From "Frustrations Mount at Washington Post as Its Business Struggles/With digital subscriptions and digital advertising revenue stagnating, the company is on pace to lose money this year" (NYT).
It's not as though The Washington Post doesn't continue to write obsessively about Trump every day. Most-read article over there right now is "Rising GOP anger at Trump shows a deeper problem for the party." Second most: "Settling scores or telling truths? Trump-era memoirs reveal covid chaos." Fourth, also Trump-related: "Georgia judge to Republicans: You’re not getting out of testifying." Also on the front page "What about Clinton’s emails? How Trump’s document controversy differs."
It really is tiresome. Trump isn't doing much of anything new. It's his antagonists looking backward or ahead to the next election. Notice how all the titles in the previous paragraph are basically about how various people feel about Trump. Anger! Chaos! Fear! And God forbid we should want to look at something other than Trump — What about Clinton’s emails? — no way! You must look at Trump. It's always already determined that Trump is the top story. It's as if his much-vaunted narcissism had escaped from his head and taken up residence at the editorial desk.
By the way, why do you think they called their plan for the Hillary Clinton administration "Operation Skyfall"? The James Bond movie "Skyfall" came out in 2012. Was it just that they expected a fall in readership? But why would that be? We're they planning to divert attention away from her?
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46 comments:
were WAPO really making money? [how much was PPP loans that can be ? forgiven ?]
will WAPO strike back with NYT income analysis
‘At that time, senior editors considered a plan that would expand the newspaper’s coverage to temper a decline in readership during what they thought would be the presidential administration of Hillary Clinton...’
At least they got to publish a bunch of Pussy Hat patterns.
And another structural and systemic component of bias. News ABOUT 'News' is considered more interesting than news about business or diplomacy or crime ...
The New York Times doing a story about the Washington Post. NPR interviewing a journalist with an essay in The Atlantic. PBS hosting a panel of newspaper columnists.
"It really is tiresome."
Try loathsome.
When will the losses become tiresome? Maybe Jeff will eat them regardless. Useful protection money.
Trump’s role as Emmanuel Goldstein has never been more obvious.
Tough to actually get people to pay for a democrat mouthpiece.
Dave ⚡️
@Docsbelief
Weird. Propaganda does not sell as well as objective journalism. Hmmm Who knew. 😀
The Post’s efforts to diversify its journalism beyond political coverage extends back until at least the summer of 2016. At that time, senior editors considered a plan that would expand the newspaper’s coverage to temper a decline in readership during what they thought would be the presidential administration of Hillary Clinton....
Because the media was already preparing for ensuring there would no real coverage of the Hillary Hoaxers nor any problems during the Hillary Hoaxer administration. Period.
Basically what they did during The Lightbringer's "sort of a god" administration. Even today, after we know obambi spent 8 years fully weaponizing the federal government against its enemies and accelerating the corrupt money laundering schemes of the DC insiders, the lefties/GOPe-ers/dems (but I repeat myself) still claim, with a straight face, that the biggest scandal during the obambi admin was that obambi wore a beige suit once.
It's interesting that a big charge against Trump was his war on the press yet news orgs like Washington Post and CNN had big boosts to their business when he was in office and don't have now.
Of course, it's not just Trump being in office that's the difference, it's how they actually were aggressive in their journalism. Both would no doubt still be getting good income if they were just as aggressive against the current administration and all the related issues/scandals/concerns. Milquetoast reporting gets milquetoast incomes.
IF they saw their role as truly being a fourth branch of sorts offering checks and balances rather than a branch of Democratic propaganda and partisan framing, they'd also get a lot more respect. Even the people who like them don't respect them anymore.
Trump's narcissism is humor, a larger-than-life portrayal of himself. Rush did it too back when he was funny.
Skyfall was scraped and the ‘the sky is falling’ went into effect.
The readers want it. The problem is not enough readers. But if they blow them off, they lose everybody they have.
I don't get it.
Why don't they hire a bunch of kids to sit around reading Twitter? If somebody farts or otherwise says something that makes these mental midges even slightly uncomfortable, they can write 100 column inches on it and get that person #CancelledFromTwitter. Hashtag SUCCESS, bitches.
