June 22, 2024

IRA STOLL GOES 20 MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE: Who Will Be the Washington Post’s Next Owner?

The newspaper is losing lots of money—reportedly on the order of $77 million a year—and rather than adding to Bezos’s reputation it is damaging it. The coverage of Israel is as approximately as hostile as Al Jazeera; the Washington Free Beacon found “at least six members of the Post’s foreign desk previously wrote for” that “news outlet bankrolled in part by the government of Qatar, which is now sheltering Hamas’s top leaders.” Republicans and some centrists dislike the paper’s anti-Trump tilt, and even Bezos, who is vaguely libertarian and likes America, has to wonder why readers would pay for a Washington Post dispensing predictably left-wing takes readily available free-of-charge from NPR.

Now the Post staff is worked up into a panic over a British former Wall Street Journal executive’s plan to bring in editors from the Wall Street Journal and the Telegraph to run the place. The supposed trigger is the British press’s use of “stolen” documents, but that seems like a pretext coming from the staff of a newspaper that published the Pentagon Papers. The real issue isn’t stolen documents (the Post staff didn’t mind when the New York Times published President Trump’s stolen tax return) but fear that the new Post management might curb the left-wing tilt. Whatever the motive, Bezos is under fire from his own staff, which is questioning his loyalty to the institution. One Post veteran editor and reporter, the biographer David Maraniss, posted on Facebook, “Jeff Bezos owns the Post but he is not of and for the Post.”

Which brings us to this “Wag the Dog”* moment: Would-Be Washington Post Editor Backs Out amid Internal Revolt.

British journalist Robert Winnett, who had been set to join the Washington Post as its executive editor after the November election, has chosen not to accept the position after the paper published an expose raising ethical questions about his journalistic work.

“It is with regret that I share with you that Robert Winnett has withdrawn from the position of Editor at The Washington Post. Rob has my greatest respect and is an incredibly talented editor and journalist,” publisher Will Lewis wrote in a memo to staff on Friday, according to several news reports.

“The leadership at The Telegraph Media Group are reaffirming his continued role as deputy editor,” Lewis added, saying the Post will “immediately” launch a new search for editor.

“We will soon announce both the recruiting firm and process we will utilize to ensure a timely but thorough search for this important leadership role,” he said.

As John Nolte wrote on Monday, the Post’s staffers’ now-successful revolt against Winnett “is good news. No one should want any reforms at the Washington Post. The Post has no credibility. The Post can no longer move the public opinion needle. That’s right where we want them. That annual $77 million loss is merely icing. Nothing is better for America than for that garbage fire to keep right on burning.”

Nonsense — as with Portland in 2020, at least until Bezos makes up his mind about offloading the Post, it’s the Summer of Love at the WaPo:

* Classical reference.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll