Jeff Bezos – Media Nation

How The Baltimore Banner’s embrace of DC sports fits with its editor’s civic-minded mission is

*The Washington Nationals will soon be covered by The Baltimore Banner. Photo (cc) 2022 by All-Pro Reels / Joe Glorioso.*

The gutting of The Washington Post may prove to be an opportunity for The Baltimore Banner. According to an announcement, the Banner, a digital nonprofit startup, will cover Washington teams, including beat coverage of the Nationals baseball team and the Commanders football team. The Banner’s editor-in-chief, Audrey Cooper, is quoted as saying:

This decision is part of our unwavering commitment to serve Maryland with honest, independent journalism. It builds on last week’s announcement that we are expanding our news coverage into Prince George’s County and represents another step in strengthening our statewide reach.

At a time when so much pulls communities apart, sports bring us together. The Washington Post’s decision to eliminate its sports section creates an opportunity for us to serve more Marylanders with The Banner’s distinctive mix of fearless accountability reporting, engaging storytelling and sharp analysis.

I found Cooper’s comments about sports bringing people together to be especially interesting because they parallel something she told Mike Blinder recently on the Editor & Publisher vodcast:

America is having a hard time having civil, civic conversations right now and I think the reason behind that is because of the shrinking local news ecosystem. If we spent more time worrying about whether our kids are being educated, whether our roads are paved, whether our water is safe to drink, and less time about these national culture fights that, to be honest, don’t affect our day-to-day lives, I think there’s a chance that local news has to re-teach Americans how to have civic conversations.

To me, saving the great American experiment means saving local news. And I think it’s difficult to find a place in America right now where that’s not, where Baltimore is like second to none. I mean, I think what’s happening here and what the Banner is doing is the most interesting experiment in local news, and I wanted to be a part of it.

This echoes a theme that Ellen Clegg and I explore in our book, “What Works in Community News,” and on our podcast. The nationalization of everything has a lot to do with why we are so polarized. We live in communities, in neighborhoods, but the phony controversies that are ginned up in the national media — especially on Fox News — gain more resonance than they should when we lack reliable sources of local news to inform us about what really matters.

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The Jeff Bezos-owned Post’s decision to eliminate its sports staff and cut back on metro coverage was mind-boggling. As Poynter media columnist Tom Jones observed (second item), the Post’s sports section was “legendary,” and it “was once known for having some of the best sportswriters in the business with the likes of Shirley Povich, Tony Kornheiser, Michael Wilbon, Sally Jenkins and Thomas Boswell, just to name a few. And the sports department of today — well, of last week — also had a deep talent pool with brilliant journalists including Chuck Culpepper, Dave Sheinin and columnists Candace Buckner and Barry Svrluga.”

The Banner’s move follows a bid by Washington City Paper to purchase the Post’s sports and metro sections. Tina Nguyen reported in The Verge that though soon-to-depart publisher Will Lewis was receptive, the talks went nowhere, and the paper went ahead with massive cuts — initially reported as 300 of the paper’s 800 journalists, but which is now being revealed as even worse than that. (Former Post reporter Paul Farhi, writing for Washingtonian, places the number at 350 to 375 positions eliminated out of a total headcount of 790.)

If the Banner’s embrace of Washington sports and coverage of Prince George’s County is successful (previously the Banner started covering another Washington suburb in Maryland, Montgomery County), I hope it might lead to more — maybe even a Washington Banner. The Post is supposedly going to continue covering national politics. But when Bezos bought the paper in 2013 from the legendary Graham family, the Post was primarily a regional paper that had more in common with The Boston Globe or The Philadelphia Inquirer than it did with The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal.

Perhaps the Banner, City Paper, Washingtonian and others can make up for that local news gap. It would also be nice if one or more of them amped up their book coverage, as the Post’s standalone book section was a casualty of the bloodletting. (And the entire photo staff. Good Lord.)

The Banner is quite a story. Earlier this week I wrote an article for The Conversation about five large regional newspapers that have achieved sustainability of a sort. Four of them are either owned by billionaires or owe their current success to billionaires. I could have mentioned the Banner as well. Hotel magnate Stewart Bainum founded and endowed the Banner after he was spurned in his bid to purchase The Baltimore Sun and then all of Tribune Publishing from the hedge fund Alden Global Capital.

