Towards the end of All About the Story: News, Power, Politics, and the Washington Post, the new memoir by former Washington Postexecutive editor Len Downie, there is an irony so huge that only a journalist could miss it. Mere pages after Downie cites that awful, nonsensical cliche that “journalism’s job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” he relates being forced to retire. It’s January 2008, and Downie is summoned to publisher Bo Jones’s office and informed it is time for him to go. Downie doesn’t take the news well. “I became numb as he discussed the details…I was determined not to show how shocked I was. I did not argue or ask questions.” After retreating from Jones’s office, Downie called his wife: “Something big, something life-changing has just happened,” he said.
It’s a great switchback: the man who wants to afflict the comfortable (why the comfortable should be attacked has never really been explained) was in fact one of the most comfortable—the rich top dog at one of the nation’s wealthiest and most elite media empires. He suddenly finds himself out of a job—afflicted, you might say, with unemployment (although his retirement perks ensured he would have a soft landing).
The reason for Downie’s sacking was the changing nature of journalism. By 2008 the digital revolution had drained advertising dollars, and the Post wanted younger, sharper staffers to handle the change. Soon the paper, which had been owned by the Graham family since 1933, would be sold. The Post was subsequently bought by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos in 2013. Since then, the paper, which has always been reliably liberal, has gone hard left, becoming sloppy, hysterical, and rawly radical. Donald Trump drove them insane.
QED: Jennifer Rubin humiliates herself using data from retracted story.
