Posted on 08/09/2013 10:20:11 AM PDT by Kaslin
The Washington Post is a legend in the minds of the Washington elite, so its financial decline has caused quiet panic. As NPR media reporter David Folkenflik put it, "You think of stories like the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, these are all stories where The Washington Post led the nation's understanding, the world's understanding of some major issues."
Outside the liberal media, you wonder how long Post fans can wallow in their Nixon-crumbling polyester "glory days" in the early 1970s. But nostalgia ruled as the Graham family sold the Post to Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon.com. "Now he is being credited as a white knight with deep pockets helping to save one of this country's great newspapers," oozed NBC reporter Tom Costello.
Perhaps the worst backslapping came inside the Post. Its media reporter, Paul Farhi, peddled rumors that The New York Times might be next on the sales block and flattered both: "One is a venerable family-owned pillar of the national media establishment. So is the other. One has a storied history of investigative reporting and a reputation for journalistic excellence. So does the other."
In the last electoral cycle, that "excellence" was defined by huge exposes claiming Mitt Romney cut another kid's hair at prep school and Rick Perry failed to put enough coats of white paint on a racist piece of rock.
Obviously, many expect (or just hope and pray) that Bezos can find a way to make newspapers profitable again. That might explain why the Post Company's stock jumped almost $25 a share. But if Bezos can't manage that, he'll get credit as a pro-journalism philanthropist. After all, the other Washington newspapers, the Times and more recently the Examiner, have been labors of love, not money.
NBC quoted Bezos saying, "The values of The Post do not need changing. The paper's duty will remain to its readers and not to the private interest of its owners."
That sounds self-refuting: The Graham family sold the paper sold due to seven straight years of financial losses, now mounting at roughly $100 million a year. New Post editor Martin Baron insisted, "No institution can spend more money than it has." (There's one exception, and Obama's running it.)
When Bezos announced the Post's "values" don't need changing, he was agreeing with the liberal media's self-image. They have to deny that journalism's vanishing profits might be caused by alienating half of your potential audience with partisan hit jobs and blatant liberal bias. It's similar to the media claiming Detroit's bankruptcy is all technological and has nothing to do with its politicians.
The Grahams sold to Bezos because they were impressed with his wealth and his digital savvy, but also because they were confident that he had all the right political values and social liberalism, as demonstrated by his $2.5 million donation for a gay-marriage referendum in Washington state. Pay no attention to anonymous company sources saying they were looking for "public-spirited" and "non-political" owners.
Ironically, they kept this sale out of the media as they negotiated throughout 2013, unlike the very public left-wing brouhaha over the Los Angeles Times possibly going to those villainous capitalists Rupert Murdoch or the Koch brothers. No one inside the liberal media elite wants to admit that Murdoch's purchase of The Wall Street Journal looks like a good thing for journalism now. Everywhere he goes, they play the Darth Vader music from "Star Wars." Jon Stewart makes grumpy faces and warns about "Murdochopoly."
But for Bezos, they're getting out the marching band for a victory lap. Post media blogger Erik Wemple said Amazon's breakout will look like a weak first act if the liberal media is saved: "Should Bezos succeed in even tweaking this sector's vicious cycle, his contributions to retailing and e-commerce may well look like modest achievements."
The first question now is whether Bezos bought the Post to be an instant power player inside D.C. (that's what D.C. assumes without blinking) or to make money. Is the Post a nostalgic plaything for Woodward and Bernstein worshipers, or is it possible he'll betray journalists and take it a more tabloidish direction, like the Huffington Post?
Listen to what Rush Limbaugh said. Journalists "don't want to have to be worried about the audience. They view the customer with contempt more often than they view the customer with respect." If Bezos grows readership, "that's gonna be a red flag to people in the newsroom because that to them is compromising their integrity, giving the audience what it wants, because the audience is a bunch of idiots. By definition, the audience doesn't know anything till the journalist tells them."
The Post just fired its ombudsman to tune out reader complaints of flagrant errors and hatchet jobs. Let's see if Bezos can turn that arrogant attitude around.
He’ll turn it into a homosexual porn magazine.
You’d think these liberal would get tired of pissing money away
People reject liberalism. Dont wanna hear it.
They want the truth. There is a reason Beck
Made like 100 million dollars last year
When you have to go back to mutton-chop sideburns and nehru jackets for your “glory days,” you are on the same glide path as the Greeks, who saw their zenith centuries ago.
As an old pressman, the picture of the real ink stained wretches from an earlier day made me smile.
I haven’t seen a newsprint cap in probably 40 years.
In other word he'ss raise the tone 100 fold.
Those caps brought back memories for me, too. However, I certainly don’t miss the deafening roar of the presses spitting out newspapers at 2AM. (As a teenager then,I was on the end of the belt, grabbing bundles and inserting the funnies and mags.) The press run usually ended by 4AM and our crew didn’t have a dry thread on us. What a sweatshop! I’m glad they don’t do it that way anymore.
Still have no clue why a West Coast internet mogul would want anything to do with an East Coast print dinosaur like the Washington Compost.
My only guess is that he might want to use it as a vehicle to lobby against proposed taxes on internet commerce.
He will make it more of an Obama supporter than it is?
I hadn't thought of that-good point.
The Pentagon Papers were a load of liberal nonsense.
The NYTimes published the entire set of the papers, and I read through them at the time.
They were used to condemn Nixon as the guy responsible for the hated Vietnam War. But the guy responsible for getting us into Vietnam was JFK. And the guy responsible for losing the war was LBJ. Nixon came late to the party, and was not in a position to do much but cut the losses.
The only REAL scandal in the Pentagon Papers—which I have never seen mentioned in any MSM news reports—was that one reason why we lost the war was that JFK ordered the CIA to assassinate the President of South Vietnam. That forced LBJ to rely more heavily on American troops, since the South Vietnamese were thrown into confusion by the murder.
I hate to think what would have been said if Nixon had ordered the assassination of an ally like that. But JFK got away with it.
Good Luck with that.
A guy can dream, can’t he?
Sure. That's why I wished you "good luck"
Unless Jeff Bezos alters the liberal, left-wing, Democrat bias mix at the Washington Post, that rag is going nowhere!!! Oh.....Mr. Bezos can keep his liberal flock...he just has to balance it evenly with fairness for the right wing view of things. Keep the news reporting straight, and.....keep the opinion pieces where they belong...on either the editorial pages or the Opinion columns!!!! Mr. Bezos can take his cue from Cable New TV, where Fox News Channel has both MSNBC & CNN on life support. Mr. Bezos....political winds are changing rapidly......and, it ain’t in the direction of the left-wng Obamabot dudes & dolls!!!! Get with it...or get out!!! Obama is a failed POTUS and so is his political mantra!!!
Save the WaaaPooo, no way, we should rejoice as another great lying machine has stumbled. Next up NYTimes, NBC, CBS, NPR, etc., etc!
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