Six months ago, the Washington Post lost over 250,000 subscribers when the paper was prevented from endorsing Kamala Harris for President. (It’s typical for papers to endorse a president.) Unsurprisingly, most papers endorse the person who aligns with the overall political views of the opinion section. Speculation was that the billionaire owner, seated prominently at Trump’s inauguration, didn’t want the paper to endorse Harris. He has denied that thus far. It didn’t prevent a mass exodus of subscribers.
The fallout was quick and brutal. They had to layoff 100 employees in the following months. Papers are already struggling. We can get so much news for free that we tend to wonder why we should pay for it. I fully believe that we need to support journalism if we want to continue to have it, and that means paying for it. John Oliver did a great episode on the importance of journalists in a free democratic society. In that vein, I have been a Post subscriber for years. At the time of the cancellation party, I still had several months left on my yearly subscription. I wanted to see how things played out before making a move.
In general, I don’t care too much if a paper makes an endorsement or not. I won’t decide based on that, anyway. The issue is really about whether the journalists are being hampered in what they write, not by their own research and personal ethics, but by the personal agenda of the owner. Today, that was made incredibly clear.
The opinion section of any newspaper is a free for all of potential insanity. Usually there is a clear lean one way or another, but most papers will have opposing viewpoints as well. The Post is a left leaning paper but there are always right leaning opinions too. Today, Bezos announced that the post opinion section would be subject to some rules. See, only some opinions would be allowed. Pro personal liberties and free markets, anything else wouldn’t get printed. This led the opinion editor to resign. No surprises there.
I’m not going to get into what personal liberties and free markets really mean in conservative billionaire speak. I think we all know that it isn’t what it sounds like on the face. But it doesn’t really matter. Even if I thought the opinions were fantastic like, pro puppies only, this would still be a terrible move. The opinion section is where people share their…OPINIONS! It shouldn’t be a place where opinions are limited to one set of beliefs. Some people, wrong people, don’t like puppies.
This was it for me, and I imagine many others. I cancelled today. My subscription is officially up in May so I can still read all about how awesome corporations are and how they for sure don’t need the government to tell them to keep their employees safe and stuff. Obviously. Before, OSHA workplaces were famously safe.
The Post should probably be prepared for another subscription cancellation spree. Then they’ll have to fire a bunch of people again. What a fun year this is turning out to be.
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