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.
I hope it fails, that everyone there loses their jobs, and that Jeff Bezos loses his investment and is humiliated for being a tool of leftist nitwits.
You couldn’t reform this fake news deep state propaganda organization even if you put all of the leftist Marxists employed by the Post into their own form of communist re-education camps. These toxic writers won’t change what they think or write just to please a new editor in chief. Burn baby Burn!
What is a “washington post”?
I think it is one of a number of hitching posts that George Washingto used for tieing his horse.
I agree with you most of the time; but not this time. The WaPo needs to go. The New York Times also; as well as CNN and MSNBC. They are not journalism; and it is hard to recall if there ever were. On their best days they are propaganda against the interests of the citizens of the United States. As for NPR; it never should have existed in the first place. There is no place for state-run media in a country with a First Amendment. It’s mere presence undermines the Constitution. NPR has one saving grace: They admit to being state-run media, whereas the fore-mentioned deny it.
My favorite bit of dialog in “Dr. Strangelove” (1962 or 1964) is when the U.S. President asks the Ambassador from the Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics how he could possibly know a particular detail about U.S. nuclear strike doctrine. The Ambassador’s reply: “Our source was the New York Times.”
I commend you for wishing them well and a return to journalism. Personally, I don’t care. It is so highly unlikely that they will ever recover to the point of being a meaningful source of information or independent analysis. Legacy media is dying and they sold their souls to maintain an obsolete machine. They are not needed any longer and they have done nothing to deserve to be saved.
Activism and honest journalism are mutually exclusive. The Post is nothing but a propaganda pusher and adding a few articles with a Conservative bent or political honesty will NEVER happen. It’s good for Bezos to lose 70 million a year. It’s a reminder to him through his wallet that he isn’t liked.
Everyone knows the Post is nothing but lies and leftist propaganda. No one wants to read that. And I do not think the Post can change, I do not think it wants too. So best that the decline continues.
Jonathan:
Haven’t read them since I was a Midshipman at the Naval Academy, and still won’t.
Please pass on to the Post…FJB!
News organizations like the Washington Post and Fox News should primarily focus on government officials being disloyal to their constitutional Oath of Office. We expect doctors, clergy, lawyers and spouses to uphold their loyalty contracts, why are government officials not held to account when being disloyal to their oath?
Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, gave one of the best speeches on the American Oath of Office in over 50 years at his retirement ceremony.
Both the WP and Fox would be well served to use Milley’s great wisdom in judging loyalty of any leader or government official.
For example: the deafening silence, by major press organizations, of the Post 9/11 blacklisting crimes being perpetrated by local “Fusion Centers” and funded by the U.S. Department of Justice and ignored by the U.S. Supreme Court. Covert blacklisting for more than 20 years is the worst form of torture and a war crime banned by Ronald Reagan’s torture treaty.
The same General Milley who, on the record, said he would give China a heads up if Donald Trump, his Commander in Chief at the time, gave any indication of taking action against our communist adversary? I’m not sure you could find a better way to completely dismantle and discredit whatever point you were trying to make. Miley’s statement was the very definition of traitorous. I wouldn’t listen to a word that snake has to say.
You are absolutely right
And the same Milley who reportedly convened a meeting of the Commanders of the unified combatant commands(four-star officers commanding Central Command, Southern Command, European Command, Indo-Pacific Command, etc,) and instructed them not to follow any orders unless it came from him. If true, this was truly an insurrection, Many mistakenly think the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is in the national command structure, He’s not. He’s an advisor to the president- nothing more. Commands in the national command structure flow from the Commander in Chief, to the Secretary of defense, to the secretaries of army, navy, etc., to the eleven unified combatant commands of the U.S. Department of Defense. Chairman of the JCOS is not in the chain of command.
Just my opinion- if and when Trump retakes office, this should be one of the first things investigated.
miley is more than willing to tow the line. Hew may know the truth but he’s been a part of the blood thirsty war mongers killing countless innocents for generations.
There’s nothing great about Gen. Milley or anything that comes out of that man’s mouth. He’s a blowhard and a coward. By rights he should be in jail for disobeying his Commander in Chief – Trump – and for insubordination.
