Why is Jeff Bezos Rakestomping the Post? talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/why-i…
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) July 24, 2025 at 4:53 PM
Thw Washington Post is my ‘front page’ news-on-the-internet choice, so the ongoing destruction of its previously valuable op-ed section irks me personally. Josh Marshall, at TPM:
I wanted to flag your attention to this piece by Jonathan Last at The Bulwark: The Washington Post is dying. I can tell you “how.” But not “why.” I’m not sure the central assertion is a big surprise to people. But Last does a good job at running through the details, the steps on the path of descent. He puts some focus on legacy systems — suboptimal arrangements, structures, compromises that any organization builds up over time. I first thought he was distracting from the decisions made under the ownership of Jeff Bezos. But I think he’s right to put some focus on them. These aren’t the reason the Post is dying. But this legacy debt — which most big and old organizations have — adds to the challenges that Bezos would have had even if he weren’t making terrible decisions.
I’m writing this because I want to point to one of the “why” reasons. There are others tied to politics, Trump, the oligarchy, etc. But a big driver is the consultants. Bezos bought the Post in a different era, as one part fun thing to do and one part de facto social philanthropy. In 2013, Bezos was the new Carnegie, Morgan, Vanderbilt. The Post’s historic owners, the Graham Family, had the best of intentions but lacked the resources to bring the Post into the modern age. It had become a classic undercapitalized business, disrupted by a newer, faster and more mercenary class of D.C. publications. Bezos paid a generous price for it and I think saw this as fun and kind of a good thing that an ultra-rich guy should do.
But Bezos had something I’ve seen before, close up, many times. The super rich don’t like losing money, even if it’s at scales that are essentially meaningless to them. This is ironic. Perhaps it’s perverse. But it’s not surprising. You don’t get to be a centi-billionaire by not sweating losing money. It’s deep in the DNA. For several years the Post was hot and growing. That was fun. Then it wasn’t. It started not being hot and losing money. And Bezos decided he’d had enough.
This part of the narrative is pretty straightforward and uncontroversial. Why did things go wrong when Bezos got involved and started making big changes? A big part of the answer is the consultants, the particular ones a guy like Bezos would gravitate toward. In short, he gravitated toward the ones who speak billionaire. Which is to say, the language of leverage, commercial paper, efficiencies, disruption, innovation, the big idea, etc. Why would he go to those people? Because that’s his social world. To the extent Bezos has peers they live in that world, work with those consultants, think in that way. It all makes sense…
…[C]onsultants who speak billionaire… mostly aren’t actually rooted in a meaningful way in the news business. And here I don’t mean “journalism” in all the touchy-feely and important meanings of the term. I mean the more brass-tacks reality of the news business, which is different from “journalism” while also being the substrate journalism requires for its existence. I know this because I’ve been dealing in various ways with these people for more than 20 years. They have these ideas because, like Bezos, they are heavily plugged into the tech business, its assumptions, its business models. Critically, they are hyper-focused on scale and efficiencies — two things which can be positives but are mostly neither here nor there in terms of the challenges facing most news publications. (Obviously, you want to use your cash as efficiently as possible. But marginal efficiency gains aren’t why news publications live or die.)…
… Running a successful digital media operation is really, really hard. Most of our ideas about how journalism is supposed to work in business terms are the product of specific technological and business factors that were undone at the turn of the century. To cite just the most obvious example, most people’s idea of what print (or we should we now say “words”) journalism should be is based on the metropolitan daily paper. But that existed because for quite a few decades one or two companies in a very capital-intensive business could have a de facto monopoly over most commercial speech in a major metropolitan area. That was a lucrative and stable business to be in. But the internet destroyed it. Everyone’s been trying to build something else ever since, with pretty uneven luck. And it all got harder when the tech monopolies became mature about a decade ago.
Bezos got antsy about his money-losing business. He’s also reacting to the political needs of his other businesses (a big factor I’m not addressing in this post). And he’s defaulting to what was probably the biggest error of the first two decades of the 21st century on the business side of the journalism business: the idea that the dynamics, business concepts and mores of the tech world were applicable to the news business. They’re mostly not. And here we mean not the “media” business, to which there is some application, but the news business. Again, not the same thing. Bezos is clearly a really smart and able guy. But since the Post is maybe his fifth or sixth priority he’s even more likely than he might normally be to default to his comfort-level assumptions, that the news business is basically like tech and the people he’ll hire are the people who speak his language, which is billionaire.
First thing we do, let’s kill all the consultants…
mrmoshpotato
Is this a reference I just don’t get?
Omnes Omnibus
@mrmoshpotato: Yes.
