300 journalists have misplaced their jobs at The Washington Publish. Over 300,000 readers have canceled their subscriptions. Proprietor Jeff Bezos, who bought the legendary publication in 2013, has pushed his repute into the bottom through the use of his huge empire to churn out content material designed to make President Donald Trump joyful: Amazon MGM Studios spent $40 million to provide a fawning documentary about Melania Trump, which premiered days earlier than the Publish despatched out mass layoff notices. And but, he’s gotten nothing out of his makes an attempt to suck as much as Donald Trump — not less than, nothing that’s a internet constructive to his backside line.
Which begs the cynical query: Why does he even personal The Washington Publish in any respect?
The Trump period is, in spite of everything, a cynical and transactional time. Billionaires, CEOs, and world leaders have rapidly realized that sucking as much as Trump will get them what they need — pardons, tariff exemption, an export management lifted, a merger deal authorized, an investigation quashed. And in terms of media firms, the Paramount-Skydance merger has set the bar for sucking as much as Trump. To ensure that the merger to get regulatory approval, Skydance CEO David Ellison pushed CBS to settle a defamation swimsuit filed by Trump, canceled The Late Present with Stephen Colbert, and employed Bari Weiss, a right-wing Substacker with nearly no newsroom management expertise, as CBS Information’s editor-in-chief. In brief, Ellison needed to decide to neutering CBS’s capability to criticize Trump. However he did get a $28 billion merger out of it.
Bezos’ media performs, alternatively, appear self-contradictory. Financing a fawning documentary about Melania Trump doesn’t mesh with proudly owning a media firm with a 150-year-old legacy of holding politicians accountable, particularly one which famously held Trump accountable throughout his first administration. (If the aim was to neuter the Publish too, then bafflingly, his deputy, Will Lewis, fired everybody besides for these on the political desks.) Even his try to separate the political beliefs from the Publish’s journalism, an try to have it each methods, backfired. After he introduced that the opinion web page would now mirror extra conservative views, reporters started leaving the Publish in droves, and subscriber numbers plummeted even additional. Because the Publish’s former editor-in-chief Marty Baron put it in a column shortly after the layoffs, it was “near-instant, self-inflicted model destruction.”
One may argue — as WaPo insiders must media reporters — that the layoffs had been obligatory as a result of the paper was shedding cash. However billionaires have loads of face-saving methods to get an unprofitable media outlet off their palms, in a way that doesn’t embrace mass layoffs (or not less than, offloads the layoffs onto its subsequent proprietor). The Philadelphia Inquirer, for example, had been donated by its billionaire proprietor to a nonprofit, whereas Fb billionaire Chris Hughes ended up selling The New Republic to Win McCormack after his personal failed try to reshape the 100-year-old journal. The Publish, which had grown its digital viewers all through Bezos’ possession, would have instantly attracted patrons: final yr, tech journalist Kara Swisher introduced that she and a number of other buyers had been ready to buy the Publish from Bezos, however reportedly by no means heard again from him.
Maybe Bezos must suck as much as Trump to additional Amazon’s pursuits, which might make extra sense if Bezos nonetheless ran the corporate. Besides he doesn’t. He stepped down as CEO in 2021. Amazon, whose subsidiary AWS holds the lion’s share of federal authorities contracts, has been in a position to independently suck as much as Trump through donations to the White Home’s new ballroom fund. (Admittedly, Bezos’ authorities contracts with NASA are on the desk, and he was reportedly noticed hanging out with Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth at a Blue Origin facility in Florida on the day of the Publish layoffs.)
Perhaps this pile of self-contradictions — or, as he once described his ownership of the Post, a “complexifier” — was inevitable when Trump got here again into workplace and made it clear that he would punish the Large Tech entities that displeased him. However there’s no clear and logical clarification for why Bezos goes about his supplication: not one which makes monetary sense, nor one which instantly furthers his personal political standing with Trump, nor one which reaffirms the dedication he as soon as made to defending the First Modification. And that lack of readability solely makes the Publish’s decapitation much more mindless.
