It’s important at a historical moment like this to keep our heads about us. Social media was filled with dark warnings about authoritarianism on Friday after the FBI arrested Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan and charged her with illegally helping an undocumented immigrant avoid being detained by federal agents. I even saw a quote attributed to Hitler.
We should leave it to the legal system to determine whether Judge Dugan broke the law or not. But, to their credit, a number of news organizations noted that the Dugan case is remarkably similar to that of Massachusetts District Court Judge Shelley Joseph. Joseph was charged by federal authorities in 2019 with obstruction of justice after she helped an undocumented immigrant escape out the back of her courtroom when she learned that the feds were waiting to take him into custody.
Charges against Joseph were dropped in 2022 after she agreed to a state investigation into her conduct. As of late 2024, her case was still wending its way through the disciplinary system.
Washington Post publisher Will Lewis. 2019 public domain photo by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The ongoing implosion of The Washington Post is unfolding at a moment when we’ve never been more in need of tough, independent journalism. The latest, as Sara Fischer reports for Axios, is that Phil Rucker is leaving as the Post’s national editor in order to become senior vice president of editorial strategy and news at CNN.
It seems that anyone who can leave the Post is doing so now that billionaire owner Jeff Bezos has thrown in with Donald Trump. I don’t blame people for staying; after all, jobs in journalism are hard to come by, and there’s still reason to hope the paper’s news reporters will be allowed to do good work. Still, Bezos has done incalculable harm over the past year following a decade of model ownership; I wrote about the first years of his reign in my 2018 book, “The Return of The Moguls.” What’s happening now is depressing.
Before I get back to the Post, a word about CNN, about which there is reason to worry and reason to be hopeful. On the one hand, you have to be concerned about independent media reporter Oliver Darcy’s story Tuesday evening that chief executive Mark Thompson had told his staff before the inauguration that he wanted them not to dwell on the past. Darcy writes:
The next day, the network executed as directed…. CNN’s journalists entirely avoided pointing out during special inauguration coverage various inconvenient truths, such as the fact Trump is the first convicted felon to take office or that he was impeached for his role in inciting an insurrection on the very place he took his second oath. It was a glaring omission, but not one by accident.
On the other hand, Thompson is the guy who, in his previous job, revived The New York Times’ fortunes, transforming the newspaper into a growing, profitable digital powerhouse not just on the strength of its journalism but through ancillary products such as games, consumer advice and food. And he somehow convinced an outstanding news leader like Rucker that CNN is a better place to be right now than The Washington Post.
About which: As I was getting ready to write this item, the Post’s Karla Adam reported (gift link) that Rupert Murdoch’s British publishing empire had settled an invasion-of-privacy suit brought by Prince Harry for more than $10 million and an apology. Adam writes:
As part of the deal, Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers (NGN) issued a formal apology, which was read out in court by Harry’s lawyer David Sherborne, conceding “unlawful activities” carried out by private investigators working for Murdoch’s newspapers, including “phone hacking, surveillance and misuse of private information.”
Scan down further into the story and you’ll come across this:
An executive summary of the claimants’ arguments, shared with The Washington Post before the settlement, indicated that Harry and [Labour Party politician Tom] Watson’s legal teams planned to allege that “over 30 million emails were deliberately destroyed” as part of a scheme to keep evidence from police investigators. The document asserted that “a pivotal role” in directing the email deletions had been played by former Sun editor Rebekah Brooks, still a senior executive for Murdoch, and former NGN general manager William Lewis, now publisher and CEO of The Washington Post.
Both Brooks and Lewis have denied allegations of wrongdoing. NGN has acknowledged that emails were removed, but said that was part of a planned system migration and a new data retention policy, and that additional instructions were given to preserve emails potentially relevant to a police investigation.
The problems at the Post may have come to public attention starting with Bezos’ stunning decision last fall to kill an endorsement of Kamala Harris with just days to go before the election. But the downward spiral really began with the appointment of Lewis to replace outgoing publisher Fred Ryan, and with Bezos’ stubborn insistence on sticking with Lewis despite embarrassing revelations about his involvement in the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal.
NPR media reporter David Folkenflik, who broke the news about Lewis’ involvement earlier this year, revisited that issue on Tuesday after reports of a settlement were circulating but before it was consummated. Though Folkenflik was careful to note that Lewis was “not a defendant in the case, and has denied all wrongdoing,” he added:
The plaintiffs allege that Lewis and the other executives orchestrated the deletion of millions of emails and withheld other material from police. According to police notes presented in court filings, Lewis told a police investigation they had to delete the emails to head off a scheme by Watson and former Prime Minister Gordon Brown to get materials surreptitiously from Brooks’ computer.
Brown and Watson have denied any such plot; News UK has not to date produced any evidence publicly to support its existence. Brown has demanded a criminal investigation from Scotland Yard, which opened a preliminary review to determine whether a full investigation is warranted.
Former Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan, now a contributor to The Guardian, wrote last Friday that Bezos needs to act quickly in order to save the Post. Her recommendations: hold an on-the-record meeting with the staff; make it clear that “he understands the importance of editorial freedom and pledge not to interfere with it”; and fire Lewis.
I wonder if it might be too late, though Sullivan’s advice would at least represent a dramatic break with the way Bezos has run the Post over the past year. My preference, given his unimaginable wealth, is that donate the Post to a nonprofit foundation and endow it, as the late Gerry Lenfest did with The Philadelphia Inquirer did in 2016.
Clearly, though, Bezos has to do something. Actually, let me revise that: He doesn’t have to do a damn thing. But I’m ever hopeful that he will.
Newsday account of Murdoch becoming a U.S. citizen, Sept. 5, 1985
We shouldn’t have been especially surprised that the Supreme Court voted unanimously to uphold the TikTok ban. After all, we have a long legal tradition when it comes to banning the foreign ownership of media companies.
Lest we forget, Rupert Murdoch was able to take his first steps in launching the Fox News Channel only by becoming an American citizen. The Australian media mogul took the oath in 1985 so he could purchase seven local television stations owned by Metromedia. FCC rules barred non-citizens from owning more than 20% of a U.S. broadcast entity.
Murdoch’s acquisition of Metromedia meant that he briefly owned WCVB-TV (Channel 5). Since Murdoch also owned the Boston Herald and the FCC forbade cross-ownership of a TV station and newspaper in the same market, Murdoch flipped WCVB to Hearst, which has owned it ever since. (This is unrelated to Murdoch’s failed attempt a few years later to hold on to Boston’s WFXT-Channel 25 while keeping the Herald. In that case, he ended up selling Channel 25 and retaining the Herald, though he later sold that, too.)
FCC jurisdiction applies almost exclusively to the dying universe of broadcast television and radio. The TikTok ban was approved by an act of Congress, passed by overwhelming bipartisan majorities and signed into law by President Biden. Donald Trump has indicated that he wants to work out a deal so TikTok can remain up and running in the U.S., and perhaps he will. So this entire episode may turn out to be a footnote.
What’s notable about the Supreme Court decision is that the justices were not impressed with the government’s contention that TikTok could be used to distributed propaganda at the behest of the Chinese government. That’s as it should be. According to Amy Howe’s account of the decision, republished by SCOTUSblog, Justice Neil Gorsuch’s concurrence underscored that the issue was foreign ownership, not free speech.
Gorsuch, Howe notes, “emphasized that the court was correct in not ‘endorsing the government’s asserted interest in preventing “the covert manipulation of content”’ to justify the TikTok ban. ‘One man’s “covert content manipulation,”’ he observed, ‘is another’s “editorial discretion.”’”