The Banner launched in 2022 and, according to Cooper in her interview with Blinder, has 75,000 paid subscribers. As of last September, the newsroom staff comprised nearly 100 people. It’s won a Pulitzer Prize, and — Boston trivia alert — Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory serves on its board of directors.

As Jeff Bezos dismantles The Washington Post, five regional papers chart a course for survival

Portrait of Jeff Bezos (cc) 2017 by thierry ehrmann.

If The Washington Post’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, ever decides he wants to take journalism seriously again, then he might take a look at a handful of large regional papers that have charted a route to sustainability against the strong headwinds that continue to buffet the news business.

Perhaps the most important difference between these papers and the Post — and the hundreds of other shrinking media outlets owned by corporate chains and hedge funds — is that they are rooted in the communities they cover. Whether owned by wealthy people or run by nonprofits, they place service to their city and region above extracting the last smidgen of revenue they can squeeze out.

Although I could add a few to this list, I am mentioning five large regional newspapers as examples of how it’s possible to succeed despite the long-term decline in the economics of journalism.

Read the rest at The Conversation.

There’s little new that can be said about Jeff Bezos’ gutting of The Washington Post

I’ve written about Jeff Bezos’ defenestration of The Washington Post multiple times over the past two-plus years, and I’m not going to rehash it in any great detail today.

Suffice to say that today’s gutting of the Post, reported here by NPR’s David Folkenflik, is just the latest outrage that began when Bezos refused to do anything after his hand-chosen publisher, Will Lewis, turned out to be a terrible choice. Lewis was enmeshed in ethics scandals stemming from his time as a Murdoch lieutenant in the U.K., but Bezos remained silent. Later came the most visible sign that Bezos had turned — his decision to kill an endorsement of Kamala Harris just before the 2024 election.

Retired Post executive editor Marty Baron has a withering essay up on Facebook that you should read in full. After acknowledging the very real challenges facing the Post, Baron writes:

The Post’s challenges … were made infinitely worse by ill-conceived decisions that came from the very top — from a gutless order to kill a presidential endorsement 11 days before the 2024 election to a remake of the editorial page that now stands out only for its moral infirmity. Loyal readers, livid as they saw owner Jeff Bezos betraying the values he was supposed to uphold, fled The Post. In truth, they were driven away, by the hundreds of thousands.

The owner, in a note to readers, wrote that he aimed to boost trust in The Post. The effect was something else entirely: Subscribers lost trust in his stewardship and, notwithstanding the newsroom’s stellar journalism, The Post overall. Similarly, many leading journalists at The Post lost confidence in Bezos, and jumped to other news organizations. They also, in effect, were driven away. Bezos’s sickening efforts to curry favor with President Trump have left an especially ugly stain of their own. This is a case study in near-instant, self-inflicted brand destruction.

It seems like a lifetime ago that I was at the Post interviewing Baron and others for my book “The Return of the Moguls.” In those days the Post was profitable and growing, and Bezos had developed a reputation for standing up to Donald Trump’s threats and bullying. Bezos has since transformed into a Trump toady, spending $75 million to make that ridiculous Melania Trump biopic for — for what? I guess to get the White House on board with his ambitions for the Blue Origin rocket company that he owns.

I can’t imagine why Bezos would want to be associated with what the Post has become — what he’s turned it into. He certainly shows no sign of interest in it. From 2013-23, he was a model owner. But people change. Bezos has changed, much for the worse. If there’s any chance that he might donate it to a nonprofit foundation, as the late billionaire Gerry Lenfest did with The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2016, I hope he’ll do it sooner rather than later.

By raiding a reporter’s home, Trump and his thugs have escalated their attacks on a free press

Barack Obama’s administration threatened reporters with jail if they refused to turn over their confidential sources. But he didn’t order raids on reporters’ homes. Photo (cc) 2024 by Gage Skidmore.

