She’s writing at a new Substack called The Contrarian:
Corporate and billionaire owners of major media outlets have betrayed their audiences’ loyalty and sabotaged journalism’s sacred mission — defending, protecting and advancing democracy. The Washington Post’s billionaire owner and enlisted management are among the offenders. They have undercut the values central to The Post’s mission and that of all journalism: integrity, courage, and independence. I cannot justify remaining at The Post. Jeff Bezos and his fellow billionaires accommodate and enable the most acute threat to American democracy—Donald Trump—at a time when a vibrant free press is more essential than ever to our democracy’s survival and capacity to thrive.
I therefore have resigned from The Post, effective today. In doing so, I join a throng of veteran journalists so distressed over The Post’s management they felt compelled to resign.
[…]Which is why I am so thrilled to simultaneously announce this new outlet, The Contrarian: Not Owned by Anybody. The Contrarian will offer daily columns, weekly features, podcasts and social media from me and fellow pro-democracy contrarians, many of whom have decamped from corporate media, others who were never a part of it. I am launching this endeavor with my cofounder, Norm Eisen. Founding contributors will include Joyce Vance, Andy Borowitz, Laurence Tribe, Katie Phang, George Conway, Olivia Julianna, Harry Litman (who recently resigned from the LA Times for reasons similar to mine for leaving the Post), and Asha Rangappa, among many other brilliant voices. We will provide fearless and distinctive reported opinion and cultural commentary without phony balance, euphemisms or gamified political punditry.
The last part of her post has a big shoutout to Fred Hiatt, who ran one of the worst Opinion sections of the War on Terror era.
Rubin is a good example of someone who’s right on Trump, but has been wrong on a lot of things in the past. That includes some embarrassing encomiums to Mitt Romney. I won’t be subscribing to her Substack. If she says something of interest, I’m sure it will bubble up on Bluesky or on the blog of someone who has been more consistently right than her.
Baud
Everyone has been wrong about something in the past. But I don’t subscribe to any substacks and don’t intend to start now.
I do click on Krugman’s now and then however.
TBone
I’m interested in what this collaboration has to say, thanks for the alert.
This is what I was trying to get at yesterday by posting from freepress.net
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Well, I’m sure poor Jenn couldn’t help herself on that one. Once a Beltway Media Corpse Pundit, Always One.
Nobody on that roster screams “I NEED TO SUBSCRIBE!”
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Baud:
Yep, they have, but here’s the difference between an average person who’s wrong and Jen Rubin.
I thought that would be obvious, but I guess not.
MattF
I wonder if Ms. Petri will be next to leave.
Baud
@Baud:
I didn’t intend to sound overly negative. Anyone who wants to speak out against Trump and the Republicans has my moral support.
Baud
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
No sweat. I’m not demanding that anyone follow her.
TBone
Bubble popping requires many straightpins.
Jackie
@MattF:
Maybe when her paid by WaPo maternity leave is up…
evodevo
Just visited the site and signed up. Happy to support sane media people in these dark times, but I can’t afford everyone I would like – SS won’t stretch that far LOL
TBone
@TBone: signup email expands the list of contributors (unsubscribe is easy if they prove to be not worthy)
rusty
Just one more reason I was right to cancel my WP subscription. It runs out in March and there have been a few moments I’ve thought about reconsidering my decision, but no. Ms. Rubin has been a good read, and she has definitely traveled from her conservative roots. I’m less interested in demonstrations of rending of clothes and groveling apologies for past positions than in good commentary now. Her current output is clearly different from her past, so that’s good enough for me. That said, I don’t see myself paying for her Substack. I do think Krugman’s are worth the read, I’ve signed up for his emails and they are very good (and they come with a fun musical link at the end of each one). I’m taking what I spent on the WP and for the NYT crossword access and sending that to the small, local New Hampshire news organization that does an excellent job covering NH politics.
Ohio Mom
The Achilles heel here is, it’s commentary.
The internet is awash in commentary. Lots of it is well-written and witty and some even insightful. It has its uses, interpreting events and connecting dots for us everyday Joe Blows.
What we really need though is actual reporters doing actual reporting. The people who will, for one instance, track the kickbacks the Doge effort was created for.
In the end, commentary has to be based on the type of facts and data reporters dig up. The peril we are facing is that the big newspapers aren’t interested in that kind of reporting anymore, not that some pundits are angry.
narya
@Baud: I’ve been liking it more than I expected; I at least skim it every day. It is somewhat-to-very wonky, so I’m learning a lot. And I will always give him credit because he predicted the 2008 mess way before anyone else
ETA: Today’s is particularly educational, about federal dollars to/from the various states.
eclare
What happened to the cartoonist who left the WaPo? Did she go off on her own?
I don’t subscribe to any Substacks, but I’m not opposed to it. I guess I’ll see what the content is. And if I could hold my nose and vote for Democrats who voted for the Iraq War, I can give Jen et al a look. This is all hands on deck time, IMO. YMMV.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Yeah, there’s a huge difference between “I get to read something from that list of folks every so often because I subscribe to the Post” and “I’ll go out and subscribe just to see what she and a dozen other DC insiders have to say.”
That’s the nut of the problem with having a jillion substacks, as I wrote about yesterday. Taken individually, there are very few that are worth the $5/month or whatever. And I don’t know how that group of writers, most of whom were making solid salaries at big media outlets, are going to net anything like their last paycheck from this venture. And if they do the paywall thing, then their stuff won’t be as widely shared as it was when they wrote for a newspaper.
RevRick
@Baud: The sacred mission of The Press is to speak the unvarnished truth. The First Amendment protects alternate locuses of power and truth: the church, the press, and the people assembled/petitioning. Ultimately, this reminds us that the sovereign is never absolutely sovereign.
The press is to speak the truth about those in power and about those who would be in power.
eclare
@Jackie:
That would be delicious if she resigned immediately on her first day back…
Scout211
Today’s Krugman Substack. In Praise of California.
A very good read.
Ending with:
Baud
@Ohio Mom:
Yes, this wouldn’t replace news reporting. But that’s not what Rubin did.