Mr. Bemused Senior
What do you call 5,000
lawyersconsultants at the bottom of the seaETA, Google says 1,000. Inflation. I blame [fill in the blank]
Citizen Alan
@mrmoshpotato: It’s a play on a famous Shakespeare quote from Henry VI. “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” One of the bad guys says it as a proposed first step to overthrowing the government.
gratuitous
I hope it’s nothing so boring as garden-variety greed.
Spanky
@mrmoshpotato: Not a fan of Shakespeare, I see.
scav
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Pollution.
ETA: Superfund site.
SpaceUnit
Man, that’s a whole lot of words to tiptoe around the fact that political cowardice makes a news publication irrelevant.
Edited for clarity.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@scav: yes. What can I say? It’s Friday.
mrmoshpotato
@Citizen Alan: Thanks.
mrmoshpotato
@Spanky: Don’t think I’ve read any since high school. (I would be a terrible Jeopardy contestant.)
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Tech bros will be the death of us all in one form or another.
It’s the usual “I did something this way, was fabulously successful, thus, “this way” is the “only way” no matter what it’s applied to” thinking of that crowd.
Really good piece by Josh, thanks for sharing.
Spanky
Some dood at Medicare.gov just sent me an email with valuable advice that was previously unknown!
I have a sinking feeling that this isn’t the last email headed by a picture of that smirking jackass.
gene108
If Bezos cared about making The Post profitable, he wouldn’t have killed their endorsement of Kamala.
That must’ve lead to a whole bunch of cancelled subscriptions.
He clearly doesn’t prioritize The Post versus his other businesses and their ability to get federal contracts.
I personally want the next Democratic president to be my vengeance against all the businesses that sucked up to Trump, like AWS loses its federal contracts. They need to fear us more than they fear the Republicans.
trollhattan
Rich dudes and their baubles. Lord, how I wish he’d fixate on Picassos and going for three Michelin stars.
HinTN
@gene108:
Good luck with that.
Jeffro
@Spanky: man that is some good advice that definitely did not already come from Michelle Obama 16 years ago already – thanks Dr. Oz!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@gene108:
300K:
nj.com/politics/2025/01/frustrated-washington-post-reporters-reveal-how-many-subscribers-have-cancel…
Deputinize America
@Jeffro:
I’m old enough to remember that when Michelle Obama suggested it, that it was rightly denounced as communistical.
fourmorewars
‘You don’t get to be a centi-billionaire by not sweating losing money. It’s deep in the DNA.’
Anybody else bothered by this formulation? Yes, rich guy didn’t get rich by giving away money. Oldest cliche in the book. It’s just, Christ almighty. How again did rich guy get to be a, what’s that word again? Don’t you just stop in the midst of typing that word and say, well, I’ll let Paul Campos say it.
lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/07/what-are-we-even-doing-here
caphilldcne
I ditched my post subscription after the refusal to endorse last year. I considered that an actual act of betrayal by my home newspaper, a literal stab in the back. I need to read it for my job but I will not pay, so I use my dc library card. I hope Bezos takes a long walk off a short pier. And I thought he was going to help the paper. Fuck ‘em.
mrmoshpotato
@Spanky: Another way to stay healthy is not having to look at that fraudster’s face.
Scout211
@Spanky: I unsubscribed from those “helpful” newsletters and chose to only receive emails regarding my account.
Not reading all those “helpful” emails has improved my health.
gene108
@HinTN:
I’m not holding my breath waiting for it to happen, but unless the bad actors in the USA face consequences, we will not have any meaningful change.
Spanky
@Scout211: I’m staying subscribed so I can document the atrocities. I fully expect him to start slipping in less benign advice, probably sooner than later.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Maybe not all consultants. Some of them are useful. However, I think we can agree the political consultants and the ‘business transformation’ consultants can be all be fired. They are nothing but a drain.
Completely off topic, I had a conversation with an obviously right-wing coworker who went to the Netherlands and was really unhappy with wind turbines. She had a serious problem with the aesthetics and how it ‘ruined’ the view. This really is a thing with these people. I don’t get it.
prostratedragon
@mrmoshpotato: He reads much (or even) better after you’ve seen a few things.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Spanky: LOL. The older, overweight, still smoking MAGAs are going to LOVE that.