Back in 2012, I wrote an opinion piece for The Huffington Post (now just HuffPost) that I headlined “Obama’s War on Journalism.” The premise was that Barack Obama, like George W. Bush and other presidents before him, was disrespecting the First Amendment’s protection of independent journalism by taking reporters to court and theatening them with jail if they didn’t reveal the identities of White House sources leaking to them.

At least Obama, Bush et al. were following a legal process. As The Associated Press reports, Donald Trump’s FBI, headed by the buffoonish but dangerous Kash Patel, raided the home of a Washington Post journalist to grab what they claimed were classified documents provided by a Pentagon contractor.

Continue reading “By raiding a reporter’s home, Trump and his thugs have escalated their attacks on a free press”

‘Things happen’ — and for one brief moment, The Washington Post rediscovers its soul

Jamal Khashoggi. Photo (cc) 2018 by POMED.

The Washington Post’s increasingly Trump-friendly editorial page has rediscovered its soul, however briefly.

In a piece published Tuesday afternoon, the Post tears into Donald Trump for his friendly White House get-together with Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who, according to a CIA intelligence assessment, was behind the 2018 murder of Saudi dissident (and Post columnist) Jamal Khashoggi.

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The editorial is unsigned, which means that it represents the institutional voice of the newspaper, including its owner, Jeff Bezos. Better still, The New York Times reports that Bezos was not among the tech moguls who attended Trump’s dinner for bin Salman, even though others were there — including Apple’s Tim Cook, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Dell’s Michael Dell, Cisco’s Chuck Robbins, Elon Musk and others.

Continue reading “‘Things happen’ — and for one brief moment, The Washington Post rediscovers its soul”

The Washington Post runs three editorials failing to disclose Jeff Bezos’ conflicts of interest

*Jeff Bezos. Illustration (cc) 2017 by thierry ehrmann.*

When Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013, there were fears that he would position its editorial pages to boost his various business interests and amplify his quirky political philosophy.

Consider, for example, Shel Kaphan, an engineer who was Amazon’s first employee and later had a falling-out with Bezos. “It makes me feel quite nauseous,” Kaphan told the Post immediately after the purchase was announced. “I’d hate to see the newspaper converted into a corporate libertarian mouthpiece.”

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Contrary to Kaphan’s fears, Bezos proved to be an exemplary owner for 10 years. Then, in late 2023 he hired the ethically challenged Fleet Street veteran Will Lewis as his publisher, and it’s been all downhill since then.

Particularly damaging has been Bezos’ assault on the Post’s opinion section, which began with his decision to kill an endorsement of Kamala Harris just before the 2024 presidential election. That was followed by the exodus of key employees, Bezos’ pronouncement that the opinion section would be reoriented to emphasize “free markets and personal liberties,” and the hiring of the conservative journalist Adam O’Neal to be opinion editor.

Now comes yet another disturbing development in the Post opinion section’s race to the bottom. NPR media reporter David Folkenflik writes that, on three occasions in recent weeks, the Post has editorialized in favor of Bezos’ business interests without making any disclosure — a violation of basic journalistic ethics. As Folkenflik observes:

For the newspaper’s owner to have outside business holdings or activities that might intersect with coverage or commentary is conventionally seen to present at the least a perception of a conflict of interest. Newspapers typically manage the perception with transparency.

The Post has resolutely revealed such entanglements to readers of news coverage or commentary in the past, whether the Graham family’s holdings, which included the Stanley Kaplan educational company and Slate magazine, or, since 2013, those of Bezos, who founded Amazon and Blue Origin. Even now, the newspaper’s reporters do so as a matter of routine.

The three undisclosed conflicts, by the way, involved a rousing endorsement of Donald Trump’s hideous ballroom, for which Amazon was a major corporate donor; support for the military’s bid to build nuclear reactors, which could bolster another Amazon investment; and a piece urging local officials in Washington to approve self-driving cars. Amazon’s autonomous car company, Zoox, had just announced that it would be moving into the nation’s capital.

Folkenflik noted that in the case of the ballroom to replace the now-demolished East Wing, the Post added a disclosure after its initial publication — but only after being called on it by Columbia Journalism School professor Bill Grueskin.

