It’s Time to Pay Our Last Respects to The Washington Posthttps://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a70249537/washington-post-layoffs/The body count is over 300 employees, a third of the Post’s workforce. Its books section is gone. Its international reporting will wither and likely die. And, as a point of personal privilege, the Post’s legendary sports section will evaporate. In my daily sportswriting days, there was no better or more talented crew to hang with at various events. I remember at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, I decided one day to write a column on water polo, of which I knew nothing. About five minutes after I sat down, the late Ken Denlinger of the Post sat down next to me. “So,” he said, “what’s going on in the game?” How in the hell do I know, I answered. “Well,” he said, “you’ve been here longer than me. You’re the veteran.” If there’s anything about those days that I miss, it’s the camaraderie of the press box, and it was always a party when the Post gang was there—Tom Boswell at the baseball games, Mike Wilbon and the late John Feinstein at some basketball arena or another, the great Sally Jenkins anywhere.
Ominously, and vaguely, Murray said that the revamped Post will consist of efforts that “will be focused on covering politics and government, and the paper will also prioritize coverage of nationals news and features topics like science, health, medicine, technology, climate, and business.”
The rub, of course, is that there’s no evidence that current management knows how to do any of this.
It began, of course, when Jeff Bezos took a pot of his Amazon money and bought the Post. (On Wednesday, one of the people laid off was the reporter who covered the Amazon beat.) Bezos brought in as publisher a Brit named Will Lewis. Management tomfoolery, such as when Bezos made an 11th-hour decision to pull an endorsement of Kamala Harris, a blunder that cost the paper an estimated 250,000 digital subscribers, ensued. And, in a tough climate for daily newspapers, that came with a price that was paid on Wednesday. Democracy, the Post says, dies in darkness. Newspapers are murdered in broad daylight.
1. One can hope.
2. The WashPost was on the skids years before Bezos threw a pot of $$$$ into the WashPost, and for even more years before the WashPost manglement couldn't bring themselves to
openly back Word Salad Queen Kammie.
3. One can hope.