How dare you applaud a woke general willing to tip of china about our sitting pres…… he is and always will be an apparatchik stooge !.
If the WP wants to rehabilitate itself, it can present an in-depth story, extending over days if not weeks, about the propaganda campaign of the federal government and other establishment sources regarding our responses to COVID. Remember that they told us we were stupid, “conspiratorial”, or worse of all “science deniers” if we did not unqualifiedly accept the recommedations of the CDC and NIH regarding: closing of businesses; closing of schools; closing of everything else; 6 feet of separation; masks; benefical use of ivermectin and other existing cheap medicines; the safety of novel and untested vaccines; and the origin of the disease. This propaganda campaign caused immense economic and emotional harm to the world. Honest journalists would want to explore how this disaster happened, including what role journalism itself played in perpetuating it.
This inquiry is not irrelevant to the Presidential campaign. The people who told us “we must believe the COVID science” are the same people telling us that Trump supporters are “cultists” who refuse to accept the authority of “experts.” For example, we continue to believe that the 2020 election was dubious even though we have been “told” by our betters that there is nothing to see there. Indeed, they are prosecuting Trump for not accepting what he was “told” about the election.
“This propaganda campaign caused immense economic and emotional harm to the world.” As well as tens of thousands of lives lost from both the disease and the vaccine, which continues to this day. Social media, such as YouTube, continue to censor and refer to the CDC for “accurate” information. We continue down the road to totalitarianism.
if I had lost my generations-held business — or worse, watched my parents die alone — by these actions…let’s just say I’d be upset. Trials. Now.
Thank you for your voice of considered reason in these times of slanted news and opinion!
“That began to change rapidly in the first Trump term.” Freudian slip or premonition?
THE ONLY PURPOSE of news is to convey truth in as much of an objective format as is possible. Viewing Left-leaning news is bad enough, but Right-leaning ones … for shame. Sugar-coating a turd makes it still a turd.
From a government outsider, not bound by any agency rules:
The Washington Post should report on the intel agencies “Cold War False Imprisonment Program” – where American agencies Shanghai the children and relatives of their own American intelligence employees. Still happening today exceeding 40 years.
Through a cruel comedy of errors, those innocent relatives of intel employees then got placed on 9/11 blacklists for life – destroying American heroes kids for life.
Just change the name of WAPO to Pravda and all will be well. Putin may subscribe.
Very interesting that Turley neglects to mention the fact that the new CEO, William Lewis, wants to move the paper towards AI as the basis for its reporting. It is no coincidence that Jeff Bezos is a leading proponent of AI. Turley may soon find himself replaced by a bot.
Quote, “WaPo is to have AI everywhere in our newsroom,”
https://futurism.com/washington-post-pivot-ai
I guess we can now look forward to stories about astronauts finding cats living on the moon, the health benefits of eating a rock a day, and how to improve pizza sauce by adding glue.
Since the WaPo employees are still fretting about the race, gender, etc of management perhaps in-service training for all employees on how to flip burgers will bring home the gravity of the financial situation.
@Young
I doubt it would make a difference. In my experience, these kids aren’t even good for that, or for making coffee. I look no further than my local Jersey Mike’s or Starbucks. If they did not have mommy and daddy pulling strings, and in the absence of that, if there were no pre-placed bricks to throw or fireworks to light, they’d never leave their rooms (at said mommy and daddy’s house). It’s true: someone like that does not need a car 9and yet they all have them when they graduate from high school). Putting those people in positions of authority that impact everyone – not a great idea.
Focusing on anything other than merit destroys our culture.. Maybe they could learn to meritoriously flip burgers!
The post would not be hemorrhaging viewers and money if the left wing drivel they were printing was true.
The problem is not that the paper has fallen off the left edge of the world.
It is that the left wing drivel it runs is nonsense.
Free markets work.
So then NPR should not be receiving tax money, right?
Absolutely. If the market exists for them it will fund itself.
Congress may tax for ONLY debt, defense, and general Welfare (i.e. all or the whole, well proceed, as basic infrastructure), omitting and, thereby, excluding, any taxation for individual welfare, specific welfare, particular welfare, charity, or favor.
Congress may regulate ONLY the value of money, commerce among nations, States, and Indian tribes, and land and naval Forces.