It’s not at all unusual for media moguls to have a variety of entangling business interests. The solution, without exception, is to disclose those conflicts whenever they are being reported on or editorialized about. The Boston Globe, for instance, rarely fails to disclose John and Linda Henry’s ownership of the Red Sox and their other sports-related interests when reporting on them as business enterprises.

To borrow Shel Kaphan’s description, it is nauseating to watch Bezos destroy his legacy as a first-rate newspaper owner by turning the Post’s opinion section into a pathetic joke. It has cost the Post tens of thousands of readers, and media reporter Natalie Korach of Status reports writes the staff is preparing for a painful round of cuts just before the holidays.

But Bezos doesn’t care. His interests are elsewhere. I just wish the world’s fourth-richest person would donate the Post to a nonprofit foundation so that he can cease being, as he’s put it, “not an ideal owner” of one of our great newspapers.

Renée Graham quits Globe editorial board over Charlie Kirk editorial but will remain as a columnist

*Globe Opinion’s original headline. It was later changed to “Charlie Kirk murder: America needs dialogue, not bullets” online and “An attack on democracy” in print.*

Boston Globe columnist Renée Graham has quit the paper’s editorial board in protest over last week’s editorial (sub. req.) praising the slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s commitment to free speech — an editorial that was widely derided by critics who objected to Kirk’s often hateful rhetoric. Graham will remain as a columnist and will continue to write her Globe newsletter, Outtakes.

Graham confirmed those developments in an email exchange but would not offer any further comment.

A Globe spokesperson said of Graham’s decision: “We are grateful to Renée Graham for her valuable contributions to our team and to the editorial board. We respect her decision to resign from the board and are pleased that she will continue in her role as a Globe Opinion associate editor, columnist, and newsletter writer.”

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Kirk was murdered during an appearance at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10. It’s been the top story in the news ever since given the public nature of his death (including a graphic video), the devotion of his millions of followers (Donald Trump and JD Vance among them), and his comments targeting Black women, members of the LGBTQ community, immigrants and others.

Continue reading “Renée Graham quits Globe editorial board over Charlie Kirk editorial but will remain as a columnist”

The Washington Post fires longtime columnist Karen Attiah amid a rising tide of repression

Karen Attiah. Photo (cc) 2016 by New America.

As best as I can determine, in the 11 months since The Washington Post’s opinion section descended into Jeff Bezos-imposed turmoil, no one had been fired — until now. Some people quit in protest, such as Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes, or because they disagreed with Bezos’ mandate to focus exclusively on “personal liberties and free markets,” such as opinion editor David Shipley. But Karen Attiah is the first to lose her job.

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Attiah, who had been a columnist for the Post, took to her Substack newsletter on Monday to announce that she had been sacked for a series of posts on Bluesky in which she condemned gun violence following the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk last Wednesday. By her own account, her only post even mentioning Kirk was this one, quoting Kirk’s own words:

“Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot”. -Charlie Kirk

— Karen Attiah (@karenattiah.bsky.social) 2025-09-11T01:40:48.549Z

Some have argued that Kirk’s quote had been taken out of context because he was referring to specific Black women and was characterizing what others were saying, as David Gilmour writes at Mediaite. To which I would observe that Kirk’s quotes and what he meant are sometimes difficult to parse. Attiah is hardly the only journalist who may have misconstrued something that he said.

Attiah, noting that she was the Post’s last remaining full-time Black columnist, wrote:

My commentary received thoughtful engagement across platforms, support, and virtually no public backlash.

And yet, the Post accused my measured Bluesky posts of being “unacceptable”, “gross misconduct” and of endangering the physical safety of colleagues — charges without evidence, which I reject completely as false. They rushed to fire me without even a conversation — claiming disparagement on race. This was not only a hasty overreach, but a violation of the very standards of journalistic fairness and rigor the Post claims to uphold.

Media reporter Oliver Darcy obtained (sub. req.) a copy of the letter in which Attiah was fired, from human resources head Wayne Connell, who claimed that she had disparaged white men. Connell’s letter begins with this:

I am writing to inform you that The Post is terminating your employment effective immediately for gross misconduct. Your public comments on social media regarding the death of Charlie Kirk violate The Post’s social media policies, harm the integrity of our organization, and potentially endanger the physical safety of our staff.