Ohio Mom
@@mistermix.bsky.social: Ohio Dad is a big Jen Rubin fan. My response to him is pretty much yours. Hasn’t budged him but like most wives, I have a list to budge hubby on and Jen Rubin fandom isn’t anywhere near the top ten.
Old School
I’m probably going to just stick with Balloon-Juice.
TBone
I chose the free subscription. The response email includes:
Baud
The bigger thing to me is not whether this new endeavor is worth a subscription but that mainstream media is losing people like Rubin.
frosty
Rubin was the only reason I was reading the Post and we cancelled it when Bezos grovelled. I signed up for her (their?) free emails. I also get them from Timothy Snyder, Paul Krugman, and James Fallows. Fallows is the only one with a marketing hook – he holds back the last cliff-hanger part of his emails for paid subscribers. I feel bad being a free-loader so I’ll have to check the budget now that WaPo is gone.
We subscribe to the local paper and the Baltimore Banner, which is two subscriptions for us at $19.99 a month. Pricy. But independent and non-profit.
eclare
I just signed up for the free subscription plan. I’ll see how that goes before I sign up for a monthly fee plan.
TBone
@Baud: the “mainstream” part may be going bye bye.
eclare
@TBone:
Huh. Interesting that it’s a .org.
eclare
@frosty:
Yeah, my local paper in Memphis is $19.99 per month, but if we don’t have a local paper, who would cover local politics?
Kay
I like Jen Rubin though – her happy warrior persona is welcome. We need more of those. She’s the only Never Trumper I trust.
Gin & Tonic
@RevRick:
No, the mission of The Press is to print what the owners of the press want printed. “Objective” reporting in the US was a relatively brief historical anomaly. History has more Hearsts than Bradlees.
Baud
@Kay:
IIRC, she actually left the Republican Party.
Gin & Tonic
@eclare: These days the TLD is effectively meaningless.
TBone
@eclare:
wix.com/blog/org-vs-com-vs-net-domain-extensions
Betty Cracker
@Ohio Mom: Bingo. ProPublica does great investigative work, but I think they’re dependent on rich people’s largesse too. I don’t know how to get around the funding issue since most readers don’t seem to value the type of journalism that is an essential pillar of democracy, and someone has to pay for it.
hells littlest angel
Hear, hear! And I don’t care what grievous sins they may have committed in the past.
Kathleen
@rusty: Everything you said about Jen Rubin. My subscription is also up in March and I had a feeling she would be gone by then and Petri will be next. I’ve cancelled most of my various subscriptions. I’m keeping Democracy Docket, Public Notice, Greg Olear (for now), Dame, Heather Cox Richardson and I just started a monthly donation to Ohio Capital Journal for its outstanding reporting. I don’t need to read duplicate stories about Trump’s latest outrage and how crappy Democrats are in opposition. I prefer either hard reporting or value added analysis based on facts.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@rusty:
A thousand times this. I just finished one of my typical Totebagger Radio screeds in an almost-dead-thread suggesting exactly that: there are a lot of independent community radio stations readily available on the web that carry news from Pacifica and other non-centrist sources, and any of them would gladly accept your ears and your donations. KGNU up the road in Boulder is one so like yours in NH, they deserve (and need) the money far more than a billionaire-owned media outlet like my hometown newspaper.
Kathleen
@Ohio Mom: Which is why I like Ohio Capital Journal. There is no paywall.
catclub
That is an impressive list, plus no sign of Fred Hiatt.
Omnes Omnibus
@hells littlest angel: Those sins show that their judgment may be a more than a bit suspect. I am happy they are now on our side, but I am going to keep an eye on them for a while.
JML
I always hoped that having a Jen Rubin over at the Post would help ease more of the people who have been voting GOP by rote out of their habit. She was wrong about a lot of stuff especially in the past, but she seemed to have evolved.
Guess I don’t want to see her replaced by the likely cesspool of right-wing idiots clamoring for the platform.
kindness
It took me a long time to start liking Jen Rubin. She’s one of the handful of Republican (she’s gotta be considering her past views) media folk who has been honest about Trump and the Republican party. I obviously am going to have to bump my subscriptions outside the MSM.
Starfish (she/her)
@Betty Cracker: A lot of small liberal endeavors have been dependent on rich people largesse.
TBone
@catclub: see #11 for expanded list of contributors
catclub
So give them some less than rich people’s money to depend on. I did.
catclub
@Starfish (she/her): Carnegie libraries.
RevRick
@Gin & Tonic: I know. The original press in the US was nakedly partisan. But the intent still resides in the Amendment. Like a lot of the reality of our history is in tension, even contradiction, of our ideals. Starting with slavery.
Kay
@kindness:
I think she matters in the general discourse, which is going to become a flood of lies and Trump-fluffing. We’ll be lucky if we have dissenters in media in double digits.
TBone
semafor.com/article/01/12/2025/ashlee-vance-launches-media-startup-core-memory
Betty Cracker
@catclub: Good for you, but the point is, the small dollar donor subscription model doesn’t seem to be a sustainable way to fund investigative journalism long term. I don’t have any (realistic) answers. Journalists with integrity (i.e., not the gossipy, brand-building monetization mavens) have been trying to crack this nut for decades, to no avail.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@catclub:
Somebody here in the last several days had a great observation along those lines.
The millionaire plutocrats of America’s First Golden Age eventually had a pretty substantial philanthropic element creep into their thinking, thus things like a Carnegie Library.
Whereas now? The billionaire plutocrats of America’s Second Gilded Age plow their money into academic institutions and think tanks designed to provide intellectual cover for the dismantling of anything that gets in the way of accumulating more capital.
The closest we’ve seen to them giving away money per the First Gilded Age are their ex-wives doing it with their divorce settlements, ie., Mackenzie Scott (Bezos’s ex-wife) had given away over $17b since 2020.
Bill and Melinda Gates are the other notable exceptions ($36b as of 2018). The rest? Theil’s donation list is telling, the Kochs, same way and so on.
TBone
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: there used to be a thing called noblesse oblige, and also they provided culture for public consumption, but now they’re all just lampreys.