The real problem with foreign ownership is that the Chinese government could demand that TikTok (I’m not going to get into the complex arrangement between TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance) turn over the massive amounts of user data that it hoovers up in order to fine-tune its algorithm and to sell you stuff. Of course, American-owned platforms do the same thing, and you might think there’s not a great deal of moral difference between Xi Jinping or Mark Zuckerberg (or Co-President-Elect Elon Musk) having access to your data. And you might even be right. But the legal distinction strikes me as fairly obvious.
Is there hypocrisy at work here? You bet, because the U.S. government has long claimed the right to access user data from American-based platforms in the name of national security. As Andrew K. Woods writes for Lawfare:
The Court noted: “TikTok Ltd. is subject to Chinese laws that require it to ‘assist or cooperate’ with the Chinese Government’s ‘intelligence work’ and to ensure that the Chinese Government has ‘the power to access and control private data’ the company holds.”
The Court could have written a nearly identical sentence about Meta or Google, vis-à-vis American law, like this: “Meta is subject to American law that requires it to assist or cooperate with the American government’s intelligence work and to ensure that the American government has the power to access and control private data the company holds.”
American firms are subject to American laws — like the Stored Communications Act, especially as modified by the CLOUD Act, and intelligence laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — that give the U.S. government legal means to access customer data, especially foreign customer data, for national security and intelligence purposes.
The ban takes effect Sunday, and the Biden White House has said it’s not going to make any efforts to enforce it with Trump taking office the next day. Trump was originally all in favor of the ban; then one of his billionaire donors urged him to change his mind. It didn’t hurt that Trump’s TikTok account turned out to be popular with his supporters.
So it seems like the most likely outcome is that Trump announces an extension while trying to work out some sort of settlement.
In the latest sign that The Washington Post has lost its way, the paper’s acting executive editor killed a story reporting that managing editor Matea Gold had left to take a job at The New York Times.
NPR media reporter David Folkenflik writes that Matt Murray intervened and ordered that a story on Gold’s departure be deep-sixed. Now, this is all very complicated. Murray, who was brought in earlier this year by the Post’s ethically challenged publisher, Will Lewis, replaced Sally Buzbee after she quit rather than move over to head a “third newsroom” initiative that Lewis has talked about but has not really explained. (Buzbee recently was named to a top editing job at Reuters.)
Murray, in turn, is supposed to run the third newsroom after the Post chooses a new, permanent executive editor — and Gold, a respected insider, was thought to be a candidate for that position. But now Murray himself, who’s proved to be popular inside the newsroom (at least until this week), may want to stay right where he is; independent media reporter Oliver Darcy wonders if Murray killed the story about Gold’s departure in order to curry favor with Lewis. Adding to the intrigue is that Lewis was also Murray’s boss when they both worked at The Wall Street Journal. Continue reading “At The Washington Post, silence is Gold; plus, a bad day for Rupe and Lachlan, and cuts at Stat News”
Washington Post publisher Will Lewis. 2019 public domain photo by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Few media executives have benefited from the political chaos of the past month more than Washington Post publisher Will Lewis.
Before the presidential debate of June 27, Lewis seemed to be hanging by a thread over revelations that he was involved in covering up the phone-hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch’s tabloids back in 2011. He’s also come under fire for approving payments to a source while he was working at another paper and, more recently, demanding that journalists — including Post executive editor Sally Buzbee, who later left the paper — not report on his transgressions.
Since the debate, which led to weeks of frenzied coverage regarding President Biden’s age and fitness, his subsequent withdrawal from the race, and the rise of Vice President Kamala Harris (not to mention an assassination attempt against Donald Trump), Lewis’ fate had been forgotten.
Until now.
NPR media reporter David Folkenflik, who earlier revealed that Lewis promised him an exclusive interview if Folkenflik would give Lewis’ ethical problems a good leaving-alone, reported on Tuesday that new documents show Lewis has been accused of making up a story 13 years ago “to shield evidence from police of possible crimes at Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloids.” The accusations were leveled as part of a lawsuit brought against Murdoch’s tabloids by Prince Harry and other prominent political figures in the U.K.