Of course, taking to social media in the immediate aftermath of a tragic event such as the Kirk assassination is fraught with danger. Opinion journalists, though, should be able to post freely as long as they maintain the same tone they would be expected to adhere to in their day job. Attiah’s posts on Bluesky were certainly provocative, but they strike me as being well within the bounds of what is acceptable.

Then again, this may have amounted to a convenient excuse to get rid of a troublesome internal critic. Darcy reported last month (sub. req.) that Attiah had a tense meeting with the new opinion editor, Adam O’Neal, and declined to take a buyout that was being offered even though O’Neal was trying to push out anyone whose work “work didn’t align with his vision for the section.”

Poynter Online media columnist Tom Jones reports that the Post’s union issued a statement condemning Attiah’s firing “and will continue to support her and defend her rights.” What form that support may take is not specified.

Meanwhile, CNN media reporter Brian Stelter writes that Attiah’s newsletter, The Golden Hour, gained 10,000 new subscribers in the immediate aftermath of her post about having been fired. Then, too, Matthew Dowd, fired by MSNBC last week after he said “hateful words lead to hateful thoughts lead to hateful actions” while commenting on Kirk’s murder, is also promoting his Substack newsletter, Lighthouse Sentinel.

We are in the midst of a right-wing backlash, led by Donald Trump and JD Vance, who are using Kirk’s tragic death as an opportunity to punish their critics. As the BBC notes, “Pilots, medical professionals, teachers and one Secret Service employee are among those who have been suspended or sacked for social media posts that were deemed inappropriate about Kirk’s death.”

Of course, no one should be celebrating Kirk’s death, which was a tragedy for his family and friends. But for the MAGA movement to use it as an opportunity to unleash a witch hunt against their opponents is as sickening as it is predictable. I don’t think this is going to blow over any time soon.

No, Jeanine Pirro’s vile op-ed is not further evidence that Jeff Bezos is wrecking The Washington Post

Jeanine Pirro. Photo (cc) 2021 by Gage Skidmore.

Because Jeff Bezos has taken a wrecking ball to The Washington Post’s opinion section, critics have become sensitive to any hint that the billionaire owner is paying obeisance to Donald Trump.

Which brings me to an op-ed the Post published Tuesday evening (gift link) by newly confirmed U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro about Trump’s decision to send the National Guard into Washington, D.C., in order to crack down on a crime wave that, by all credible accounts, does not exist. I haven’t been able to find any media commentary criticizing the Post for running Pirro’s piece, but I have seen grumbling on social media along with yet another round of vows by readers to cancel their subscriptions.

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Deciding whether to run such a piece is not just a journalistic decision but also an ethical one. Pirro’s major qualification for her job as D.C.’s top prosecutor is having served as a Trump-worshipping talk-show host on Fox News, although it has to be said that she served as both a prosecutor and a judge many years ago. Her op-ed defends an authoritarian president who is militarizing the nation’s capital just because he can. Should the Post have just said no?

The Post itself editorialized against her appointment (gift link) back in May. Part of the paper’s objection was over process, but the editorial also called out her judgment and noted that her executive producer at Fox News had referred to her as a “reckless maniac” in promoting the voting-machine conspiracy that led to a $787.5 million libel settlement by her then-employer.

Which is to say that the Post’s editorial board, compromised though it may be, saw fit to stand up to Pirro and Trump as recently as three months ago. No doubt the new opinion editor, Adam O’Neal, decided to run Pirro’s op-ed for the most ordinary of reasons: it was submitted (if not necessarily written) by a high-ranking government official with responsibility for a significant issue in the news.

In that regard, it’s useful to remember the mess over The New York Times’ decision to publish an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton back in 2020 in which Cotton endorsed the use of military force to crush violent Black Lives Matter protesters. As I wrote for GBH News, the Times shouldn’t have run the piece for several reasons. Among other things, the editors did not insist that Cotton address an earlier public statement he’d made suggesting that violent protesters should be killed on the streets, and he was allowed to make an entirely unsubstantiated assertion that antifa was involved in the protests.