Kay
thehill.com/homenews/house/5082318-pramila-jayapal-laken-riley-act/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medi…
I was waiting for someone to say this because it seems obviously true. I’m glad there’s some opposition of some kind, anyway.
trollhattan
@Baud: I subscribe to Patti Smith. Because Patti Smith.
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
@TBone:
I think elites today are more cognizant that public good produces a more liberal population.
TBone
@Baud: 🎯 they think we can all be replaced by AI
semafor.com/article/01/13/2025/us-announces-new-controls-on-artificial-intelligence
trollhattan
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
That series of Thiel Libraries are actually roach motels, only for humans. No books.
Baud
@TBone:
In fairness, I probably could be. But I’m an outlier.
RaflW
Discouragingly, Philip Bump has accepted an op-ed job at WaPo, moving from news-analysis where he was good (until I stopped reading/subscribing, he was a go-to of mine). He defended the rank and file staff at the Post and huffed hopium that Bezos’s influence isn’t a problem he’s had.
Good luck. I won’t be reading, but will still follow him on Bsky to see how all that plays out.
lowtechcyclist
@Ohio Mom:
THIS.
The problem isn’t a shortage of opinions, it’s when news platforms with great reach mislead, whether through bad or bogus reporting, or through misleading or dishonest commentary. Forming a new opinionating platform really won’t combat that.
This is why I support outfits like TPM, ProPublica, Mother Jones, Bolts, and others that do actual reporting.
TBone
@Baud: there is nothing artificial about your intelligence!
trollhattan
@kindness:
Exception to the rule in my estimation. Reasons aplenty to hold her conversion in suspicion but she’s been consistent and I see zero chance of her reverting to prior form.
IDK if I can name another whom I genuinely trust. Bill Kristol? Frenemy, on a good day even while being legit never-Trumper.
grubert
@Ohio Mom: stone-cold truth, that.
The hard work of journalism is what takes money, it’s not easy.
Opinions are a dime a dozen, we’re drowning in opinions.
satby
@Baud: people also forget mainstream Protestant denominations were more influential; as were social norms that encouraged the wealthy to “do good” in such a way that building libraries and hospitals was a bit of a rich guy competition back then. Now they compete with rocket ships to nowhere.
TBone
We need real journalism as well as access to the insights and wisdom gained by historians, educators, and other sane contributors to the narrative.
Like Timothy Snyder, for one example.
Gin & Tonic
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I’ve mentioned him before, but the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation has donated several billion to charitable causes, he just doesn’t blow his own horn as much.
Betsy
I used to despise her columns but it’s been gratifying to see her turn around on so many cherished fallacies and falsities of the Right Wing.
I cancelled my subscription to the WaPo last week. Hated to do it for the sake of Alexandra Petri, Judith Martin (Miss Manners), and Carolyn Hax. But there’s no sense wishing things were different or hanging on to something that is already gone.
Remember when “we” all thought Bezos’ acquisition might be reason to look for something good to come?
I guess I’m using “we all” in a very loose sense …
MazeDancer
Carol Leonnig leaving would be a BFD. The Post is still full of opinions.
As I unsubscribed from WaPo when Bezos blocked the Harris endorsement, can’t do it again.
Can’t see anyone in that line-up that would make me pay, now. Maybe I’ll change my mind.
But I have too much stuff to watch/listen to now.
Have to say I am enjoying The Weekend on MSNBC. Hope Michael Steele’s epic takedown of Joe Scarborough garnered the show some new viewers.
RaflW
@@mistermix.bsky.social: “she never went back and did some soul-searching and re-evaluation of her past”
Just my own supposition, but I get a strong sense from Rubin that she doesn’t think she was generally wrong to have supported Republicans in the past. She’s bought (or conveniently uses) the notion that the party moved away from her.
It has moved further right in it’s public stances and utterances, but GWB + Cheney were not substantially different in terms of homophobia, corporate largess & tax cuts, imperialism (is threatening to ‘buy’ Greenland that different than invading Iraq? Both are hostile takeovers of resource-rich places Republicans think America is entitled to just have).
That GWB had a more diverse cabinet and spoke Spanish were some pretty window dressing that seemed to satisfy people like Rubin. But not me.
Steve LaBonne
@lowtechcyclist: We all know what opinions are often compared to. The oped page is the worst invention in the history of journalism.
Steve LaBonne
@TBone: But I class those latter things as informed analysis, not opinion. And it’s rare that it can be usefully provided at the length of a newspaper oped column.
DFH
@MattF:
She’s on maternity leave now, and her latest column is really good. Just read it today…and just haven’t had the motivation to read Jen Rubin lately, although she was good during Mueller.
RaflW
@MazeDancer: Apparently the Post’s daily views have collapsed much faster/further than the loss in subscribers (which was not small).
I think many of the unsubs were people like me who used to share unpaywalled links, and visited multiple times per day myself. The hangers on are less driven to the content WaPo puts out now, and being run by an immoral, sleazy Brit, upper mgt has no ideas on how to rebuild.
Right wingers are not going to take up the Post. They’re just not wired that way, and won’t shake decades of “it’s the liberal Post” feelings.
TBone
@MazeDancer: Michael Steele is also not great, historically
TBone
@RaflW: confirmation
semafor.com/article/01/12/2025/the-washington-posts-traffic-tanks
TBone
@Steve LaBonne: which is why I signed up for the substack which is the subject of this post.
Denali5
When Alexandra Petri leaves, I leave.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Thanks for linking that.
I knew the bill would mandate detaining people on accusations alone, but I hadn’t heard that the current law mandates detention for people who’ve confessed or been convicted of theft. I don’t think that crucial fact was included in any of the reporting I read.
Kay
THis is it, you guys. None of these fuckers ASKED Trump how he planned to bring grocery prices down over the four years he was running, and now the secret has been revealed!
It’s drill baby drill. That’s it. No wonder they didn’t ask- they knew he didn’t have shit.
pajaro
There are never Trumpers who became allies with the Dems because of a belief that Trump was a unique threat to democracy, but have otherwise not changed their political and worldviews to any great extent. And then there are folks like Rubin, whose journey involved rethinking a whole range of her views on both economic and social questions, and who became Democrats in the process. She doesn’t both sides stuff, and she doesn’t use euphemism when blunt language is appropriate. She’s gone from a Romney Republican to a Harris democrat. Good for her, and I wish her luck.
Shalimar
@TBone: She has a good collection of people whose opinions interest me. This isn’t on my top 5 list of things to subscribe to when I can afford it, but her new substack is on the list of places I want to read.
trollhattan
@Kay:
Odd how being the Biggest Bestest erl and gas producer, we nevertheless pay high prices for fuel. Why? We export to fetch the highest prices.
If we produced 2X what we do today, prices consumers pay would not budge one inch.
Morons.
Lynn Dee
@TBone: Yes, it’s reportedly not just Jen Rubin.
lowtechcyclist
@Gin & Tonic:
True, but if the Fourth Estate is dominated by outlets that have no regard for the truth, there’s no reason to care if it’s protected by the First Amendment or not.
Well yeah, but it was preceded by the eras where there were an abundance of newspapers coming at the news from very different sides. Which didn’t provide objective reporting, but it did ensure that each side had papers that would print the dirt about the other side, so it more or less worked.
The era of ‘objective’ reporting was mostly a consequence of television. On the one hand, when you had just a few networks using the public airwaves to disseminate the news, they really needed to be neutral, hence the Fairness Doctrine. And on the other, the six o’clock news pretty much killed the evening papers, and it didn’t take long for one morning newspaper to crowd out the others in nearly all markets. Usually that survivor was a fairly mainstream organ, and besides you had the Fairness Doctrine keeping the TV news semi-objective, so that arrangement still more or less worked.
“Objective” reporting in the US may have been a relatively brief historical anomaly, but there’s no apparent path back to where we were before that step in the evolution of the news biz. So it may have been an anomaly, but it was a fairly long-lasting one: it’s been what we had as far back as I can remember (until it started breaking down in recent years), and I’m 70 years old. So its anomalous nature doesn’t give any clues about: what now?
Shalimar
@Kay: Domestic energy production has already been boosted through the roof the last 4 years. Add this to the list of things that are possible if you believe their anti-Democrat propaganda but absolutely will not happen in reality. I guess they take credit for production increasing under Biden and hope prices go down?
narya
@trollhattan: Charlie Pierce refers to him as “Butcher’s Bill” Kristol. Personally, I don’t trust him as far as I could spit and hit him; before Biden dropped out, for example, Kristol was (a) advocating for Biden to drop out AND (b) wishing for some magic process/primary that would give us a Whitmer/Shapiro ticket. In addition to skipping right over the VP, he was removing governors from two needed swing states; completely stupid suggestion, top to bottom. I find many of his suggestions to be similarly stupid. Dude, just because we both oppose TFG does not mean we agree on anything else.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I don’t know how you look at that and don’t see “legal justification to launch mass deportations” – I’m just relieved she said it. The thing that genuinely scares me is the unreality. It’s like swimming and trying to touch bottom. Are we going to pretend this isn’t happening? That’s creepy.
I think Americans have to stop looking for a far Right takeover like it might appear in a movie. It’s going to be CODIFIED. It’s going to look like we have elections and choices and “debates” but none of that will be real. No tanks. No secret police. Just regular police with new powers.
Baud
@Shalimar:
Last I saw, oil prices were projected to go down even before the election. Combination of more supply and lower world demand.
Kay
@Shalimar:
I knew domestic energy production was way up, but it’s a long held media/Republican myth that unless we’re drilling in natural parks we’re leaving money on the table.
The Wal Mart CEO said at the shareholder meeting that grocery prices will continue to rise. Don’t tell Donald Trump or national media.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Did you see the pathetic word salad Trump barfed up when (lightly) pressed on how he would end the war in Ukraine? Good lord. Also not something new — he bragged constantly about how he alone was the only person who could do it.
Ohio Mom
@Kathleen: And Ohio Capital Journal reports on things I’ll never read about in The Enquirer.
Belafon
@Kay: I think we should demand that all oil companies prove they are drilling on the land they own before they get to buy any more.
grubert
@trollhattan:
A LOT of people believe price/demand curves are some kind of law of nature.. as if tacit collusion doesn’t exist.
Baud
Relevant to oil drilling and alternative media
Bupalos
I don’t think she’s especially “right on Trump.” In fact I think she’s off, in a way that most of us are off, and that leaves us in a bad position to defend democracy.
This isn’t a very good sentence and it would be no worse, maybe better, if it were written with reversed roles:
Reversing the sentence though brings Rubin’s own small role in our media predicament much closer to the center. And the stovepipe she’s off to huddle around seems to me to be comprised of polarization profiteers. I don’t think she’s a bad person…nor a good person…nor is any of this about who is good and who is bad. It’s about understanding the forces and dynamics leading us down this blind alley, what we can do to mitigate them and to turn back or slow the slide. Rubin and her ilk lend very little of use in that project. In fact the demands of the algorithmic politainment industry generally lead to amplification.
grubert
It seems getting the rights allows them to claim future income as a current asset which makes stock prices rise, more hookers and blow for the executives. Doesn’t matter if the rights are never used, short term profits uber alles.
dww44
@Ohio Mom: Agree fully. We need a comparable publication, preferably non-profit, that has a similar reach as the corporate owned media, but is fearless in its reporting. That costs a lot of money and I don’t know any deep pockets billionaire types who’d be willing to finance such a publication. But, it does need to happen sooner rather than later.
Denali5
The current issue of the Atlantic has an article on how Hitler legally rewrote the German constitution so that he could enact his plans – in a few weeks. Trump is following his lead with help from Project 2025 and his billionaire cronies.
FelonyGovt
I have paid subscriptions to two Substacks. Both are art instruction run by entrepreneurial women, and I get value for my money. I’m disturbed by Substack’s policies, but don’t feel I can expect these content creators to up and move sites that easily.
