local population?
HullBobby,
I read the other day, the AP is joining up with some other, left, media groups to form a new outlet to re-establish trust or truth or something like that.
Yeah, I laughed too.
Nope. I celebrate the end and hopefully it will be sooner than later. They have always been partisan. The masks came off during Trump. He has a way of bringing out the real intentions of these crazies. Same with the NYT. Real reporting is now found on Substack.
Which half of your audience did you write off when you became a highly compensated senior propagandist for Fox News? Go reread your article then go back and read the stuff you post Jon.
Half of one percent.
The Ralph crowd. Skinheads. White nationalists.
Half of one percent. That half.
Fair and UNbalanced, I see a panel discussion every night on Fox’s 6 PM News with Bret Baeir and he has at least one liberal on the 3 person panel EVERY NIGHT. Name a true conservative that is on MSNBC. Who is it, Ana Navarro? Nicolle Wallace? Mike the moron Steele? Name one conservative on MSNBC or keep your Fox misinformation to yourself.
As usual I feel like Turley is being overly optimistic. What we’re seeing is all our formerly great institutions having the lid blown off so we can see the filth inside. Just as with any other building, a few can be saved but only through ruthless gutting of the whole structure. Many will have to be razed. The problem is not just that wapoop has destroyed their brand; the problem is that they’ve perverted their brand. Far too many Americans have only ever known wapoop as a lying, cheating, fake news-spewing mockery of journalism. I agree with other commenters who say the only solution is to fire absolutely everyone but is that even possible? And is it enough? It’s akin to turning epstein’s Island into a church retreat center. Once evil has taken root, it’s not so easily driven out.
Yes, bring back the balance, POST haste!
No way that leftist rag could survive a $787 million lawsuit way to go Jon!
Booger eater says what
The ComPost is a total piece of crap. I get a digital version and Sunday print for $1 a week so I can monitor the disingenuous and mentally debased reporting and commentary. The reporting is straight out of the Biden propaganda machine and most of the commentary by degenerates such as Milbank and Jenny Rubin are beyond disgusting. I swear those two would support Farrakhan who would put them in concentration camps if he ran for President. This newspaper is filled with totalitarian thugs who seek a one party state. I doubt anyone could redeem that paper.
how many times must we say these things; go woke, go broke…you can lead a horse to water… you can fool some of the people some of the time… The average American with 2 oz. of common sense have rejected the overbearing hubris of the prog/left propaganda masquerading as journalism.
The Free Press founded by Bari Weiss, check it out. thefp.com. She is an recovering NYT editor that fled when she noticed “All the news that’s fit to print “ became “all the news that fits the narrative”. She started in January, 2021 with a news letter and has been growing ever since. Even cheapskate me is subscribed which requires money.
It’s a good article, but it’s absurd to assert this started with Trump. The practice began in the Clinton Era as schools and existing media began to execute a politicized agenda. This further accelerated with Ezra Klein’s Journolist, which expressed the growing belief that Advocacy Journalism was not just an acceptable practice but the only acceptable framework for journalism.
@Rick
Yup. And it was furthered by W (‘No Child Left Behind’, anyone?). Do not think this had anything to do with Rs or Ds, because it didn’t. What we are witnessing today, though – that is strictly the province of the modern left.
Two great things need to happen: the washington compost folds and parts of russsia go dark , just as in The Ukraine
Once this much of the employee base is determined to drag you down with their ideology, I think recovery is unlikely. While I’m pleased that Musk has pulled X back from the brink, my gut tells me it’s too late for the WaPo and Disney. I think many universities are in the same boat.
The Left is very nihilistic and instinctively totalitarian, and too few liberals are ever willing to admit that, much less stop them. When every Western country is having these institutional problems with their left, what else can one conclude? Liberalism is the gateway drug to Communism.
Diogenes you make another great and honest comment. Remember when the NY Times had their Tom Cotton kerfuffle and the inmates demanded that the column be removed, that editors be fired and that the staff were all put in danger from a sitting senator’s common sense opinion? Well that ship hit the shoals and it has not recovered.
Your point about Disney is right on the money, they are fighting to come back but it is over, at least for now.
WAPO has Taylor Lorenz on their staff, how is that even possible? As much as I dislike Bob Woodward at least he was an actual reporter. Even if he was fed info from an FBI guy in order to take down Nixon. (Sound familiar?)
When Columbia headed down the ruinous road of appeasing the hamas wing of antifa and blm (I will not capitalize these monsters) and the president of the college finally had to call in the police after they broke in and violently took over a building how did the Board react? They were critical of the president…not for taking too long to call the cops, but for calling the cops at all. This means the cancer has spread and the diagnosis is a rough one.