We later learned that editorial-page editor James Bennet hadn’t even bothered to read Cotton’s screed before publishing it. Bennet, whose miscues were piling up (including his inserting a false assertion into an editorial that led to Sarah Palin’s endless libel suit against the Times), was soon fired.

Pirro’s op-ed strikes me as unremarkable right-wing boilerplate about what she describes as a need to crack down on youthful offenders. She calls on the D.C. Council to amend or reverse three laws that would strip those offenders of important rights and protections. The op-ed says in part:

Unfortunately, young criminals have been emboldened to think they can get away with committing crime in this city, and, very often, they do. But together with our local and federal partners, our message to them today is: We will identify you, prosecute you and convict you. For any juveniles: We are going to push to change the laws so that if you commit any violent crime, I have jurisdiction to prosecute you where you belong — in adult court.

Don’t get me wrong. This is terrible, vile stuff, but the question is whether the Post should have run her op-ed. I think the answer is yes. It’s a newsworthy piece by a public official who’s close to the president. If I were editing the piece, I would have insisted that she address the falling crime rate in D.C. (As a general principle, I think editorial-page editors need to insist on standards of truthfulness and accuracy in outside contributions.) Overall, though, I don’t think Pirro’s piece is nearly as objectionable as Cotton’s was five years ago.

The Post, given its location in the nation’s capital, has always been a favored landing spot for op-eds by high-ranking government officials. The best way to have prevented Pirro’s op-ed from running would have been to keep Trump out of the White House. But it’s far too late for that.

From the CJR, a more nuanced view of where The Washington Post may be heading

Where is The Washington Post heading? Certainly from outside the paper’s walls, the situation looks grim, as staff members are streaming toward the exits in droves, especially but not exclusively from the opinion side. But as disgusted as I am by Jeff Bezos’ shift from model owner to boss from hell over the past couple of years, I’ve held out hope that all may not be lost — as long as he doesn’t mess with the news operation. So far, he hasn’t.

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Which is why I want to call your attention to this Jon Allsop piece from the Columbia Journalism Review. He recounts the devastation in minute detail, but he offers more nuance than I’ve seen elsewhere. He also buries the lead. The key is his wrap-up:

[J]ournalism is more of a team sport than the industry focus on its stars sometimes acknowledges, and the Post is clearly retaining a corps of incredibly talented journalists. In their departure notes, [chief political reporter Dan] Balz and [sports columnist Sally] Jenkins both emphasized this fact, with the latter writing that she sees “the glimmer of a new Washington Post — one that moves”; it will have “to be right-sized,” she added, “and young trees planted, but when the clocks all start chiming at the same time, it will be glorious.” Chelsea Janes, who covers baseball for the Post, and is staying, reacted to news of Jenkins’s exit with a different metaphor — that of a sports team that has been torn apart for unclear reasons — but added that there’s “plenty of talent still on the roster, and everyone on that roster plays to win.” I can sympathize with Janes’s analogy: my English soccer team is currently in the process of a full-scale rebuild, and a lot about it sucks. But it also feels like a moment of opportunity. That is, if the owners and management know what they’re doing. The same is true in journalism.

The challenge is finding an audience for the Post now that Bezos’ feckless leadership has allowed the paper to be caricatured as a mouthpiece for Donald Trump, even though it’s not, and even though its news coverage remains superb. It also doesn’t help that he’s stuck with Will Lewis as his publisher despite Scotland Yard’s ongoing interest in Lewis’ possible involvement in the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal. I would love it if Bezos returned to the generous, hands-off owner I wrote about in my 2018 book “The Return of the Moguls,” but that’s not likely to happen.

Even so, we still have three great national newspapers — the Post, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. If the Journal can survive and thrive despite Murdoch family ownership (by the way, here’s a terrific profile of Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker by The Guardian’s Michael Savage), then the Post can overcome Bezos. That is, assuming Bezos wants it.

Media Nation on semi-hiatus

We’re heading out later today for the rest of the week, and I’m not planning on writing anything unless there’s huge media news. I’ll try to send out an abbreviated supporters newsletter sometime on Thursday. Behave yourselves.