I signed up for free subscriptions to Paul Krugmam and Jen Rubin and we’ll see where that goes.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I did. I follow his promises. Fruitless, I know.
A MAGA account on TikTok posted a fawning interview with Melanie. She says we didn’t accept her because we didn’t know her. That’s not it AT ALL. We didn’t accept her because she’s a flaming racist and mean-spirited and petty as an individual. We’d dislike her no matter who she was married to.
Gin & Tonic
Greenland = Lebensraum. Yes or no?
Steve LaBonne
@Gin & Tonic: Greenland = valuable (especially to tech industries) minerals that are no longer out of reach under thick ice.
Kay
I could have been a tiny ripple of liberalism on TikTok but Congress killed my dream. I was becoming a VERY popular commentor, excuse me, CREATOR.
trollhattan
@RaflW:
Does Bezos actually care? I think he treats The Post same as Musk treats Twitter: a media bauble to be manipulated to his whim. He has no particular concern for its success as a bidnez because it’s a teensy fraction of his portfolio.
Jeffro
I was posting in the last/dead thread – my bad! Catching up…
Chief Oshkosh
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
Heather Cox-Richardson’s substack earns her over a million dollars a year according to her Wikipedia entry, as cited in a 2020 article. I read a more recent article that I can’t find right now in which she was interviewed and said that it’s now closer to $2.1M/yr.
It’s interesting as to why she started to charge $5/mo. Originally full access was free, but she found that the bots and MAGAts were turning her comments section into a fetid swamp. She instituted a “nuisance” fee of $5/mo if you wanted to be allowed to submit comments (you can read comments and her articles for free). A funny thing happened on the way to cleaning up her comments section: she discovered that 1) the nuisance fee nearly completely cleaned up the comments section and 2) the nuisance fee is making her rich.
I wish I could find the article, it’s in a Maine-centric, local-color sort of magazine, because the interviewer-writer did a good job of making it appear as though HCR was genuinely surprised at the amount of money she was making, and sort of at a loss as to what to do with it.
NB: She is apparently the most successful Substack author to date, I believe as measured by subscriber numbers or payout.
ETA: @frosty: I guess HRC has this as her marketing hook
TBone
@Denali5: I too focused on the Hitler playbook first thing today on the earlier thread. We’re already well on our way toward the fascist takeover. Good eye.
Baud
@Chief Oshkosh:
TBone
@Chief Oshkosh: I still get her letters for free every day. Not full access, but the important stuff.
Jeffro
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I wonder if Mackenzie Scott and Melinda Gates each gave $1B to set up a foundation or org of sorts devoted to real, non-RWNJ and non-Musk/Thiel news…
…let’s see…5% of $2B is $100M annually without touching the principal…carry the 3 (kidding)…
…what I’m getting at is with just a leftie billionaire or two, they could set up an independent multimedia organization with a perpetual $100M annual budget for reporting. And that’s before they take in any revenue from ads.
Baud
@Jeffro:
Mark Cuban is big on Blue sky. I don’t know why he doesn’t do it.
Neo-Librettist
@Gin & Tonic:
Oil. It’s always oil.
Jeffro
@Kay:
@Betty Cracker:
eventually he’ll slip and say, “look, my only plan was to stay out of prison, you dumbfucks”
MomSense
@Chief Oshkosh:
She and her husband are really nice, too. It’s always good to find out the people you respect are kind and generous.
TBone
@trollhattan: it’s the why they are taking over the media’s means of production that’s the important part.
transatlanticism.uni-muenster.blog/newspapers-in-the-weimar-era/
Jeffro
@Betty Cracker: re: Ukraine, trump’s only “concept of a plan” is for him to repeat Putin’s demands Zelenskyy himself, because he is after all a super-genius. When Z tells him to get fucked, well, trump doesn’t have that particular concept down yet.
T: “Look, Volodymyr…enough’s enough don’t you think? I think so. Let’s just forget about the eastern part or Ukraine. It’s really Russia anyway, isn’t it? Declare the war over, bring all your boys home, let Vlad keep that hellscape. You’ll be a hero!”
Z: “get. fucked.”
T: (short-circuits) (wait…that’s actually only in my dreams)
T: “well you’re just a nasty man…”
Quinerly
@Ohio Mom:
Totally agree with you and MM on Rubin. If Mitt R’s son were to run on 98% MAGA, she will be penning love letters.
Plus, she grates on me when on MSNBC.
Emily B.
@Kay: Very similar to how Putin and Orbán maintain the appearance of democracy—elections, courts, etc.—while being authoritarians in practice.
Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes have a good discussion of “managed democracy” in THE LIGHT THAT FAILED: Why the West is Losing the Fight for Democracy. The book was published in 2019; sadly, it’s even more relevant now.
Ruviana
@Chief Oshkosh: I signed up for it when Cheryl Rofer gave it a shout out. I’ve always subscribed for free and I like her historical depth when she writes about current stuff.
Chief Oshkosh
@TBone: I read her everyday, too. If you get a chance, watch some of her YT vids. Long but usually worth my time. YMMV. Also, she’s interviewed on a many podcasts – all very interesting to my ears.
Re-reading my original post, I hope it’s not construed as negative. I’m very happy that she’s making money doing what she does and I think she is genuinely bemused about the amount that she’s making.
Bupalos
@Steve LaBonne: “Lebensraum” was traditionally taught in American education to mean basically the same as “elbow room” but in German it has deeper connotations that relate to ‘standard of living.’ It’s invocation was less about finding places for Germans to live as feeding resources to Germany through imperial acquisition of vassal regions, most notably Ukraine.
A Ghost to Most
I’m glad I beat the rush, and quit 3 years ago, after 35 years.
WaPo Wingnut Welfare opionion columnists.
TBone
@Chief Oshkosh: she is a national treasure, a historian and a pirate queen!
trollhattan
That move to Texas can’t happen soon enough, for Zuck.
“Where my unbiased workers at, y’all?”
Zuck in a cowboy hat will be a thing to behold. Okay, it will be a thing.