Folkenflik’s story is filled with names and details, but essentially Lewis is accused of faking a security threat “to justify the deletion of millions of emails dating from the start of 2008 through the end of 2010.” Here’s the heart of Folkenflik’s report:
In July 2011, when police first learned of the deleted emails, Lewis explained that Murdoch’s company was compelled to get rid of them because of a tip that he and a senior executive received nearly six months earlier: an “outside source” told them that former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was conspiring with a News UK employee and another person to steal the emails of the CEO. That unnamed person was said to be Tom Watson, then a leading member of parliament and critic of the Murdochs. The IT person was later alleged to have been a former News UK staffer.
Brown has denounced the claim as false and outrageous. He’s asked Scotland Yard for a criminal investigation of the episode involving Lewis. Watson, who is among scores of litigants suing News UK alleging illegal invasions of privacy, has denied it. In court, the lead trial attorney for Watson, Harry and the others called the story “a ruse.”
Writing in The Guardian, Caroline Davies goes into detail about minutes of a meeting between police officials and Lewis in July 2011. In the excerpt below, “Rebekah” is Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of Murdoch’s News International company, and “BCL” is the law firm that was representing Murdoch’s interests. Here’s what Lewis reportedly told detectives:
We got a warning from a source that a current member of staff had got access to Rebekah’s emails and had passed them to Tom Watson MP.
This came to Rebekah. I was asked to meet the source. I will consult with BCL as to whether I can tell you the identity of the source. The source repeated the threat. Then the source came back and said it was a former member of staff and the emails had definitely been passed and that it was controlled by Gordon Brown. This added to our anxieties. We took steps to try and be more specific around her emails.
Folkenflik and Davies report that Lewis is also accused of leaking an audio recording aimed at harming a critic of Murdoch’s proposed acquisition of the Sky broadcasting service. That acquisition was nixed after the phone-hacking schedule came to light.
Lewis has denied any wrongdoing, though he would not speak with Folkenflik.
The Post, along with The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, is one of our three great daily newspapers. We all have an interest in its surviving and thriving after several years of losing circulation and money. It’s been clear for some time that Lewis lacks the ethical compass needed to lead the Post.
Owner Jeff Bezos might have hoped that Lewis had survived the worst of it. But as the most recent developments show, this saga is not done playing out. It’s hard to see how it will end well for Lewis.
If there has been one consolation about Fox News’ ongoing subversion of our political discourse — and even of democracy itself — it has been the near-certainty that 93-year-old Rupert Murdoch does not actually have a pact with the Lord of the Underworld and will at some point depart this vale of tears. His rabidly right-wing son Lachlan Murdoch, who Rupe put in charge a few years ago, is outnumbered by three of his siblings, and they reportedly have more moderate views.
Now that is in danger. On Wednesday, The New York Times published a deep dive (free link) into legal steps Murdoch is taking that are aimed at ensuring Lachlan’s continued reign after Rupert himself has departed the scene. Reporters Jim Rutenberg and Jonathan Mahler write that the old man is seeking to rewrite the terms of a trust that specifies four of his many children will share equal control of his media empire:
The trust currently hands control of the family business to the four oldest children when Mr. Murdoch dies. But he is arguing in court that only by empowering Lachlan to run the company without interference from his more politically moderate siblings can he preserve its conservative editorial bent, and thus protect its commercial value for all his heirs.
The toxic effects of a ruling in Rupert’s favor can’t be exaggerated. We in the media like to focus on how Mark Zuckerberg has profited by allowing Facebook to be weaponized by shadowy, malignant forces and how Elon Musk has transformed the cesspool that was Twitter into a far worse place that indulges far-right extremists and conspiracy theorists like, well, himself.
But Fox News is without question the single most influential player on the right, flagrantly promoting lies of omission and commission, including the Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election was somehow stolen from Donald Trump. Fox had to pay a $787 million settlement to the Dominion voting machine company for deliberately lying that Dominion had switched votes from Trump to Joe Biden. But other than firing its biggest star, Tucker Carlson, for reasons that have never been fully explained, Fox has continued on its lying, hate-mongering way.
