The $hit has just hit the fan, friends and readers, and it’s going all over the walls right now. Bigly. When I say “readers” I don’t mean just our readers, our Zoomers here. I’m talking about readers of major newspapers, minor newspapers, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, throw aways, anywhere the word is printed, whether black marks on wood pulp or in illuminated pixels on the internet. It has been less than ten hours since the biggest political newspaper in this country, the hallowed Washington Post, announced its “policy” of non-endorsement this presidential election cycle. It was an act of blatant cowardice, motivated by owner Jeff Bezos, who is worried that Donald Trump might mess with his foreign contracts, if reelected. Bezos is also intimidated by Elon Musk’s space efforts when Bezos has his own and it’s no secret who Musk is in bed with right now. That said, there’s an uprising at the Post and also the Los Angeles Times, same reason: owners with yellow stripes down their backs.
Hmmm, I see a trend here. Weird pic.twitter.com/Ga906mwmXG
— Mary (@mlh247) October 25, 2024
It takes a certain breed of cat to own a newspaper and run one. And Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong are not of the right breed. They are financial people. They are oligarchs. They are money men. They are not the kind of people who should own newspapers or run them. There’s a certain kind of mettle and worldview that successful publishers and journalists have and these two guys don’t have it. They’re someplace else.
Hours after the Washington Post made the announcement that it would not be issuing an endorsement in a Presidential election for the first time in over 30 years, the paper is now feeling the direct impacts of it’s non-endorsement as Washington Post Editor At Large Robert Kagan has resigned from the Post, according to Max Tani from Semfaor.
This news comes shortly after Tani reported that members of the Washington Post Opinion staff have been furious about the paper’s failure to issue an endorsement. In fact, there are even reports that an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris had been written up, but that the paper still chose against doing so after the paper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, put pressure on the CEO of the Washington Post to avoid issuing an endorsement.
Today’s exodus from the Washington Post comes following a week where the LA Times has seen a similar exodus and public backlash after three of its reporters have resigned over the paper’s refusal to issue a Kamala Harris endorsement.
I cannot overstate how much I respect the journalists taking this stance and putting their own personal livelihoods at risk. This is a tough business. We’re in the same business here, our little blog, as a news and media outlet, albeit on a tiny reduced scale from these giant papers. But trust me when I tell you that the dynamic is the same. We depend upon readership as does the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. We depend upon advertising. We depend upon subscribers, which we call patrons, and on donations. We depend upon surviving in a dangerous ecosystem, where giants like Google have messed with the algorithm and small publishers like us have taken an incredible hit this year. We depend upon surviving on Twitter in the era of Elon Musk.
We’re all in the same boat. And the basic truth here is that this is the most consequential election in American history, and it is not one to sit out. No way. There are only Americans and traitors right now, just as Ulysses S. Grant opined right after the Civil War. Americans are standing up for democracy and traitors are sitting back, hedging their bets and worrying about their own bank accounts.
Dr. Soon-Shiong, owner of the Los Angeles Times, is apparently fine with a Trump win if he can keep making money. Same for Mr. Bezos, I guess. But it’s not fine with their journalists or their readers.
This story is just getting rolling. There may be walkouts at both papers. They may stop publishing, at least temporarily. I would not be surprised. Democracy may indeed die in darkness, but we’re damn well not going to waltz into the dark, whistling past the graveyard, and doing nothing. We’re going to stand up.
People who don’t have the cojones to print NEWS and take brave, if logical, stands on issues including controversial issues (although why endorsing a candidate is controversial is mind boggling???) should probably put in a bid to purchase fux nuz, nuz min, or some other not quite news outlet….actually they have a LOT to choose from nowadays. Oh, or maybe put out one of those silly little pod casts so they can pretend they have relevance since having more money than the creator of the universe does not translate into having a large dick.