Belafon
It’s funny reading through the reactions to Rubin here, where some of you are hard into “she hasn’t changed and all it will take is the right Republican to win her over” and others are promoting what they see as her changes.
TBone
A great find, I hope! Scholars Strategy Network.
bsky.app/profile/scholars.org
Ever hopeful
scholars.org/
Redshift
@Betty Cracker:
Hear, hear. And it’s not a recent development that readers aren’t interested in paying what it costs to produce hard news, and investigative journalism in particular. Most of the time, it’s not popular, and we only had it because the economics of the news business were good enough that owners were willing to lose money on it, and it was perceived as the kind of thing news was supposed to be.
minachica
@Belafon: This is the circus we get — in lieu of bread. Enjoy!
Kathleen
@pajaro: She also grounds her opinion in facts.
TBone
@trollhattan: I fixed a quote by Robert Fulghum
Belafon
@Denali5: I wonder, based on reading that, if one of the blunders Trump is making is believing that what hurt Hitler early on was not pursuing tariffs as hard as he should have. Tariffs were a bad solution to a problem back then, but they were the major tool countries were using. That’s not the case anymore, but Trump doesn’t understand that.
TBone
@Belafon: he’ll use the tariffs selectively to reward or punish his corporofascist collaborators.
Belafon
@Redshift: And readers were the product to companies selling ads. It was Ford and Tide that were paying for newspapers, not us. We were basically paying the deliverer’s salaries.
Belafon
@TBone: But they must swap with those of us who would like to leave.
trollhattan
@Belafon:
Tariffs to fight hyperinflation seems like baseball bats to fight a staph infection.
TBone
@TBone: “lookin’ good, Billy Ray! Feelin’ good, Louis!”
bsky.app/profile/scholars.org/post/3lfd7c4aedk22
This snippet doesn’t do justice to the entirety, but
Redshift
@Steve LaBonne:
I agree completely; if I had a time machine, going back and stopping its creation would be high on my task list. I have no problem with newspapers and other publications publishing opinion pieces, but the creation of the op-ed page, opposite the editors’ own opinion pieces, gave those pieces an unwarranted stamp of approval, that they somehow satisfied the news standards of the paper.
One positive thing about columnists striking out on their own is it brings them closer to their appropriate status of “someone with an opinion on the internet,” instead of an unearned status as a sort-of-journalist.
trollhattan
Utterly O/T Big birb unbound from burg, thawed, fed, freed.
facebook.com/fairbanksairportpoliceandfire/posts/pfbid0zzwtA7E9HLtYfZ4B66Thy1bdocdMcd1HjWokfiE9AUUHQ…
Gin & Tonic
@Bupalos: Precisely my context.
RaflW
@trollhattan: I don’t care if Bezos cares. But what I see is that top management at WaPo has no idea how to cover Trump and the Republican party as a whole as the threat to democracy that they are.
Bezos is like the other billionaires, unconcerned with how ordinary Americans fare in the shitshow, as long as their wealth is vastly larger than ours.
frosty
@RaflW: My take on Jen Rubin re: Republicans of the past is that GWB and Cheney weren’t antisemitic or misogynistic; at least not through a megaphone. Seeing that from the party was a step too far for her. Dobbs sealed the deal.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Wow. I don’t begrudge that income either. Good for her. If I had that kind of money, I would form a non-profit to buy run down buildings, fix the up, convert them to apartments, and rent them at below market rates to people who could pass a background check and fell below certain income thresholds. I don’t have that kind of money, though.
Kay
@Emily B.:
Thank you. I’m very interested in actual experiences with authoritarian systems. You wonder when people become alarmed (if ever). The situation in North Carolina is very bad. The conservatives are rejecting the results of an election.
TBone
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I’d never pass your background check, despite being an exemplary tenant for decades and even using my own money on upgrades I couldn’t live without because those fucking landlords were dicks. Escrowing my rent would have resulted in immediate retaliation.
Melancholy Jaques
@Baud:
Agreed. We told Americans that Trump represented a threat to democracy and that all Americans should oppose him. We should not turn away from those who do so.
TBone
@Melancholy Jaques: bravo says I.
JML
@Belafon: well, it’s hard to know whether Rubin will swing back to the GOP if they have a real shakeup over the next decade; we’ve only seen her response to the Trump Takeover, which was a fairly good one IMHO.
If an old-school northeast republican started pushing through that brand of republicanism, I could see her going all in on them again. But for any of them to get traction would take something seismic within the GOP and every time we hope they might face that kind of fracture it gets clamped down. The moderates on social policy in the GOP who like their tax cuts etc have either sold their morals out on social policy or left the GOP. The internationalists on foreign policy have either sold their ideals out on that issue or left the GOP.
The current form of the GOP is a fairly bizarre coalition of oligarchs, isolationists, anti-government types, and bigots. there’s not much coherent policy, for sure, and it’s held together through a cult of personality that should have a shelf life that won’t last beyond the next 4 years or so. hard to see candidates emerging that would attract a Jen Rubin-type out of that morass any time soon?
Belafon
@RaflW: Bezos, Musk, and others like them are the people who don’t have skin in the game. If you can buy something the size of twitter or the Washington Post and not have it affect your wealth, what happens to the country and government doesn’t really affect you, and therefore you shouldn’t have any say it it’s function.
TBone
@Kay: I barked loudly about that in the A M. post but not loudly enough I guess …
cmorenc
@MisterMix:
To be fair, if the mistake a small majority of voters had just made in 2024 was to elect Mitt Romney president, we woud not be facing the existential crisis of four years of an insane, hatefully malevolent racist narcissistic reckless authoritarian as President. We likely would have regarded some of his policies and background as a venture capitalist as repugnant, but Romney isn’t insane and while we may regard some aspects of his Mormon religion as distasteful or even ridiculous, Mormonism also contains a huge element of community civic responsibility and respectful regard for other people. The basic idea the ACA came from was from Romney in Massachussetts.
Second, the way back requires us to gain converts from their former selves to sanity, especially articulately persuasive ones like Jen Rubin. The way to continue indifenitely in the wilderness is to be disrespectfully holier-than-thou towards them out of smug satisfaction of always having been a member of the right-thinking subset of the population.