It’s disheartening to think that this might continue long after Rupert Murdoch’s departure.
I knew that the news staff at Boston 25 was getting squeezed, but I didn’t realize how deeply until I read Aidan Ryan’s report in The Boston Globe (I’m briefly quoted). Ryan writes:
… at least 13 staffers, including reporters, producers, salespeople, and a news director, who have left the station since the start of the year, according to interviews and workers’ LinkedIn profiles. Those exits at WFXT-TV (Channel 25) came on top of a steady trickle of departures stretching back years.
Eight current andformer employees who spoke to the Globe cited a confluence of factors driving people out, including issues with the quality of the station’s content, overwhelming workloads, pay cuts, layoffs, and uncertainty over whether its private equity owners will keep the lights on. Most spoke on condition of anonymity because of fears of retribution.
You will not be surprised to learn that many of these cuts coincide with the station’s 2019 acquisition by a private equity firm, Apollo Global Management. Private equity has destroyed much of the journalistic landscape, especially local newspapers. Unlike newspapers, though, local television news is still a fairly lucrative business, as well as where a large proportion of Americans get their news, according to the Pew Research Center. If you look at this chart, you’ll see that advertising revenues have held fairly steady, with increases in digital offsetting some of the decline in over-the-air ads.
Private equity firms and hedge funds, though, care about only one thing: how much profit they can wring out before walking away and letting the next owner clean up the mess. In fact, Ryan reports that Apollo tried to sell Boston 25 to another hedge fund in 2022, but that deal fell through.
Boston 25 — formally WFXT-TV (Channel 25) — has a long history tied up in the convoluted tale of Rupert Murdoch’s one-time ownership of the Boston Herald. As I wrote for GBH News back in 2014, Hearst’s Herald American was on the verge of collapse in 1982 when Murdoch swooped in, rescued the tabloid and infused it with new energy. Murdoch added it to his Boston holdings in the late 1980s, acquiring Channel 25 and seeking a waiver from the FCC so that he could continue to own both.
One day as that story was unfolding, then-Sen. Ted Kennedy was making a campaign swing through suburban Burlington. As a reporter for the local daily, I was following him from stop to stop. Kennedy had just snuck an amendment into a bill to deny Murdoch the regulatory waiver he was seeking that would allow him to own both the Herald and Channel 25 (the amendment prohibited a similar arrangement in New York). At every stop, Herald reporter Wayne Woodlief would ask him, “Senator, why are you trying to kill the Herald?”
The episode also led Kennedy’s most caustic critic at the Herald, columnist Howie Carr, to write a particularly memorable lead: “Was it something I said, Fat Boy?” Years later, Carr remained bitter, telling me, “Ted was trying to kill the paper in order to deliver the monopoly to his friends” at The Boston Globe.
As a result of Ted Kennedy’s amendment, Murdoch sold the Herald to his longtime protégé Pat Purcell, who operated it until 2018, when the paper declared bankruptcy and was delivered unto the hands of Alden. Murdoch, meanwhile, continued to operate Fox 25.
In those days Fox 25 was a well-staffed operation with a real Boston flavor, running a satellite bureau across the street from the Statehouse and featuring segments such as “The Heavy Hitters” — commentary by local media guys Peter Kadzis, Cosmo Macero and Doug Goudie. Among the station’s journalists were anchor Maria Stephanos and investigative reporter Mike Beaudet, both of whom are now at WCVB-TV (Channel 5). Mike is also a colleague at Northeastern University. And no, despite Murdoch’s involvement, the station bore no resemblance to the Fox News Channel.
The station was acquired by Cox Media Group in 2014, and the station slowly became less distinctive and more generic. “The Heavy Hitters” was eliminated, as was the Beacon Hill bureau. Cutting began and then accelerated after Cox sold itself to Apollo in 2019. That said, I still like what I see whenever I tune in the Boston 25 newscast, and I hope there’s a way forward. Anchor-reporter Kerry Kavanaugh has been generous in helping us with several mayoral debates in Medford.