Compelling journalism, no? I mean, the Washington Post used to go after Presidents back when they weren't Democrats. It's kind of the same thing. It's like Twitter Watergate. Who's not paying for this?
Or wait ... here's another idea. Write some more stories about how Jeff Bezos shouldn't be taxed more and how unions really aren't as good as people say they are because remember Jimmy Hoffa? You wouldn't want to end up like Jimmy Hoffa now would you?
That will sell some newspapers.
Ladies and Gentlemen ... the Washington Post USED TO BE a newspaper. It is now the world's richest man's Internet Manifesto.
"in their journalism?"
You misspelled "making shit up".
Street corner whore upset no John will marry her, film at 11
Operation Skyfall, huh?
Just a reminder that at the end of the movie, the titular house is destroyed.
Maybe they should have thought about that a little harder.
Russian Collusion Hoaxes sell, Hiding Hunters Laptop doesn't.
Bezos can afford to lose money at the Post. The problem with the Post is Bezos doesn’t live in D. C. and he doesn’t care about what happens in D. C. And the people who work at the Post don’t either. Don’t look in the Post if you want to know why there were a bunch of police cars at the corner store.
So the WaPoos "money maker" has left town. Sort of like when Pimp Iceberg Slim has a woman leave his string of hookers. Not that The Don was a hooker--but the WaPoo people were pimping his story for every bit of ink they could get. And now he's in the rearview mirror and they've got a terrific case of the sads. Well tough noogies to them. Go find somebody else to call "literally Hitler".
And take a look at the maroon in the White House who is calling people he doesn't like "semi Fascists". Worse yet he's got a Press Secretary who takes the "semi" off the label and says MAGA Republicans are the "definition of fascists". Which is sort of funny because the term "MAGA Republicans" was invented by and is the hobgoblin of Joe Biden's very small mind.
If old Slow Joe were in command of the ship (pro tip, he's not even in command of his porridge bowl) KJP would be out on her ear--like yesterday.
What would happen to Christianity if the Devil died? Come to think of it, there are a lot of empty pews around here.
Bezos uses the Washington Post as a cost center for influence, not a profit source. He has Web Services for that. Its benefits must outweigh the costs and provide leverage for the interests of our betters worldwide, most of all Bezos.
Like ours, the WaPo's future is subject to Stein's Law. If they need Trump to survive, they won't make it, will they? The man is older than I am and he's subject to Stein's Law as well.
They have to see this, right? *Orange Man looms* Eeeeeek! Run away!
The WaPo will continue on its Long March until Bezos gets tired of his vanity project. The same can be said of Steve Job's widow vanity project. The same can be said for Carlos Slim and the NYT. Bezos has a valid business reason to prop the WaPo up, keeping the government at bay and probing his shares of Amazon up. Jobs widow can afford virtue signaling without even noticing it and Carlos Slim can prop the NYT up indefinitely without feeling it as long as it serves his purposes.
Couldn't've happened to a fouler group of 'news' outlets.
Got their audience strung out on Trump crack - now what?
Oh, yeah - Climate.
Sorry. Won't pay like O-man bad.
Democracy Dies in Too Bad, So Sad…
What are you people care. You have pajamas media that rules the interwebs along with truth social. Not only that you dominate print media with the Washington examiner everything fit to print according to Reverend Sung Mung Moons cult and totally own the libs on cable with Ruprick Murdick's Faux News.
What does this say about the "educated strata". Newspapers already lost most of the content that the non-college credentialed "read". Are the educated readers becoming bored, or are they tired of been fooled?
“Why you fool, it’s the educated reader who CAN be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.”
— C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength
"It really is tiresome."
And yet...
NYeT, never, WaPoo is in demand when the climate changes to desperation.
Maybe Jeff will eat them regardless. Useful protection money.
Antivaxxxer? A well crafted handmade tale brayed is an inoculation with boosters, albeit with a forward-looking debt and viability profile.
I wonder about this. Hasn't this blog featured WaPo Living or Style features for years? Does anybody really want more of them?
Wouldn't it be fun if Trump could trademark-copyright his public personality and start charging royalties each time the legacy mainstream press uses it. It will nicely accelerate what is going to happen anyway.
