The Washington Post has announced layoffs affecting one-third of its workforce, including most of the sports and foreign news desks. The Washington Post Guild’s response was particularly notable in calling for a new owner who would simply subsidize the newspaper despite its failing revenue and readership.
As someone who once wrote regularly for the Post, I have long lamented how the newspaper became less credible and relevant as it embraced advocacy journalism. It ran raging pieces from columnists such as Phillip Bump, Taylor Lorenz, and Jennifer Rubin, who viciously attacked those with opposing views, promoted conspiracy theories or called for the end of objectivity and neutrality in journalism. Even after other publications admitted that prior stories were hoaxes, the Post stood by clearly false reporting.
Years ago, I wrote that I was baffled by how the staff believed that writing off more than half of the country through biased reporting was a workable business or journalism model.
Readers left in droves. Despite anonymous reporters attacking Jeff Bezos since he purchased the newspaper, they expected him to be a type of sugar daddy who would subsidize their brand of journalism. They were increasingly writing for each other, but they still expected Bezos to lose millions for the privilege of owning the paper.
There is a strange thing about billionaires: they tend to want to make, not lose, money.
That point was driven home brilliantly when new editors were brought in to read the riot act to the staff. Washington Post publisher and CEO Will Lewis, a former British media executive, 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. 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.”
The response from staff was furious, calling for the removal of Lewis and other new editors.
If that wasn’t clear enough, management told staff months later that the sniping and obstruction had to stop. The newspaper must be able to sustain itself; if they could not get on board, they would have to leave.
Any business facing millions in losses will do two things simultaneously: work to expand sales and to reduce costs.
However, to do that, the Post must return to a journalism that most people want and value, rather than an echo chamber for MS NOW viewers.
In my book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage, I discuss the decline of the Post and other media due in part to the embrace of advocacy journalism.
We previously discussed the release of the results of interviews with more than 75 media leaders conducted by former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward. They concluded that objectivity is now considered reactionary and even harmful. Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle, said it plainly: “Objectivity has got to go.”
Saying that “Objectivity has got to go” is, of course, liberating. You can dispense with the necessities of neutrality and balance. You can cater to your “base” like columnists and opinion writers. Sharing the opposing view was dismissed as “bothsidesism.”
Once again, the management is trying to save the Post from itself. It is trying to return the newspaper to profitability, but these editors have faced continual resistance from reporters who would prefer to lose their jobs than their bias. The same drama is playing out at CBS and CNN recently.
In some ways, the only thing that might change the culture at the paper could be a staff turnover. Elon Musk showed that at Twitter, now X. Years of hiring advocates do not simply evaporate with a change in management.
The most telling response came from the Washington Post Guild, which declared:
“If Jeff Bezos is no longer willing to invest in the mission that has defined this paper for generations and serve the millions who depend on Post journalism, The Post deserves a steward that will.”
The question is what is “the mission.” The Post staff has driven one of the greatest newspapers in history into near insolvency by yielding to its own bias and impulses. It abandoned most readers while doing little to adapt to the new realities of the media landscape.
The only response from the Guild is that they should have a billionaire who is willing to lose money and subsidize them. It is the most self-indulgent and frankly entitled attitude that they could take at this moment.
The Post is struggling to survive, and the crew is still resisting efforts to alter the ship’s course. It is far from clear that even Jeff Bezos can save the Post, but I hope so. We need the Post and, while painful, it will need to be solvent to survive.
Inside the federal security and intelligence agencies there are at least two groups:
Federal employees of the DOJ, DOD, CIA and NSA that are loyal to their constitutional Oath of Office (American model of government). The other group follows a foreign model of government – disloyal to their Oath of Office pledging loyalty to a single person or single political party.
In the early 21st Century, the Bush Administration disabled the internal whistleblowing system for the most loyal federal employees of the DOJ, DOD, CIA and NSA. The Bush Administration adopted a foreign model government – a model not found in the U.S. Constitution, a model not supported by the Founding Fathers and a model not found in the Declaration of Independence.
These most loyal federal employees also followed the World War Two precedent “Nuremberg Defense” rule: when a government supervisor “disloyal” to his or her Oath of Office gives an illegal order – loyal subordinate employees can refuse those disloyal and illegal orders. America created this rule to jail or execute Nazis following World War Two.
Since the Bush officials punished loyal federal employees and rewarded disloyal employees (supporting foreign models of government). Those heroic most loyal federal employees only had one government-watchdog in the Washington DC area – The Washington Post investigative reporters.
Disloyal federal officials have nearly unlimited taxpayer money to violate the American Oath of Office. Since Bush destroyed or neutered taxpayer financed government-watchdogs (ie: IGs, GAO, etc). America’s most heroic and most loyal federal employees had to go to a private government-watchdog (limited finite private money (ie: Washington Post, ACLU, private lawyers, etc).
Since Bush officials refused to provide government-watchdogs and adopted a foreign model of government, this placed a huge financial burden on The Washington Post. Private newspapers are financially out-gunned by unlimited taxpayer dollars.
This was the context when Jeff Bezos purchased the Washington Post – a foreign minded president (following Cheney’s foreign “Unitary Executive Theory”) was attacking the most heroic and most loyal federal employees in America’s security and intelligence agencies. Bush’s DOJ even violated Ronald Reagan’s Torture Treaty – that was also codified into federal law and followed the “Nuremberg Defense” rule (following illegal orders is not a defense from criminal prosecution for any government employee or contractor).