Boston is fortunate to still have a number of local TV newscasts, and some of them are quite good. Still, the fading away of Boston 25 is sad as well as a loss for both the community and the people who work there — and for those who are no longer at the station.
Correction: Updated to note that Doug Goudie was one of “The Heavy Hitters.” I had the wrong Doug.
Once the mishegas over the shake-up at The Washington Post dies down, we are left with a question: Is publisher Will Lewis the right person to set a new direction for Jeff Bezos’ money-losing, reader-hemorrhaging newspaper? The New York Times has some disturbing news (free link) on that front.
According to Times reporters Benjamin Mullin and Katie Robertson, executive editor Sally Buzbee clashed with Lewis over a story about new developments in the British tabloid phone-hacking scandal. Lewis had some involvement as an executive in Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, and he reportedly told Buzbee that he didn’t want the story to run. Buzbee ran it anyway. The Times reports that the exchange was a factor, though not the decisive one, in Buzbee’s decision to leave the Post rather than accept a reduced role under Lewis’ plan to reorganize the staff into three newsrooms.
And lest we forget, Max Tani of Semafor reported a couple of weeks ago that the Post’s director of newsletter strategy, Elana Zak, sent out a missive instructing staff members “don’t distribute this story” in its newsletters. At the time, Zak’s email was attributed to some sort of internal mix-up, but the Times story casts that in a new light.
Buzbee, at least, stood up to Lewis and his ethically inappropriate demand. The problem is that his handpicked new editors, Matt Murray and Robert Winnett, may prove to be more malleable.
A flawed WSJ story
The Wall Street Journal has published a lengthy inquiry (free link) into President Biden’s mental acuity that has inflamed liberal critics. I read it with an open mind, but the story, by Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes, is based almost entirely on the observations of partisan Republicans like former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who’s quoted on the record, and current Speaker Mike Johnson, who isn’t.
The article, we’re told, is based on interviews with 45 people — but apparently six of those interviews were devoted to what Johnson had told people about a meeting he had with Biden in February. The story also contradicts earlier reporting about McCarthy, who has privately praised Biden’s mental sharpness even while mocking him in public.
One of the most fair-minded, nonpartisan media observers out there is Tom Jones of Poynter Online, so I was curious as to what he would have to say about it. Here’s his take:
Is it a fairly reported story on a pertinent topic? Or is it a pointed piece based pretty much on quotes and opinions from those who don’t want to see Biden elected to a second term?
I’d go with the latter — considering the money quote is from McCarthy, another key anecdote was reported by current Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, and other tales suggesting Biden’s decline are flimsy, at best. (For example, he sometimes talks quietly, he uses notes, and he relies on aides.)
That “money quote” from McCarthy, by the way, is this: “I used to meet with him [Biden] when he was vice president. I’d go to his house. He’s not the same person.”
Despite Murdoch’s ownership, the Journal’s news coverage is generally superb. It was the Journal’s reporting, after all, that led to Donald Trump’s 34 felony convictions last week. You have to wonder how a slanted piece like this passed muster.
Fairly or not, the Journal has raised the stakes for Biden’s June 27 debate with Trump, who, it should be said much more often than it is, is nearly as old as Biden and whose own problems with age-related mental slips tend to play out in public rather than (allegedly) behind closed doors.
Jay Fitzgerald returns
Veteran journalist Jay Fitzgerald, one of the original Boston bloggers, has revived Hub Blog (via Contrarian Boston). It looks like Jay is mainly writing an old-fashioned link blog with a few longer posts on the turmoil at The Washington Post.
I started writing an early version of this blog in 2002, shortly after Hub Blog launched. I was actually doing it by hand — I had no idea there was this thing called blogging software that automated the process of date-stamping, archiving older posts, adding permalinks and the like until Jay asked me, “What are you using.” He led me to Blogspot, though I’ve been using WordPress since 2005.