Congress may not tax for NPR or regulate related broadcast facilities.
Read it. Article 1, Section 8.
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Note: General welfare is ONLY basic infrastructure such as roads, water, electricity, post office, sewer, etc.
“The laying of taxes is the power, and the general welfare the purpose for which the power is to be exercised. They [Congress] are not to lay taxes ad libitum for any purpose they please; but only to pay the debts or provide for the welfare of the Union. In like manner, they are not to do anything they please (i.e. unconstitutional regulation) to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose.”
– Thomas Jefferson
Well now America has finally arrived at the true manifestation of the American Founders and Framers.
Maximal individual freedom under severely limited and restricted government.
Not one scintilla of the American welfare state is constitutional.
The American thesis is nothing less than Freedom and Self-Reliance.
Completely free enterprise in the free markets of the free private sector wherein private property is private property and private property is not public property.
Industries are free to self-regulate as a rational act to avoid liability.
The entire communistic American welfare state is unconstitutional including, but not limited to, admissions affirmative action, grade-inflation affirmative action, employment affirmative action, quotas, welfare, food stamps, minimum wage, rent control, social services, forced busing, public housing, utility subsidies, WIC, SNAP, TANF, HAMP, HARP, TARP, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Environmental Protection Agency, Agriculture, Education, Labor, Energy, Obamacare, Social Security, Social Security Disability, Social Security Supplemental Income, Medicare, Medicaid, “Fair Housing” laws, “Non-Discrimination” laws, etc.
Article 1, Section 8, provides Congress the power to tax for ONLY debt, defense, and “…general (all, the whole) Welfare…,” omitting and, thereby, excluding any power to tax for individual Welfare, specific Welfare, particular Welfare, favor or charity. The same article enumerates and provides Congress the power to regulate ONLY the Value of money, Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian Tribes, and land and naval Forces. Additionally, the 5th Amendment right to private property was initially qualified by the Framers and is, therefore, absolute, allowing no further qualification, and allowing ONLY the owner the power to “claim and exercise” dominion over private property.
Government exists, under the Constitution and Bill of Rights, to provide maximal freedom to individuals while government is severely limited and restricted to merely facilitating that maximal freedom of individuals through the provision of security and infrastructure only.
Oh, and the ONLY definition of “natural born citizen,” in particular, was published in the Law of Nations, 1758.
And secession is not prohibited and is fully constitutional causing every act and effect of Lincoln to be unconstitutional requiring immediate reversal and extirpation placing America squarely back on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
A first good step would be to ban reporting that didn’t cite explicit sources (no generic institutional names or “anonymous”).
Freedom of the Press
1st Amendment
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Insurrection – an act or instance of rising in revolt, rebellion, or resistance against civil authority or an established government.
“Last year, the 10 fake electors from Wisconsin disavowed their attempt to overturn Trump’s defeat in 2020, recognized the legitimacy of President Joe Biden’s victory, and pledged not to serve as real electors in 2024 or any election when Trump is on the ballot – or to act as sham electors in any future election, as part of a civil lawsuit settlement.”
Yes, what trump and his phycho sycophants tried to do in 2024 was an Insurrection.
So BLM protests.riots were an insurrection.
So the Portland riots were an insurrection
So the Kavanaugh protests were an insurrection
So the Laffeyyette part riots were an insurection
So the Seattle Chas protests were an insurrection.
You can not save this with word games.
When you write differently about things that are the same for political reasons – you will as the Post has lose your audience.
No one would care that J6 was being called an insurrection – if every other protest that met the definition you choose to use was ALSO called an insurrection.
How are black people assembling to talk about unfair treatment of blacks comparable to trying to stay in power after loosing an election? Sheesh, learn to cogitate.
How is burning and trashing cities comparable to talking? sheesh, learn to wapo better.
How are diverse people who assemble to talk about the unfair election comparable to blacks rioting because Hussein Obama led them to believe whitey hates them, and the ones like you haven’t figured out the Democrats have been lying to you for your whole life??
Petitioners who were not “…free white person(s)…” were not allowed to be admitted to become citizens and must have been compassionately repatriated on January 1, 1863, and, as a corollary, their descendants are subject to the very same admission denial.