The Washington Post faced a unique financial crisis by its proximity to Washington, DC where the most loyal federal employees reside. Congress should financially reimburse The Washington Post for using their “private” dollars to do the job of Congress had a duty to do under Article I and Article VI of the U.S. Constitution.
Nonsensical
Communists running out of other people’s money.
Spot on, Prof. Turley! ..as one whose day began and ended with ‘The Washington Post,’ from my undergraduate days (Proud GWU Alum!), onward.. easy to see that The Mission of Katharine Graham & Ben Bradlee, which elevated WAPO and made it such a central part of everyone’s daily Life, was courageous & relentless ‘Investigative Jouralism,’ to get to and expose/ report The Truth, i.e., the Facts… wherever they may lead… this model got lost in the hands of ‘advocacy journalism,’ getting sucked into a ludicrous fictional vortex of non-Facts/ non Truths as promoted by MSNBS….. WAPO became both irritating and boring… I lost interest……….
The WAPO staff gambled and lost. They’re indoctrinated. Strike 1. They are propagandists. Strike 2. They live in a bubble. Strike 3. There are not enough gullible fools willing to buy what they’re selling. There is too much competition from honest, fair, and factual journalists. The WAPO would rather lie and die than compete. Good luck getting a job with WAPO on your resume.
A few days ago, I typed a simple one-word reply in the WaPo (online) comments section to confirm their censorship bias, which I suspected had led to many of my comments being removed or shadow-banned over the past few years.
That word, which the WaPo ‘moderators promptly banned again: “Bolsheviks” I think we know why the staff doesn’t like that word…
The WaPo motto “Democracy Dies in Darkness” now has a companion: “Prevarication and Propaganda Metastasize into Darkness.”
The bigger context here is that sometimes presidents break laws and violate their oath of office, resulting in very bad outcomes.
This presidential lawlessness is financed by your nearly unlimited “tax dollars”. For most of the 21st Century, real checks & balances were financed by limited finite “private dollars”.
So the bad guys violating their oath of office, violating laws and violating treaties have nearly unlimited money (financed by taxpayers). Their crime victims and collateral damage, many times federal employees harmed, have very limited private money.
If you are financially out-gunned by unconstitutional government practices, one of the only real government-watchdogs is The Washington Post in the Washington, DC area. So a private company, with private funding, is spending lots of money doing the jobs of taxpayer-financed government watchdogs.
George W. Bush Republicans then systematically dismantled taxpayer-funded government watchdogs (ie: IGs, Civil Rights Division, etc). When Bush Republicans destroyed internal government whistleblowing systems, that action alone created an explosion in government leaking and placed a heavy financial burden on the Washington Post.
Since the DOJ was derelict in their duty to protect whistleblowers, it placed a financial burden especially on the Washington Post. This was about the time Jeff Bezos purchased the Washington Post.
If America had a legitimate system of Justice, Congress would reimburse the Washington Post for doing their job
Bezos has little left to lose at this point, so here is what I think he should do with the paper. He should have a separately subscribed local section for people who care about what the DC city council, Fairfax county supervisors, etc are doing, and local crime and stuff. For the national paper, he should change the format. For each story, state the objective facts, then give the Democratic narrative and then the Republican narrative, and each should be labeled as such. This will require hiring Republican staff and forcing the staff of opposite political views to work together.
. Advocacy journalism is catchy. It’s advertisements so call it Madison Avenue, 😂 persuasive literature or persuasive writing. They’re campaign ads. It’s absurdity and it ruins everything. Movies are changed and dubbed to reflect DEI ruining classics.
Madison Avenue and you can live in a van down by the river, too. There’s a mental health crisis.
Advocacy journalism and other points Professor Turley raised does not appear to explain why the layoffs eliminated most of the sports and foreign news desks.
True. My take: Sports websites are ubiquitous.
Foreign news. Americans have no interest in anything beyond its borders.
A waste of money from a business perspective. Concentrate on politics instead. Americans eat that shit up.
The Washington Post lost half of the country. It can’t survive. They can’t cover “news” in a timely manner, so they became a mouthpiece for the Democrats. If Jeff Bezos wants the Washington Post to be relevant, he’ll have to appeal to the whole country and be a bipartisan opinion outlet.
Discuss the important topics that the country wants to know about.
Start off with Chuck Schumer and Mike Lee state their views on the SAVE ACT, side by side on the same page. The next day run the rebuttals of each, pointing out and lies, deceptions. etc.
More topics of national interest.
Definition of a woman.
Do illegal aliens belong in the US?
Do XY chromosome people belong in XX sports?
Should government officials have to wait 10 days after publicly announcing what their and their immediate family’s financial transaction will be?
Abortion stance.
AI pros and cons.
The list of topics is endless.
Same goes for the New York Times.
Having 3.2 million subscribers tells a different story. You fail to see the impact.
Interesting poll out yesterday shows that 47% of registered voters know someone in their family or community who is living in fear because of the Trump administration’s deportation policies.
Note: that is 47% of REGISTERED VOTERS, not just 47% of random people.
I wonder how those 47% are going to vote in November ???
https://poll.qu.edu/images/polling/us/us02042026_ubad67.pdf
You have been manipulated to think what yo are postulating is in fact credible. you are a gullible fool.
Leadership–means nothing to u. Figures. Dumbass. Pathetic spoiled punk
They should be afraid if they have something to hide, baby.
^ DNC-paid troll. Ignore. ^
^ Chinese Communist Party paid troll. Ignore. ^
“. . . 56% of registered voters support deporting all illegal aliens . . .”
In an election, I’m pretty sure that 56% beats 47%.