Melancholy Jaques
I’m coming in pretty late in this discussion, but I have always wondered something about Rubin, Krystol, and others like them. For years they were the leading voices of the Republican party. How do they feel about the fact that Republicans and especially Republican voters do not give a shit about anything they say? These people spend a lot of time & effort writing things they hope are persuasive. What do they think about the fact that they not only do not persuade, but that they are rejected by the audience that used to respect & admire them?
Redshift
In the same general vein, hard news was one thing I feel was missing in earlier threads about non-billionaire alternative news sources. Other than ProPublica, almost everything suggested was political news and opinion. I understand we all don’t trust the major media in those areas (and it’s the focus of the blog) so we’re particularly looking for that, but if we’re talking about canceling subscriptions, there are other things those outlets provide that don’t completely suck that some of us can’t necessarily do without. Whether I like it or not, WaPo is my hometown paper, and I haven’t had any luck finding a real alternative. And that makes me feel even more for people who no longer have any hometown paper.
Maybe we could have a discussion of what options people see for local news. Both for our own purposes, and as a tool for advocacy — local news deserts tended to vote way more for TCFG, and if we’re going to fix our broken information environment more broadly, we need to know where to steer people toward for real information, not just opinion.
TBone
Updated blast from the past:
UncleEbeneezer
@RaflW: Most people who move in a better direction don’t do a big, public mea culpa. I know we enjoy the fantasy that they will but in my experience they mostly don’t. And it’s counterproductive for the interests of our big-tent coalition to expect or demand it. If people want to enter our big tent without self-flaggelation, confessing all their sins and denouncing their former peers etc. I think we need to be about providing a welcoming path in. We need them, plain and simple. Hectoring them or posting “this you?” Receipts to shame them is something we probably should stop doing.
Baud
@UncleEbeneezer:
Not even the purification ceremony?
Sure Lurkalot
@Ohio Mom:
I heartily endorse your entire post. We don’t lack opinions, takes or speculation. In a way, all the substacks, newsletters and other missives dying to get into your inbox serve to obfuscate that there is truth at all and you end up with Baud’s “people believe what they want to believe.” It’s not like the authors of this content correct themselves when their takes are wrong. But the content is still “out there”, still in the land of “people are saying.”
Civil society can absorb a cadre of people who question everything and find conspiracies everywhere but once that reaches critical mass, all bets are off.
I do wish we could get off the 24/7 “news” cycle. It’s not news, it’s not informative and it’s not particularly healthy.
Captain C
@RaflW:
Easy, peasy: Bezos sells the WaPo to his ex-wife, who folds it into a nonprofit organization devoted to reporting the news well (and not having its op-ed page be full of right wing idiots), and makes sure someone who actually cares about this is running the paper, as opposed to a Murdoch alum.
Of course, in this scenario at least some of the upper management will get yeeted away with prejudice, and deservedly so, so they’ll likely never go for this.
Redshift
@cmorenc: Yeah, I was listening to Chris Hayes’ interview with Indivisible’s Leah Greenberg yesterday, and a major point was that a common feature of successful movements to oppose autocracy is working with groups of people who you may not agree with on anything other than that opposition. (And plenty of other ones where there is more overlap, of course.)
brantl
@Gin & Tonic: What they wind up doing doesn’t change what their “sacred mission” is, it just means you’re argumentative.
FelonyGovt
@Redshift: Exactly right. I’ve been waffling about cancelling the LA Times, which of course is the right thing to do, but it is my hometown paper. And now it’s proving to be a valuable source of information and updates on the fires.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Gin & Tonic:
Thanks. I forget about Dell. Back in the Aughts, he had a much higher profile. When he took the company private again, he pretty much went private himself.
Chris Johnson
@trollhattan: It’s interesting the extent to which I now see ANY facebook, ANY wapo, ANY twitter, ANY nyt link and simply refuse to go there no matter what. I’m just beyond done, after 2024. I don’t care if they have ‘free candy’ painted on the side of their goddamned van.
So for me, animal-related human interest stories as bait to engage with facebook again? WTF are you even thinking. Outtahere with that stuff.
Wyliecoat
@Ohio Mom: this is exactly my problem. Do you have recommendations for good, boots on the ground reporting? I subscribe to the SF Chronicle, which I really like, but any others in the digital space?
brantl
@trollhattan: Bill Kristol, even converted, is one of the smarmiest assholes on the planet. He still believes in a wealth of stupid shit, and is the asshole who gave us snowbilly snookie, Sarah Palin.
Elizabelle
@FelonyGovt: Thinking the LA Times has an inside track on the next Pulitzer for Breaking News coverage. For tragic reasons.
brantl
@RaflW: This is the only time I ever expect to have to say this, to be fair to Stumpy, at least he started out at buying it, and not lying and invading it.
Redshift
@Captain C: Yeah, it was not at all unfair to assume that the point of having a billionaire buy a news company in an industry with a broadly failing business model was to run it as a public service and not care that it lost an amount of money that wasn’t worth his time to worry about. I’m sure that’s what pretty much everyone but Bezos was hoping for. Instead, even before the corrupt interference, we got cuts and other garbage because Mr. I’m-rich-so-I-must-be-brilliant thought the job was to make the business profitable.
TBone
Update on Rubin collaborators from press release (will need moderation if acceptable):
Contributors include: Allegra Lawrence-Hardy, Andrew Weissmann, Andy Borowitz, Asha Rangappa, Barb McQuade, Bob Kagan, David Litt, Esosa Osa, George Conway, Harry Litman, Ilan Goldenberg, John Dean, Jon Alter, Joyce Vance, Justin Nelson, Karen Agnifilo, Katie Phang, Kim Lane Scheppele, Larry Tribe, Lavora Barnes, Marissa Rothkopf, Mike Podhorzer, Nancy Gertner, Renato Mariotti, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Sherrilyn Ifill, Stephen Richer, Steve Vladeck, Tom Joscelyn, and Olivia Julianna.