CNN is struggling with this dilemma, get no ratings and lose millions or change their model and try to actually come back to being a fair news network. This is why you see idiots like Jake Tapper saying he will never have on an election denier (but he will have on Raskin, Clinton and Abrams) while at the same time they have Ellie Honig who is doing an excellent job about being fair and objective in his trial coverage.
As for MSNBC, they are a clown car that actually have Joy Reid, Al Sharpton, Lawrence O’Donnell, Chris Hayes, Nicolle Wallace and the embarrassing Joe Scarborough and that thing he is married to. They are a joke.
Bob Woodward is an actual CIA operative
“As much as I dislike Bob Woodward at least he was an actual reporter. Even if he was fed info from an FBI guy in order to take down Nixon. (Sound familiar?)”
Hullbobby, that is part of the Deep State some wish to deny exists. Then there is the question of JFK. Today, the Deep State is obvious.
S Meyer, I never thought about the Kennedy assassination as being a conspiracy, but after what happened with Trump it made me realize that they brought down Nixon, went after Trump and maybe even Kennedy.
I always thought that Mark Deep Throat Felt was just an honest broker, but he may have been just another operative sent after Nixon.
What is odd is that with all the money and fame that Woodward made by “exposing” Nixon that there isn’t one liberal reporter out there today that will dig into Biden and his obvious corruption. Nope, we get Philip Bump and the rest of them lying for Biden instead of doing their job. The WH press corp, especially at the daily KJP group massage is truly embarrassing. The only hard hitting question I have heard is when some dope from CBS attacked John Kirby for not going after Israel enough. Seems that they have no issue with the group actually holding our hostages.
HullBobby,
Well said.
“I always thought that Mark Deep Throat Felt was just an honest broker,”
Hullbobby, my question was always, what was Mark Felt doing tracking Nixon? Nixon was President. He had to be some type of operative.
Presidents come and go. J. Edgar Hoover was the Director of the FBI (and the predecessor BOI) for just under 50 years.
All excellent points, Hullbobby.
NPR, now WaPo. Extra! Extra!
Upstate Farmer gets it!
His posts are spot on…well thought out…and tells it like it is without any spin or deflection.
The Advocacy Journalist movement as the rest of the radical Leftist agenda must be destroyed….not ignored, condoned, or tolerated.
The Press now known as the Media and Journalists that actually do conduct themselves in an honest, unbiased, and ethical manner is supposed to be the purveyor of truth to the People and speak truth to power no matter who is in control of the government.
Unless and until it does that….they are part of the problem and problems need to be solved.
Let them learn to code….fire every last one of them and just clean house or see their houses fall into utter and complete ruin.
Either way the People and this Nation shall be far better off than we are currently.
Upstate is one of our great contributors here on this site.
HullBobby,
As you as well!
Thank you!
Ralph,
Well thank you very much.
Eh, let them be their own destroyers. Looks like they are about half way there.
In the mean time, support independent media!
Why should Americans have rights and freedoms if other people in the world cannot?
We fought for them.
We did not run away to be a refugee in another country.
We did not expect others to do the fighting for us.
What kind of rifle did you use?
I’m dusting them off now, which kind do you prefer?
I prefer the kind where you put the barrel in your mouth and pull the trigger.
The only way to turn the Post around is to start firing people. You start at the top and work down. The complainers get moved to the front of the line as well.
if you fire them they will just come here to troll
LMAO
Abbe Lowell, the “brilliant” attorney, who infamously said “All they have is false facts”, will be representing Hunter at trial today.
He plans to use the defense that Hunter, the “smartest man that the POTUS knows”, in a moment of complete sobriety between crack smoking binges, signed a form under penalty of perjury, that had not been completely filled out, and that someone else had checked the box about drug use.
LMAO and they say Trumps lawyers are idiots. This guy must have gotten his law degree from the same box of cracker jacks as Dennis McInlyre.
We should help Taiwan invade mainland China and restore democracy.
Let’s start in DC, Illinois, Berkeley, and Cambridge then move on to your pet projects
Only if you, your children or grandchildren are leading that amphibious assault, like storming the beaches at Normandy.
Mr. Turley, you are too kind to the Post. It is a has-been. Only a name, a buildig. Empty without the brains & souls of the people who made it great. They are gone now, so let it die the natural death it has earned for itself as we move on to new and better news sources.
4 words, two names: Jennifer Rubin, Philip Bump
Please add Taylor Lorenz.
Well, maybe all the Wapo needs is to double down on diversity.
The Post reporters can always move to the WSJ. There are two articles today- one about Trump and another praising Garland- that are both biased and filled with half truths. When I commented it was immediately deleted. They no longer tolerate criticism,