UPDATED: Breaking - The Washington Post hires new editors from conservatives news orgs

The billionaire media is circling the wagons to make life miserable for Democrats

UPDATE: Monday, Jun 3, 2024 · 9:27:57 PM +00:00 · justmy2

The contours of today’s events at the Washington Post are starting to become clear, and unfortunately, many of the assumptions look to be true.  

Barely five months after joining The Washington Post as publisher and CEO, William Lewis recently began discussing a plan with his top executives for dramatically restructuring the newsroom.

His timing, though, drew resistance from executive editor Sally Buzbee. With her team of journalists absorbed by the demands of covering a historic presidential campaign, she urged Lewis to wait until after Election Day.

Lewis didn’t want to wait. Hired by Post owner Jeff Bezos with a mandate to reverse a sharp decline in subscriptions and a $77 million deficit over the past year, he wanted to execute the new plan immediately. She also balked at the role he saw for her in the new structure — and the two agreed she should depart, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

This sounds awfully familiar to the language Elon Musk used as he fired most of his staff, hired new leadership, and pretended his intent was to save a company vs create a new channel to drive conservative messaging.  

And the breadcrumbs look more like croutons…

“We are going to turn this thing around, but let’s not sugarcoat it. It needs turning around,” he said. “We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”

In his brief remarks, Murray did not share his specific editorial priorities, though he mentioned a few specific stories that will be top priorities for The Post, including the presidential election, Donald Trump and the trial facing Hunter Biden.

Let me translate that for you:  

 “This paper is too liberal and we need more balance. You need to be covering the trial of Hunter Biden with the same vigor as the 88 indictments of a former President and current presumptive nominee who has said he wants to be dictator on day one.  That’s just good news judgement folks.”

I suspect these changes are going to happen much more quickly than anyone expects, because the goal is to impact this election, not save money.  Yes, that’s my opinion, but it is also what all of the evidence is heading towards, including some of the comments below from people in the know. 

Not good, not good at all.

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UPDATE: Monday, Jun 3, 2024 · 2:12:32 PM +00:00 · justmy2

The pattern has more than emerged, it is being fully activated across all of media.  
 

Vivek Ramaswamy’s plan to take control of BuzzFeed

The Baltimore Sun's new conservative owners are changing it. Here's how

Musk begins his Twitter ownership with firings, declares the 'bird is freed'

Michael Tomasky diagnosed this very succinctly.

They all understand what Viktor Orbán told the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2022: “Have your own media.”

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UPDATE: Monday, Jun 3, 2024 · 1:54:33 PM +00:00 · justmy2

Wow, two in a row.  I wake up to another story on the rec list.   Thanks everyone.  
 

I was reminded in the comments of the recent shift in headlines on the front page of the Washington Post.  These are just from the last 3 days.

A ‘very innocent man’ stares down being convicted and becoming a felon

In the pandemic, we were told to keep 6 feet apart. There’s no science to support that.

‘I took an oath to do no harm’: The two doctors wrestling over Fauci’s legacy

Notice the subtle clear conservative reinforcing intention of every single one of these headlines. For instance, the first leads with a false premise to deflate the power of the actual content.  

It places a focus on innocence, with no evidence supporting it, while simultaneously platforming GOP messaging. There is nothing wrong with including the quote, but when you headline it, you are making an opinion judgement that Trump’s innocence claim is the primary point readers need to be informed of.  There is no journalism standard that would make that a reasonable assertion.  

That’s what we are in for as people interested in maintaining our democracy as we know it. The time for excuse making has ended and the time for strategic plans to counter a soon to be one sided traditional media environment has begun. It’s not impossible, but the first step has to be accepting the playing field has changed, from the Post to the Times to Twitter. 
 

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If you don’t like the “liberal media”, buy it.

Bezos’ end game is becoming apparent.

Sally Buzbee, the executive editor of The Washington Post since 2021, has stepped down, publisher and CEO William Lewis announced late Sunday.
 

She will be replaced by Matt Murray, the former editor in chief of the Wall Street Journal, Lewis said. After the presidential election in November, Robert Winnett, most recently the deputy editor of Telegraph Media Group, will take over in a newly created role of editor. Both have previously worked with Lewis.

The abrupt shakeup at the top of the Post — which Lewis announced alongside ambitious plans for a new division of the newsroom — is the biggest move by far from the British-born journalist since he took over as CEO in January.

I unfortunately don’t have time for a lot of commentary, but suffice it to say, hiring editors from the Wall St Journal and the Daily Telegraph (one of the primary conservative British newspapers), makes it clear where the newspaper is headed if they can figure out an angle.  They mentioned a new social media division, so maybe that’s their idea to circumvent the local political dynamics and audience. 
 

Their problem is they are based in the absolute worst location for such a strategy and the door will open to an upstart almost immediately if the turn is conspicuous. I am more concerned about more catch and kill like they did with the Alito story, where the conservative bias is more subtle.  Similar to the New York Times. 
 

I have a gut feeling” Democracy dies in Darkness” is about to move from a motto to a mission statement.