In keeping with its mission to make independent, fact-based, pro-democracy media available to everybody, The Contrarian will offer free content alongside its paid subscription content. Rubin and Eisen welcome the public to join The Contrarian’s new venture in defense of democracy.
FelonyGovt
@Redshift: Ditto for Patrick Soon-Shiong at the LA Times. We were happy to have a LOCAL billionaire wrest back local control from the evil Chicago folks. Come to find out he’s just as evil.
EthylEster
@Belafon: She endorsed and voted for the Dems. That’s good enough for me.
brantl
@UncleEbeneezer: I don’t have to habitually shame JR, but I don’t have to pretend her head wasn’t up her own ass for years, either.
Emily B.
@Redshift: Actually, not that long ago, owners were NOT losing money on journalism. Newspapers didn’t make a ton of money, but they were modestly, solidly profitable. What paid for the reporting was advertising. Then Craigslist killed classified ads, which had been a cash cow, and the rest of the internet took a huge bite out of display advertising, and suddenly the print model wasn’t working any more. The digital model that seems to work best is subscription-based, but now that’s faltering, too.
Agreed, good journalism does cost money.
JKC
Dumped my WaPo script today, not because of Jen Rubin’s departure, but because of the decrease in anything interesting to read.
I subscribe to my two local papers and TPM. That seems sufficient.
Elizabelle
@FelonyGovt: Yeah. I cancelled five minutes after hearing he pulled Kamala’s endorsement, and then he was fapping about bringing on people like Scott Jennings, formerly of Mitch McConnell’s staff, and now resident moron panelist on CNN.
But: resubscribed this week, to follow the fires and aftermath. And, it’s month to month and half the price I had been paying before Soon-Shiong reared his fascist head. (Plus the lagniappe of his daughter saying people were cancelling because of Biden and Gaza, please …)
Kathleen
@Ohio Mom: For sure! I understand a group of former Columbus Dispatch reporters started the paper. They ran a story about GOP’s plans to cut education funding that resulted in angry calls and GOP now “split over funding”. That’s real reporting.
JustRuss
Well if I was one of the richest people on the planet, that’s what I would do. Which may be one reason I’m not one of the richest people on the planet. Or on my block, for that matter.
Fair Economist
@FelonyGovt: I’m liking the Watch Duty app for fire information. I can find out about new fires minutes after they start.
brendancalling
@@mistermix.bsky.social: I’ll disagree. I have seen that contrition. It was on Twitter, after Trump won in 2016. Rubin was very upset, and was saying how she had been wrong in the past, and that going forward she was going to listen to what Democrats said, and—I found this important—that while she may disagree with them, that she would never hate on them again.
I follow her on BS (and formerly on Xitter) and have found that she’s lived up to that promise reliably.
RoseWeiss
@narya: I frequently see Kristol on the Bulwark podcasts. He still considers himself a Republican even though he disagrees with everything the current party is doing. He did completely support Harris for President but he actually hasn’t changed any of his conservative views, he just wants the U.S. to remain a (more or less) democracy.
Ohio Mom
@Emily B.: A big cause of what ails newspapers is vulture capitalism. For Hanukah, Ohio BIL (a lifestyles reporter married to a retired state editor) sent Ohio Dad the book “Hedged: How Private Investmant Funds Help Destroy American Newspapers and Undermine Democracy.”
It’s by Margot Susca, an assistant communications professor, and has over 50 ages of footnotes, so it must be an attempt to get promoted. I have no desire to slog through it but am glad this aspect of the ruination of newspapers has been carefully documented.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
amazon.com/Hedged-Investment-Newspapers-Undermine-Communication/dp/0252087569
RoseWeiss
This thread is probably dead, but I want to remind everyone about community radio as news sources. I’m on the board of an all volunteer, non-profit station with a news department for local news. We’re working on forming a regional news group with other community stations in our general area. I have high hopes.
Ohio Mom
@frosty: Meanwhile, I can only assume Rubin never gave a a rat’s ass about the safety net, else she would have left when W proposed privatizing Social Security. Which is why I have no use for her.
Anyone who could pledge allegiance to the Republican Party and only leave because Trump was a bridge too far — as far as I can tell, she has never reconsidered her lack of support for the causalities of capitalism and bad luck.
Ohio Mom
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Ha! Great minds…
@mistermix.bsky.social
@brendancalling:
Thanks, I had missed that.
lowtechcyclist
@Belafon:
Not just them, but the classified ads, which have long since gone to Craigslist et al.
I’m sure national advertisers still have ads in the big papers and on their websites, but just don’t pay what they used to. But the classified ads are simply gone as a source of revenue.
lowtechcyclist
@lowtechcyclist:
Dead thread, but Emily B. beat me to this @173.
TBone
@RoseWeiss: godspeed!
Chief Oshkosh
@TBone: Finest kind!
Miss Bianca
@RoseWeiss: where are you (and your station) located?
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: thank you for this!
I’ve been opening your links and keeping the tabs open ( I have to materially participate in daily life, so saving to read later), lots of good and hopeful things. Grateful…
btw, did anyone discuss last nights hcr letter, about nc wresting power away from elected democrats, and thus from the democratic electorate in that state? It was upsetting, hard to sleep after reading it.
Archon
Defeating and discrediting Trump and MAGA is the most important political and social movement in a lifetime. To that end any past views or attitudes that were incompatible to mine or frankly any progressives are at this point, irrelevant.
All that matters is defeating MAGA and keeping our democracy and Jen Rubin is on board with that.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: she is a queen and a goddess, with her calm factual informative letters, clarifying the main points, connecting the dots. And her tone is nearly always neutral and even handed.
i wish her information could board all ships; I would not consider it piracy
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Another right of center grift just like MeidasTouch or Lincoln Project. All opinion, no reporting.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
@Redshift: cclassified ads used to pay for the news but those went online.
Quaker in a Basement
@Betty Cracker: News orgs need to morph into phone service providers–cheap ones. Lure subscribers with a low, low rate and leverage with ads.
different-church-lady
On the one hand it’s great to find out some people still have principles.
On the other, the way this is going the only bars left will be Nazi bars.