Good day all. Well, it looks like a few hundred now former employees of the Washington Compost have discovered what Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said back in the 80’s. The problem with socialism is that eventually, you run out of other people’s money. The Washington Compost has just laid off a large number of staffers.
The Washington Compost, once known as the Washington Post, has been losing money for decades. For some unknown reason, Amazon’s Jeff Bezo bought the paper and pumped in a large infusion of cash. However, the Compost, as it’s now known, has never turned a profit or even come close to breaking even. Now Bezos has decided it’s time to overhaul that rag. This meant closing departments and massive job cuts. Here are the details from CNN:
The Washington Post laid off about one in three employees across the company Wednesday morning, dealing another big blow to a newsroom that has reached a breaking point.
Oh well, it sucks to be them.
Bezos has been pushing the Post’s management team to return the publication to profitability, but many journalists at the paper have criticized his approach and questioned his motives.
“Bezos is not trying to save The Washington Post. He’s trying to survive Donald Trump,” former Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler said in a column earlier this week.
I recall when Kessler left the Compost. I don’t recall if he was pushed out or left on his own. I do know that his “Fact checks” were about as accurate as the forecasts of a 19th century weatherman.
Post employees had been bracing for widespread layoffs for several weeks. On Wednesday morning, staffers were told to “stay home today” while notices were sent about who had been laid off.
This is how businesses conduct layoffs these days. I don’t approve of it. It used to be that you were told in the place of employment and allowed to collect your possessions and say goodbye. Now? They lock you out and call you to pick up your stuff that someone else has boxed up.
The impacts include dramatically shrinking the Metro desk, shutting down almost the entire Sports section, closing the Books section, and cancelling the daily “Post Reports” podcast, sources at the newspaper said.
I’ve never heard of that podcast, which I suspect was part of the problem. It wasn’t generating any revenue and no one was actually watching it.
The Post’s international coverage is also being markedly reduced, though some bureaus outside the US will maintain a “strategic overseas presence,” Murray said.
I suspect that in the next year or so, those bureaus will also be closed down unless they start bringing in good stories and making money.
At the Post lately, “it’s just been one funeral after the other,” contributor Sally Quinn, wife of the late Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, told CNN’s Pamela Brown Wednesday morning.
Quinn said of Bezos, “It just seems heartbreaking that he doesn’t feel the paper is important enough to bankroll.”
“They say” the cuts are for the good of the paper long-term, she added, but “if you don’t have the great reporters, you don’t have any good content, who’s going to want to buy it?”
Well that’s part of the problem now. The Compost doesn’t have great content. By and large, what they’ve been calling News has generally been Democrat propaganda. The Compost has also lost or settled a number of lawsuits because their “Reporting” was absolute garbage and in a few cases, outright fabrications.
Things started really going bad with the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. It wasn’t so much the events, they did need to be covered, it was how things were presented. With Watergate, it was all about “Getting” Richard Nixon. (He certainly didn’t help himself) It also isn’t helping matters that the current staffers are even more blatant about their political beliefs. They have given up any pretense of being neutral observers and reporters.
Employees described the severe cuts in social media posts Wednesday morning. “I’m out, along with just a ton of the best in the biz. Horrible,” the Post’s Amazon beat reporter Caroline O’Donovan wrote on X.
I think a number of people would debate you regarding the “Best in the biz” Ms. O’Donovan.
“I’m among the hundreds of people laid off by The Post,” race and ethnicity reporter Emmanuel Felton wrote. “This comes six months after hearing in a national meeting that race coverage drives subscriptions. This wasn’t a financial decision, it was an ideological one.”
Race and ethnicity reporter? Why did that position exist in the first place? In any case, all those being let go are blaming this on politics and that Bezos is trying to curry favor with the Trump Administration. While Bezos and Amazon, along with a few other Bezos holding do have business dealing with the Government, it wasn’t politics that caused the cutbacks. It was financial. There is only so much money that an owner is willing to lose before he decides it’s time to cut his losses.
The problem for Bezos is that it may be to late to save the Washington Post. The few changes Bezos made regarding their opinion page and his decision to endorse no one for president in 2024 caused the staffers to explode. It also caused all the special snowflakes Libtards and Democrats who liked having a propaganda sheet that reinforced their delusions cancel their subscription in a snit. (Leftists will not tolerate any opinion they don’t agree with) I suspect that the days are numbered for the Washington Post.
Thatisall
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