• Catch and kill. The National Enquirer’s practice of paying for stories and of deep-sixing articles in order to gain power and influence over someone — known as “catch and kill” — didn’t start with former Enquirer owner David Pecker. Nor was Donald Trump the first alleged beneficiary. I recommend “Scandalous,” a 2019 documentary about the Enquirer that is revealing and highly entertaining. Both Bob Hope and Bill Cosby were caught dead to rights in tawdry sexual affairs, and the Enquirer killed stories about those affairs in order to force them to cooperative in cheery feature stories. Pecker’s innovation was to politicize the practice.
• Facebook and news. Back when I was reporting my 2018 book, “The Return of the Moguls,” news organizations desperately sought to use Facebook as a way of distributing their journalism. News publishers liked to talk about “the barbell,” by which they would attract readers on Facebook (one end of the barbell) and try to get them to migrate to their own digital products (the other end of the barbell), where, it was hoped, they would become paying subscribers.
In the years since, Meta executives have decided news just isn’t worth it and have throttled journalism on Facebook and other products, including Threads and Instagram. How bad is it? The Washington Post has conducted a data analysis (free link) showing that “the 25 most-cited news organizations in the United States lost 75 percent of their total user engagement on Facebook” between the first quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2024. It’s further evidence that news organizations’ business models shouldn’t be dependent on giant corporations with their own agendas.
• The WSJ will miss Murdoch. Axel Springer, the right-wing German media conglomerate that took over Politico in 2021, has its sights set on The Wall Street Journal, according to Ben Smith of Semafor. Rupert Murdoch, through his control of the Fox News Channel and other outlets on three continents, may be the most malignant media magnate on the planet. But he’s been a surprisingly good steward of the Journal, which after 17 years of his ownership remains one of our great newspapers. At 93, he won’t be in charge too much longer. And here’s a quote from Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner that you might enjoy: “I’m all for climate change. We shouldn’t fight climate change but adjust to it.”
I’ll grant you that’s something you might see on the Journal’s editorial page even now. Murdoch, though, has been better about not letting that bleed into the news pages than Axel Springer might be.
The Washington Post has named a new publisher to replace Fred Ryan, who left earlier this year amid widening losses, falling circulation and a reported rift with executive editor Sally Buzbee. Ryan will be succeeded by Will Lewis, and there are some flashing lights we ought to pay attention to.
For one thing, Lewis was knighted by King Charles III on the recommendation of Boris Johnson. For another, he is a former top lieutenant to Rupert Murdoch, although he denies that he and Murdoch are close. Weirdly, a Post profile of Lewis says that “Lewis disagrees with media descriptions of him as a former ‘Murdoch lieutenant,’” but it’s a simple fact. It doesn’t mean that he still speaks to Murdoch or that he doesn’t have his own set of values.
Lewis is the founder, CEO and publisher of a project called The News Movement, which the Post describes as “a social-first media business providing nonpartisan news to Gen Z.” The homepage offers BuzzFeed-style clickbait, but Lewis also has a background in serious journalism.
In other words, there are warning signs, but Lewis may turn out to be an inspired choice. That said, Post owner Jeff Bezos’ hiring record is mixed. Ryan always struck me as not quite right for the job, something confirmed by former executive editor Marty Baron in his book “Collision of Power.” Among Ryan’s last acts was presiding over the death of the Post’s gaming vertical, one of the few features the paper offered that appealed to a younger readership.
Bezos’ pick for editorial page editor, David Shipley, has not improved the Post’s opinion section, which, with few exceptions, has been dismal for many years. The jury is still out on Buzbee. She was well-regarded in her previous job as executive editor of The Associated Press. Her performance at the Post strikes me as solid, but I’m not sure what her vision is. Perhaps her tense relationship with Ryan held her back.
Final fun fact: The New York Times beat the Post in breaking the news about Lewis’ hiring. Yes, I know it can be difficult to report on your own institution, but good grief.