Steve LaBonne
Once again I point out that even an evil shithead like Carnegie was way more interested in the common good than our finance and tech bros.
caphilldcne
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I feel like they’re amazing. I was in Scotland last year hiking the Hadrian’s wall path and loved seeing them. In fact I think I actually like the ones outside of Palm Springs even more – a whole garden of them. I stop and buy a banana date shake and watch them whenever I get to drive to Palm Springs from LA (which admittedly is twice but I’d do it again).
kindness
I had a WaPo subscription for 20 years. First Bezos brought in English Murdoch boys as admin. Then I noticed when Bezos started telling his OpEd people what they could and what they couldn’t say. We’d find that out by the people who left the Post. Then when it came out last fall that Bezos deep sixed the Post’s giving Kamala the vote…. I cancelled my subscription. I feel bad but vindicated by the employees fleeing it. I ended up getting a digital subscription to the Guardian and the SF Chronicle. I had had a print Chronicle subscription since the 80’s but last year they stopped delivering to my neck of the woods (85 miles east of SF). I got pissy and cancelled. I’ve relented. Yea…I still have a dirt cheap digital NY Times subscription but I hardly read that any more. It’ll be next on the chopping block. So…this is why I think the WaPo is dying. It’s owners are idiots and they don’t mind showing it anymore. Remember the old days when folk tried to hide that?
dmsilev
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Just tell her that the Dutch are modernizing all of their old windmills.
lowtechcyclist
I grew up reading the WaPo. I read about the Mercury program and JFK’s assassination in its pages. I had a dead-trees daily subscription as recently as 2009, when the demands of new parenthood caused the unread papers to pile up rapidly. Except during some intervals where I was out of its distribution range, it was my main daily source of news for nearly half a century. So its evident disintegration has been both sad for the paper itself, and worrisome for the future of the news business in this country. Watching Ann Telnaes, Jen Rubin, Philip Bump, Catherine Rampell, and surely some others I’m forgetting, either forced or pressured to leave in recent months, has said all too much about the direction this once-great paper has taken: steeply downhill.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@caphilldcne:
Where did you see them? My wife and I hiked the entire way east-to-west (thus Newcastle to Bowness-On-Solway) 3 years ago and I don’t recall seeing any.
Which means they obviously weren’t that intrusive.
One of the only engaging things about driving the otherwise soul-sucking I-70 in KS and the godforsakeneasternplainsofcolorado are the wind turbines that have sprung up in the last dozen or so years. It’s really cool to see them at a distance at night, the blinking light pattern goes on for miles.
Chief Oshkosh
@SpaceUnit:
And written for brevity.
Baud
Baud
Text box looks to be fixed. Thanks, WG.
Albatrossity
It’s actually the second one I got. The first was a warning to look out for fraudsters…
Irony has been curbstomped, bayoneted, fileted. and nuked. It was great while it lasted.
lowtechcyclist
@Albatrossity:
You forgot ‘fired into the sun.’ Other than correcting that omission, no argument here.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: I wonder how the lawyers are feeling about these motherfuckers having to repeatedly be sued for withholding funds that have already been allocated.
Baud
@Baud:
Spoke too soon. It’s hit or miss.
mrmoshpotato
@Albatrossity:
Dr. Supplement warning against fraudsters…
Chief Oshkosh
@Steve LaBonne:
Actually, it may be worse than that. I had a group dinner the other night that included an MotU-type who has one foot in finance and the other in tech as both foot soldier early on, and as mentioned, now an MotU. This isn’t a new concept around here, but is disturbing to meet face-to-face: The 21st MotU does in fact think about the common good, and the thought is that there are too many of us and not enough jobs and so the solution is to have fewer of us. This does not include just controlling the birthrate, but also, culling. It would be nice if the culling were natural (e.g., Covid), but he’s not particular about the means.
Thiel is not an aberration.
Bill Arnold
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
She is obviously easily manipulated by right-wing propagandists.
Power and communication cables above ground, strung between tall wooden poles, is an ugly thing that Americans consider to be visually normal.
Jeffro
Same here.
DC-area kid, 40+ years-long reader. Heck, the Mrs. and I used to buy the dead-tree Sunday edition even when we lived up in Delaware. Oh well. Bye, Bezos!
(and yes, I told ‘him’ why I was canceling, and I made sure to spread the word just as far and wide as I could, too)
Scout211
Thank you for your service.
Kosh III
First thing we do, let’s kill all the consultants…
Start with the DNC and maybe the D’s will win elections.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: I see there’s no love for “thrown into the dustbin of history” these days.” Makes me feel old.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kosh III: What is the DNC’s job?
ETA: Eh, fuck it. The horse is dead.
Steve LaBonne
@Chief Oshkosh: We are NPCs / useless eaters. But only relatively few of us pay enough attention to understand that.
Bill Arnold
@Chief Oshkosh:
There is a camp that believes that the global human population should be culled about 50 percent (4 billion), and a more radical camp that believes that it should be culled 7 billion, leaving about a billion, higher latitudes == light skinned.
They are overconfident arrogant psychopaths, with great wealth==great power.
(Global heating is on track to reduce the global human population by a minimum of a billion or two. More global heating, more kills; the Trump administration’s gutting of the switch to no-carbon energy in the USA will contribute. Also a mass species extinction, including much of the charismatic megafauna in the wild, but that’s just a side detail.)
