Publisher and columnist Adam Kelly is in the West Virginia journalism hall of fame despite being the most conservative man I ever met. He asked me once if I knew what the purpose of a newspaper is.
His answer: To make money for its owner.
What was true in 1982 is true today. The Pulitzer-laden staffs of the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post discovered this over the weekend when their owners vetoed endorsements of her majesty, Queen Kamala. Likewise, the Hill reported, “Over 200 American outlets under USA Today parent company Gannett will not back candidates in presidential or national races,” according to USA Today.”
This sudden attempt to restore their virginity by newspapers may be because of the dumb-as-the-B-in-dumb Democrat candidate. But it could be the fact that all these rags have failed Newspaper Rule No. 1, which is to make money for the owner.
I hope that the latter is true because that gives me hope that the problem can be fixed. AM radio was once hopelessly obsolete until Rush Limbaugh revived it as a source of clean information untainted by liberalism.
Jeff Bezos lost $77 million last year as the owner of the Post. He decided to reintroduce objective journalism to the paper on the Potomac that flushed its reputation down the Porta-Potty long ago. He decided to return to the pre-Watergate era when the Post did not endorse in presidential races.
The press coverage of this decision is as expected.
NPR alleged, “The Washington Post has been rocked by a tidal wave of cancellations from digital subscribers and a series of resignations from columnists, as the paper grapples with the fallout of owner Jeff Bezos’s decision to block an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
“More than 200,000 people had canceled their digital subscriptions by midday Monday, according to two people at the paper with knowledge of internal matters. Not all cancellations take effect immediately. Still, the figure represents about 8% of the paper’s paid circulation of roughly 2.5 million subscribers, which includes print as well. The number of cancellations continued to grow Monday afternoon.”
I do not doubt that someone will organize a advertiser boycott. This was the reaction from the fascist left when Elon Musk bought Twitter.
Bezos wrote a column explaining his action. In it, he said:
Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, “I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.” None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one. Eugene Meyer, publisher of The Washington Post from 1933 to 1946, thought the same, and he was right. By itself, declining to endorse presidential candidates is not enough to move us very far up the trust scale, but it’s a meaningful step in the right direction. I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it. That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy.
I wrote editorials for 26 years. He’s absolutely right. Newspaper endorsements are worth as much as the paper they are printed on. Yet we spent weeks interviewing candidates and mulling over who to endorse as if we were the Guardians of the Universe.
Bezos also is right about endorsements undermining the credibility of the newspaper. There is no wall between the editorial page and the news staff. Reporters know which way the wind blows and if you want to get ahead in life, you agree with the boss.
Bezos is dealing with a newspaper trusted by few people outside the Beltway (as the once credible Wall Street Journal dubbed it). He grapples with how his paper will rebound.
He wrote, “Lack of credibility isn’t unique to The Post. Our brethren newspapers have the same issue. And it’s a problem not only for media, but also for the nation. Many people are turning to off-the-cuff podcasts, inaccurate social media posts and other unverified news sources, which can quickly spread misinformation and deepen divisions. The Washington Post and the New York Times win prizes, but increasingly we talk only to a certain elite. More and more, we talk to ourselves. (It wasn’t always this way — in the 1990s we achieved 80% household penetration in the D.C. metro area.)”
Speaking of “inaccurate social media posts and other unverified news sources,” when is the Bezos Post going to return that Pulitzer it received for spreading the disinformation and misinformation about Russia fixing the 2016 election in Trump’s favor?
He also needs to rein in his fact-checkers who have become the biggest liars in DC which is quite an accomplishment given the thousands of politicians and government officials who live there.
I would get rid of the editorial page because editorial pages are obsolete. Opinions are all over the place on the Internet and much better because most of the successful writers are better informed, particularly on matters regarding guns and the military.
Bezos rival Elon Musk has turned Twitter into a fact-checker of the media.
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Brutal.
It would be worth Bezos’s time and money to hire a few conservatives to fact-check a week’s worth of Washington Post articles. The results would be eye-opening for him.
Instead, he’s making a few cosmetic changes, such as hiring a few conservative columnists. Does it not already have George Will and Jennifer Rubin, two hags who are upset that Trump won’t date them?
[Readers, please, don’t suggest me. I have no interest in working for anyone ever again except my readers. I am enjoying retirement without censorship.]
Now I liked Adam Kelly, who billed himself as a country editor. He ran the weekly newspaper in Sistersville, a small Ohio River town. He was not a cynic. He was practical. If a newspaper’s purpose is to make money for the owner then you will have a product that serves its readers rather than some ideology.
Giving readers both sides of the story is a good way to keep more people happy. And this is not some 1950s pipedream.
Up until 2004, Charleston, West Virginia, had two newspapers separately owned — a communist one in the morning and the conservative Charleston Daily Mail, which I worked for, in the afternoon. This was capitalism at work. They shared a printing press and advertising offices. All was well.
Then the morning paper borrowed $56 million and bought the afternoon paper out for the purpose of shutting it down, which ran afoul of federal antitrust laws. The Justice Department intervened. The federal court delayed the euthanasia of the Daily Mail for 10 years. In that decade the industry changed. By the time the communists at the morning paper achieved their dream, they were broke.
Unable to pay back the loan and stuck with various other debts, the owners lost the paper and a federal bankruptcy judge sold it to the highest bidder.
The Internet didn’t break them. Breaking the law and greed did.
It is not to late for Bezos to save the Washington Post. Musk brought in Tesla engineers to fix Twitter. I am sure the marketers at Amazon could help Mister B salvage the Post and help it make money, which again is the purpose of a newspaper.
This article first appeared on Don Surber’s Substack. Reprinted here with permission.
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If The Washington Post can’t make money, which newspapers can? The New York Times and Wall Street Journal apparently still do, but that’s close to it. My ‘local’ newspaper, the Lexington Herald-Leader, now publishes their dead trees edition only three days a week, and it’s delivered by the Postal Service, so it’s even older than it was previously.
I love newspapers, and am a digital subscriber to the Post, because, with my seriously degraded hearing, it is far easier for me to read the news than watch it on television, but the simple truth is that newspapers are 18th century technology. There is just as much information available, for free, on the internet: all of the major networks have an online version of their stories, and those are not hidden behind paywalls. How do newspapers develop a product for which people are willing to pay, when so much of their competition is free?