The Naturalization Act of 1802 was in full force and effect on January 1, 1863, and was never legally and legislatively abrogated.
Secession was not prohibited and was fully constitutional causing every act of Lincoln, subsequent to his unconstitutional denial of secession, to be invalid, illegitimate, illegal, and unconstitutional.
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Naturalization Act of 1790
United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” March 26, 1790
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof….
The Federal courts established more than 100 years ago that a constitutional means to challenge allegations of election fraud was to submit an alternate slate of electors and let congress sort it out. In 1876 Congress did that.
There is no such thing as a “fake election” – they are alternate electors, and while highly unlikely Congress has the power to chose them over those certified by the Executive rather than the legislature.
This is also just more left wing nut lawfare. LEft wing prosecutors and AG’s are giving people who acted legally the choice of confessing to lies and possibly getting on with their lives or facing years of expensive litigation to clear their names.
John Eastman – who you have targetted vicisiously has ultimately WON ever legal battle that has completed against him.
He has been driven out of multiple jobs, disbarred (and reinstated), charged in states he had nothing to do with, and spent millions in legal fees.
And WON every single time.
Why – because this is all garbage partisan lawfare, buy people abusing the law and their political power in partisan ways.
Because the conduct being targeted is not only perfectly legal – but the law on that is more than a century old.
It is not the so called insurrectionists that are the criminals.
It is those KNOWINGLY abusing the law to go after political enemies.
The objective is to punish those protesting the most corrupt election int he US in over 100 years.
And you idiots think that by repeatedly getting caught LYING and abusing power that you are strengthening your argument ?
Each of the meany lies and abuses of power you get caught in, further erodes your credibility and what little trust there is in your idiotic claims.
It has often taken mean years to debunk the real fraud in this country – the various idiotic claims of left wing nuts.
There are STILL left wing nuts that are shilling the collusion delusion.
And those national security professionals who put their names to the Blatantly false lie that the Hunter Biden LAptop was russian disinformation – they now have important jobs in the Biden administration.
There was a time when being caught in blatantly false lies like the collusion delusion or the Russian laptop hoax, would require you to remove yourself from the society of decent people.
Today on the left it gets you the job of Secretary of State.
WISCONSIN, GEORGIA, MICHIGAN, PENNSYLVANIA MADE UNCONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES TO ELECTION LAWS
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AG Paxton Sues Battleground States for Unconstitutional Changes to 2020 Election Laws
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton today filed a lawsuit against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in the United States Supreme Court. The four states exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to justify ignoring federal and state election laws and unlawfully enacting last-minute changes, thus skewing the results of the 2020 General Election. The battleground states flooded their people with unlawful ballot applications and ballots while ignoring statutory requirements as to how they were received, evaluated and counted.
“Trust in the integrity of our election processes is sacrosanct and binds our citizenry and the States in this Union together. Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin destroyed that trust and compromised the security and integrity of the 2020 election. The states violated statutes enacted by their duly elected legislatures, thereby violating the Constitution. By ignoring both state and federal law, these states have not only tainted the integrity of their own citizens’ vote, but of Texas and every other state that held lawful elections,” said Attorney General Paxton. “Their failure to abide by the rule of law casts a dark shadow of doubt over the outcome of the entire election. We now ask that the Supreme Court step in to correct this egregious error.”
Elections for federal office must comport with federal constitutional standards. For presidential elections, each state must appoint its electors to the electoral college in a manner that complies with the Constitution. The Electors Clause requirement that only state legislatures may set the rules governing the appointment of electors and elections and cannot be delegated to local officials. The majority of the rushed decisions, made by local officials, were not approved by the state legislatures, thereby circumventing the Constitution.
BugAnon – you say “insurrection” is “resistance against civil authority or an established government.” The government of the United States is established by the Constitution, n’est pas? Was Trump trying to set aisde the Constitution? Obviously not. He challenged the certification of the electoral votes from several closely contested states, as Democrats have done in the past. It is unclear whether electoral votes from the states CAN be challenged in the tabulation of electoral votes by the VP. Taking the position that it IS possible is NOT “overthrowing the government”, it is attempting to use perceived legal remedies under the existing legal and political regime.