Jim Appleton
@mrmoshpotato:
How long before the emails helpfully plug stuff Dr S personally benefits from?
Betty
@Spanky: Me too! Couldn’t hit delete fast enough. What a mess.
H-Bob
“The super rich don’t like losing money, even if it’s at scales that are essentially meaningless to them. This is ironic. Perhaps it’s perverse. But it’s not surprising. You don’t get to be a centi-billionaire by not sweating losing money. It’s deep in the DNA. For several years the Post was hot and growing. That was fun. Then it wasn’t. It started not being hot and losing money. ”
Was it actually losing money or was the profits growth rate declining? We’ve seen many rich guys lose their shit over declines in profits growth rate (i.e., the business is profitable and profits are increasing but not increasing as fast as prior years).
p.a
Fuckin’ Thanos. Asshole never heard of birth control.
Geminid
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I remember seeing a lot of wind turbines in west Texas a few years ago. They became plentiful alongside I-20, once I cleared the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex.
The ridges with wind turbines overlooked numerous oil pumps and the occasional drilling rig. There were cattle wandering around the landscape too. It was like seeing three phases of Texas economic history all at once.
I noticed a steep dropoff in wind turbines when I crossed into New Mexico. This was in 2019, and New Mexico’s legislature had just passed Governor Michelle Luhan Grisham’s clean energy package. She made it a key part of her campaign platform the year before. From what I’ve read, I think I’ll see a lot more windmills when I finally get back to the Land of Enchantment.
I’m just hoping they slow the wind down some. That last trip, I camped near Santa Rosa and that was the windiest fuvking camprgound I ever saw. The wind there made the wind at North Carolina’s Outer Banks seem like a gentle Zephyr.
I hope to camp at Santa Rosa Lake State State Park again next January (I like to make it my first stop in New Mexico). If I do, I’ll probably pretend it’s not quite so windy on account of all the big wind turbines west of it.
gene108
@H-Bob:
Wall Street investors drive a lot of this thinking, where growth rates have to constantly increase or the company stock won’t be valued as much.
It’s one of the main reasons for the destruction of the middle class, and loss of manufacturing jobs.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Geminid:
A few people have mentioned this before but TX is a massive wind energy producer and developer:
comptroller.texas.gov/economy/economic-data/energy/2023/wind-snap.php
That was 2 years ago and the total they were getting was 26%. It’s now up to 28%.
The big question going forward is obviously how (or if) any changing Federal policies will impact this. Given Hair Furor’s pathological hatred of wind turbines it might but this guy doesn’t think so in a TX context:
texasstandard.org/stories/windy-energy-pause-trump-texas-grid/
It only talks about an EO and Fed Lands whereas TX farms ain’t built on gubmint lands. It doesn’t discuss incentives, tax policies, etc., that go into the cauldron of what supports clean energy development at that scale.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@mrmoshpotato: a call-out to the Shakespeare play where someone says “first, let’s kill all the lawyers”. This line was referenced in the Eagles song “Get over it”. I haven’t read all the comments yet so I bet someone got there ahead of me
ETA: Citizen Alan got there much sooner! With receipts!
dnfree
@mrmoshpotato: Don’t read Shakespeare’s plays—go see them! You’ll have an entirely different experience.
Jeannie Hill
Marty Barron, put the WP back in the game.
Miss Bianca
@Chief Oshkosh: Did you ask him how he felt about culling himself? You know, for the good of the earth.
Martin
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I doubt it’ll change anything. Texas energy market is very straightforward – incentivize demand and then build whatever is cheapest to meet that demand. If it’s wind build wind, if it’s coal build coal. Texas has never stopped building fossil fuel despite the renewables because there’s no real effort to curtail demand. That stands in contrast to California with a larger economy and population but with 40% as much renewables, but with a much larger share of generation coming from renewables.
Because they’re a regulatory island federal regs often didn’t apply to them before.
Be cautious of the arguments in favor of Texas’ approach. It’s very ‘Abundance’-coded and builds off an assumption that GDP is tied to energy use. But CA disproved that connection 30 years ago, and most of Europe has confirmed that. You don’t necessarily need to increase energy consumption to grow economically, in fact, there’s a risk of sinking so many assets into generation that you become incentivized to finance unnecessary demand (which Texas is now doing) simply to pay off the generation. This is part of why California avoided that route in the first place.
The AI boom is very speculative. None of it is turning a profit – not even close, and it’s unclear that it ever will. If that collapses because there’s no viable business model there, Texas energy grid is going to have a mountain of stranded assets. Same with crypto.
artem1s
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
srsly? literally the land of windmills isn’t supposed to have windmills? Jeebus wept