Wash Post—new editor from WSJ!?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Clash Over Phone Hacking Article Preceded Exit of Washington Post Editor
Will Lewis, the chief executive of The Washington Post, objected to coverage of a legal development involving him in a phone hacking case.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/05/business/media/washington-post-buzbee-lewis.html

Hats off to Buzbee. Management does not tell the newsroom to quash stories.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Clash Over Phone Hacking Article Preceded Exit of Washington Post Editor
Will Lewis, the chief executive of The Washington Post, objected to coverage of a legal development involving him in a phone hacking case.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/05/business/media/washington-post-buzbee-lewis.html

Hats off to Buzbee. Management does not tell the newsroom to quash stories.

This feels like Buzbee trying to salvage some job prospects elsewhere. It doesn't negate the fact that she lost HALF of the WaPo's readership.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Clash Over Phone Hacking Article Preceded Exit of Washington Post Editor
Will Lewis, the chief executive of The Washington Post, objected to coverage of a legal development involving him in a phone hacking case.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/05/business/media/washington-post-buzbee-lewis.html

Hats off to Buzbee. Management does not tell the newsroom to quash stories.

This feels like Buzbee trying to salvage some job prospects elsewhere. It doesn't negate the fact that she lost HALF of the WaPo's readership.

She doesn’t need to “salvage” her job prospects. She wasn’t particularly beloved at the Post, but she was the top editor there and at the AP, and both organizations won a bunch of awards for their work under her tenure.

The drop in readership is obviously not only her fault, and no one who’s in a position to hire her would think it was.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Post Executive: We lose 77 million dollars a year. Our numbers have been cut in half. Former customers want us to eat shit and are laughing at our plight.

Post Journalists: Read the room. A diverse hire should be telling us this.

Did you know it’s possible to focus on more than one problem at a time? The Post needs to address its lack of any coherent business plan, and to come up with a plan to attract more readers. It also needs to find ways to diversify its newsroom leadership, in no small part because that will make its journalism better and more likely to attract readers who aren’t currently reading it. And at any rate, even if you only hire the white candidate, it’s not a terrible idea to at least SPEAK TO a few candidates with different backgrounds. Most businesses have decided diversity is an important goal for bottom-line reasons. Apparently not the Post?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Post Executive: We lose 77 million dollars a year. Our numbers have been cut in half. Former customers want us to eat shit and are laughing at our plight.

Post Journalists: Read the room. A diverse hire should be telling us this.

This sums up just how out-of-touch and tone-deaf the WaPo has become.

It is a similar phenomenon to what happened to NPR.

Do they not understand they have no monopoly on opinion?

[Anonymous]

If the WaPo employees were organize a support group, I imagine it would look just like this:

Sadly though, the Post does not appear to understand what a parody it has become.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Hats off to Buzbee. Management does not tell the newsroom to quash stories.

Completely agree. Lewis is a scumbag. These are dark days ahead for the Post.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

This feels like Buzbee trying to salvage some job prospects elsewhere. It doesn't negate the fact that she lost HALF of the WaPo's readership.

Yeah, let's defend the a55wipe implicated in the phone hacking scandal. That's the guy we need to lead the revival of a major US news outlet!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There were days I couldn’t tell if I was reading the Post or The Onion. By fall of 2020 they ran out of actual racists to write about so they had to get creative. Parks were now racist, sidewalks were racist, fishing was racist. We cancelled. It’s just all too much.

This. The is-it-the-Post-or-The-Onion confusion, plus Karen Attiah, made my family cancel our subscription, too.

If the new editorial voice can bring back journalism instead of the activism that replaced it in recent years, I might subscribe again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Clash Over Phone Hacking Article Preceded Exit of Washington Post Editor
Will Lewis, the chief executive of The Washington Post, objected to coverage of a legal development involving him in a phone hacking case.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/05/business/media/washington-post-buzbee-lewis.html

Hats off to Buzbee. Management does not tell the newsroom to quash stories.

Are you seriously going to pretend that the Alito flag story didn’t happen?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Clash Over Phone Hacking Article Preceded Exit of Washington Post Editor
Will Lewis, the chief executive of The Washington Post, objected to coverage of a legal development involving him in a phone hacking case.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/05/business/media/washington-post-buzbee-lewis.html

Hats off to Buzbee. Management does not tell the newsroom to quash stories.

This feels like Buzbee trying to salvage some job prospects elsewhere. It doesn't negate the fact that she lost HALF of the WaPo's readership.

She doesn’t need to “salvage” her job prospects. She wasn’t particularly beloved at the Post, but she was the top editor there and at the AP, and both organizations won a bunch of awards for their work under her tenure.

The drop in readership is obviously not only her fault, and no one who’s in a position to hire her would think it was.

If you think winning professional awards is more important than losing audience, you have the wrong priorities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Post Executive: We lose 77 million dollars a year. Our numbers have been cut in half. Former customers want us to eat shit and are laughing at our plight.

Post Journalists: Read the room. A diverse hire should be telling us this.

This sums up just how out-of-touch and tone-deaf the WaPo has become.

It is a similar phenomenon to what happened to NPR.

Do they not understand they have no monopoly on opinion?

What’s ironic is that it was a Black woman that had to clean up the mess at the local WAMU affiliate and they complained all the same and even tried to leak damaging stories about her to ruin her reputation. The local journalists were less respectful of her than how they are now with the white male Post management team.

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

The Post became an organ for "the resistance" in 2016. They made it their motto. At the time, many readers, myself included, cheered this move and happily subscribed. However, it quickly became clear that this didn't mean great truth-telling journalism--it meant propaganda. "Good" stories only, please, inconvenient truths not allowed. We saw this at the Times, too--the Donald McNeil firing, running Barry Weiss out of the paper with a Slack revolt, and the "literal violence" of the Tom Cotton OpEd. Within a couple years, readers abandoned ship when it became clear that News news had become OpEd and OpEd a reprint service for the DNC. A specific demographic (20-something LAC grads, grievance Olympics gold medalists) had taken over the newsroom, and management never had a chance. Read Michael Moynihan's recent piece on Vice's self immolation for a case study. The reason a WSJ exec is taking over now is that that paper never committed ritual suicide, and Bezos needs an adult to keep the place from shuttering. The WSJ has quietly become the only real *News*paper left... although the NYT's quiet course correction back to sanity is promising. I hope WaPo follows suit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The Post became an organ for "the resistance" in 2016. They made it their motto. At the time, many readers, myself included, cheered this move and happily subscribed. However, it quickly became clear that this didn't mean great truth-telling journalism--it meant propaganda. "Good" stories only, please, inconvenient truths not allowed. We saw this at the Times, too--the Donald McNeil firing, running Barry Weiss out of the paper with a Slack revolt, and the "literal violence" of the Tom Cotton OpEd. Within a couple years, readers abandoned ship when it became clear that News news had become OpEd and OpEd a reprint service for the DNC. A specific demographic (20-something LAC grads, grievance Olympics gold medalists) had taken over the newsroom, and management never had a chance. Read Michael Moynihan's recent piece on Vice's self immolation for a case study. The reason a WSJ exec is taking over now is that that paper never committed ritual suicide, and Bezos needs an adult to keep the place from shuttering. The WSJ has quietly become the only real *News*paper left... although the NYT's quiet course correction back to sanity is promising. I hope WaPo follows suit.

You seem to mistake the NYT editorial page with the news department. The direction of the editorial page under James Bennet was an absolute disaster. He favored being provocative above all. Bari Weiss deserved to lose her job. He also hired Elizabeth Bruenig who also deserved to lose her job.