This was utterly predictable, which I know because I actually predicted it back when people were talking about the Washington Post's success during the Trump Administration.
Decades ago, it was observed that loudly and openly partisan media would have its audience grow when an opposition president was in power, and decline when its side held the presidency. Whether high-end policy magazines like National Review or The New Republic, or popular media like the Rush Limbaugh Show.
What this means is that when the Post cast aside its sheer negligee of objectivity in favor of naked partisanship, it had exactly the results anyone who was paying any attention would have predicted.
Dumb fucks need to start billing the DNC.
Dumb fucks need to start billing the DNC.
Dumb fucks need to start billing the DNC.
mezzrow: "Bezos uses the Washington Post as a cost center for influence, not a profit source."
Bezos can run the WaPo out of petty cash. It's barely a blip on the spreadsheet.
And lets face it, it's only going to get worse for the "can't code" crowd of "journalism" school "graduates".
You can hire "journalists" (LOL) for next to nothing as they are some of the dumbest people on the planet. The dumb journalists only have to be a little smarter than the The Hopeless gadfly's of the world, and how hard is that?
The few journalists who matter will be headed to substack and similar places where they can charge for a la carte consumers which is the wave of the future.
Maddow, Stelter, Acosta and the rest made big hay with PDT. They had nothing else. They are disappearing faster than dinosaurs!
Sad!
I think I hinted at this in my comment under the post on the 37 year old not having sex.
They cannot cover politics accurately. They cannot cover social, cultural, and scientific news accurately. Economics? Depends on what they allow to be printed. Honestly, is there a reason to read WaPo? The opinion page once mattered. Now it matters only to those interested in such things as a 37 year old not having sex. In other words- a small, small group with an outsized influence on what gets covered.
Unfortunately for them, their actual numbers aren't much. And in the end, they cannot cover the costs. But then, these are the same people who believe non-profits are the more honorable way to go. I hope it all works out well for them. Bless their hearts.
"Dumb fucks need to start billing the DNC."
There's a lot of truth in that. They based their business model on pandering to the Democrat hysterical. When the Democrat hysterical feel less of a need to be...hysterical, business suffers.
A truly brilliant news organization would adjust their biases every time power changes hands. Profits without interruption. A news room of cynical Libertarians could probably pull it off.
Wapoo is the house organ for the Democrat party.
DEMOCRACY DIES IN DARKNESS!
T_ _l_ _ L_ _ _ _z
All print newspapers (but the NYPost and WSJ editorial pages) are left wing. Grab onto that if you wish. But print “journalism” is no longer journalism. It’s propaganda. Yes, yes, I know that papers often had a political slant that they were known for, but that was back before radio and television. If you were conservative, you bought this paper. Liberal, bought that paper. Two or more newspaper towns had that luxury since they could all be profitable. Now since the winnowing out began with the collapse of classified advertising and the internet killed their profit center, they are flailing about trying to latch on to something to keep them alive.
All objective journalists left a while ago for online. NYT and WP will likely survive because of sugar daddies. But their audiences and circulation are going to be difficult to increase. And as the older cohort accustomed to a newspaper die off and the younger folk who didn’t have to go out every morning to pick up the delivered paper from the driveway so were never accustomed to a morning paper come of age, dead audience, crippled business.
Shoot, I am 57, grew up with two papers every morning with my parents. Now, it is all online. And i am not paying to get past a propaganda firewall. Just too many other sources of reliable information.
Of course with an untrained chimpanzee in the White House and a government stuffed with goons, cranks, and thugs, the Washington Post has nothing to report.
They might try telling the truth. They might try ripping into the nonsense that spews from Biden Central. They might try to take down the current president. They have tried that before.
Not a flattering picture is it?
Journalism is going the way of the Norwegian Blue Parrot. Maybe not quite their, yet, but on the shelf.
Primary case: How the media handles partisan stories: It either 1) Repeats it as fact or 2) Fact checks the beejeebers of it for 6 9's of accuracy, depending on the "journalists'" kink. There is little curiosity about the facts, or really, the Truth and there are a lot of facts the obscure Truth.
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