This was a massively stupid move on Bezos and Soon-Siong’s part. Massively, catastrophically stupid. That they didn’t foresee exactly this kind of blow back is mind boggling to me.
And I admire the courage of the journalists who quit more than I can say. As stated, this is a tough business. Jobs are not easy to find, not in any aspect of this business. It’s good to know that the real pros at both the L.A. Times and WaPo are not just rolling over for this.
That Bezos and Soon-Siong didn’t foresee the blowback to their editorial inertia evince just how spinelessly stupid they are. BRAVO to all the staff who have taken, and will take action on this issue!
By allowing the fascist candidate to intimidate them into silence is a pure act of submission of their 1st amendment rights. Is nothing worth fighting tyranny for???
Do they really think Hair Hitler won’t shut them down anyway??? That’s not just cowardice….that is stupidity.
That’s exactly the point. You can’t fence sit in their position. That quote is spot on. If you don’t have the balls to own a newspaper, let alone one of the stature of the L.A. Times and WaPo, then freaking don’t bother. And the L.A. Times situation is mesmerizing. Harris was California’s attorney general and senator — but the L.A. TIMES is not sure she should be endorsed???
As a former Californian, I just marvel. I just shake my head and I marvel.
As I think of the quote, “Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one”, I would like to add MY quote, “Just because you don’t have an opinion doesn’t mean you’re NOT an asshole.”
Have had a WaPo subscription for years. Not any more.
as a subscriber to Wapo I checked comments and almost 30,000 negative comments from regular readers who universally pledge to unsubscribe from the Post and many from Amazon as well. Billionaire tech bros don’t value democracy and this has led to conflict from journalists at the papers they own. anyone else missing the fairness doctrine?
If Woodward and Bernstein hadn’t doggedly pursued the Watergate story, who knows how much longer we would have been stuck with Nixon, and how much more damage he could have done?
These were two relatively young reporters investigating the frigging President and his cabal.
Perhaps we would have never met Jill Wine-Banks.
Thank you for being the light of truth here. I cancelled my NYT subscription a few years ago after that horrendous Tom Cotten oped. I never had a WaPo to cancel. I do feel bad for the union employees that these a-holes are hurting by mismanaging this situation.
Ain’t it amazing how two of the world’s wealthiest and most accomplished men, Jeff Bezos @ Washington Post and, especially, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong @ LA Times, can rationalize their decisions and think the rest of us will mindlessly buy that bullshit?! Bezos wants to be above it all by not endorsing a candidate this year and never again. That might have seemed principled one or two years ago; 11 days from the election not so much! And, Dr. Soon-Shiong, who began his wealth being a brilliant surgeon and medical/pharmaceutical innovator, appears a bit less open and is being led around by his daughter Nika (who is apparently always sticking her nose into editorial business where it doesn’t belong). Nika, especially, claims the LA Times must not endorse Kamala Harris’ genocide in Gaza! Oh, really?! Better to give a pocket endorsement to Trump/Kushner who want to finish the leveling of Gaza and the Palestinian diaspora so they can build luxury resort properties! Either way both these men are now victims of the “Streisand Effect.” If these men, and by extension Trump, had just let the Harris endorsements stand, fewer people in the country would have paid attention. Now, there are negative spotlights on them and the story is a bigger part of the news cycle! Rich doesn’t equal smart!! 🤪
I saw this day coming the minute Saint Ronnie dispensed with the fairness doctrine. After Bill Clinton, of all people, removed all barriers to corporate ownership of news outlets without limits, I knew the transition was complete, from real news reporting to the great oligarchical propaganda machine.
This Cowardice, GREED and CORRUPTION, have NO place in a DEMOCRACY! The MEGA Rich are a Worthless Bunch. They have NO HONOR, Ethics or PRINCIPLES. The RICH WORSHIP at the Throne of MONEY & POWER. America is in this Dangerous, DARK Place because of these Super RICH OLIGARCHY, who NO longer CARE if “Democracy DIES.”