OT: Washington Post layoffs
- Thread starter WestCoastWildcat
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Somewhat NU related in that all those Medill grads have no WaPo to go to work for
I feel like I have my finger over the button right now. I could launch the bomb.
I read your response before you wrote it. There's a real world out there, things don't happen a vacuum. What's the connection? A climate of chaos, fear and retribution, fomented largely by one man, who demands subservience. While techtim's assessment is largely correct, there's another factor, the mind of a man who curry's favor from a highly corrupt individual. What I posted. was not conspiracy theory, in the sense of say, the existence of someone's birth certificate, it is a plausible supposition. You know, the journalist Don Lemon was jailed the other day for covering a rally in a church right here in St. Paul. Journalists are now under attack, even for things like being fat, or ugly, or not smiling.... Retribution seems to no longer have restraint. I took AdamOnFirst's dictum to heart, "Let us have it out man, it’s boring as hell around here since UW landed Miller." There's an NU sports connection for ya. Another is that all sports have rules and referees. Which seem to be being disappeared in society at large.
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Peggy Noonan with here thoughts on WAPO (agrees with C and Tim):
The diminishment of the Washington Post hits hard because it feels like another demoralizing thing in our national life. Our public life as a nation—how we are together, how we talk to each other, the sound of us—isn’t what it was. It’s gone down and we all feel this, all the grown-ups.
The Post was a pillar. The sweeping layoffs and narrowing of coverage announced this week followed years of buyouts and shrinking sections. None of this feels like the restructuring of a paper or a rearranging of priorities, but like the doing-in of a paper, a great one, a thing of journalistic grandeur from some point in the 1960s through some point in the 2020s. I feel it damaged itself when, under the pressure of the pandemic, George Floyd and huge technological and journalistic changes, it wobbled—and not in the opinion section but on the news side. But I kept my subscription because that is a way of trusting, of giving a great paper time to steady itself. (And there would always be an important David Ignatius column, or a great scoop on some governmental scandal that made it worth the cost.)
But the Post’s diminishment, which looks like its demise, isn’t just a “media story.” Reaction shouldn’t break down along ideological lines, in which the left feels journalism is its precinct and is sad, and the right feels journalism is its hulking enemy and isn’t sad. Treat it that way and we’ll fail to see the story for its true significance. The capital of the most powerful nation on earth appears to be without a vital, fully functioning newspaper to cover it. That isn’t the occasion of jokes, it’s a disaster.
I fear sometimes that few people really care about journalism, but we are dead without it. Someday something bad will happen, something terrible on a national scale, and the thing we’ll need most, literally to survive, is information. Reliable information—a way to get it, and then to get it to the public. That is what journalism is, getting the information.
You have to think of it as part of your country’s survival system. Maybe the government will or won’t tell you the truth about what’s going on, maybe the Pentagon will or won’t, but if you know you’ve got this fabulous island of broken toys, professional journalists working for a reputable news organization, you’ve got a real chance of learning what’s true.
It takes years to make good reporters—people who are trained, who love getting the story so much, who love the news so much, that they will wade into the fire, run to the sound of the guns. They are grown only in newsrooms, not at home with laptops. They are taught by older craftsmen and professionals, through stories and lore.
The Post’s greatness and expertise can’t easily be replaced and perhaps can’t be replaced at all, or at least not for decades of committed building.
It is possible what we’re witnessing is an owner, Jeff Bezos, deciding that his newspaper is a 20th-century structure in a 21st-century world, that it couldn’t be changed or gradually moderated, so he and his executives are tearing it down to the studs. Maybe he’ll sell it, maybe he’ll keep it and rebuild it. But that will take a long, long time. You can’t immediately get or win back the stature of a thing, the presence, the professionalism. You can’t snap your fingers, wash away a whole world, erect a new one, and have it work well and quickly.
And this will have an impact on our democracy.
Why is the end of a great newspaper not good for democracy? Let’s journey back to Thomas Jefferson, in Paris in 1787, as American minister to France. Back home they were debating the U.S. Constitution. In a letter dated Jan. 16 to his friend Edward Carrington, a member of the Continental Congress, his thoughts: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” He wasn’t being flip. He understood journalism was a defense against tyranny.
Government by its nature always wants to accumulate power and use it. A watchful press slows this process, sometimes stops it, by exposing its abuses.
If citizens are informed, they can self-govern from a rough baseline of realism. “The good sense of the people,” Jefferson wrote, is always “the best army.” True, they can be “led astray,” but their mistakes will be limited and can be corrected through information that can “penetrate the whole mass of the people.” When the public is uninformed, those running government “shall all become wolves.”
He absolutely knew those who report could produce work that was partisan, inaccurate, sensationalistic. He himself became quite the mischievous manipulator of the press. But again, the process could self-correct, especially if a nation had a big, burgeoning information culture, with everyone keeping an eye on everyone else.
In any case he was certain a free press was safer for the republic than what would otherwise become government censorship and propaganda.
This is so self-evidently true—and so pertinent to this moment!—that it becomes obvious that the capital of the most powerful nation in the world, operating without a big main newspaper to monitor it, is a danger and a threat.
I do not understand the figure of Mr. Bezos. Nice man, met him, always treated as kind of business visionary, and fair enough! But what is he about right now? I can’t believe the fourth-wealthiest person in the world (and in history) would dash his own historic reputation to curry favor with the Trump administration. For what, more contracts? He’s got enough contracts! It’s so small-time, so penny-ante. What matters is honor, that’s the thing that lasts, what history says of you, how you helped your country.
As for those who execute diminishments, we are in the midst of a continuing technological revolution, the internet upended the business model, it’s hard out there. But I’ll tell you, I have been meeting the same media executives for 20 years, and there’s something wrong. Their eyes light up as they offer lengthy, detailed explanations of the challenges to modern journalism—why it’s dying, why nothing works. When talk turns to what to do, how to negotiate the landscape, their eyes turn dead. It isn’t just that they don’t know how, it’s that they’ve fallen in love with the doom loop. Their only creativity is in describing everything that is killing their company, and they have vivid words for it—“strangling,” “pummeling.” They have no words for coming alive and enduring. Might this be part of the problem?
Finally, losing the one major newspaper left in the great nation’s capital—and during the Trump administration no less, during a time of the easy abuse of standards and traditions, of inching up to and then inching over the law, in a pattern that promises not to get better but worse—is more than a Jeffersonian nightmare, it is a kind of sin. The kind history doesn’t easily forgive
The diminishment of the Washington Post hits hard because it feels like another demoralizing thing in our national life. Our public life as a nation—how we are together, how we talk to each other, the sound of us—isn’t what it was. It’s gone down and we all feel this, all the grown-ups.
The Post was a pillar. The sweeping layoffs and narrowing of coverage announced this week followed years of buyouts and shrinking sections. None of this feels like the restructuring of a paper or a rearranging of priorities, but like the doing-in of a paper, a great one, a thing of journalistic grandeur from some point in the 1960s through some point in the 2020s. I feel it damaged itself when, under the pressure of the pandemic, George Floyd and huge technological and journalistic changes, it wobbled—and not in the opinion section but on the news side. But I kept my subscription because that is a way of trusting, of giving a great paper time to steady itself. (And there would always be an important David Ignatius column, or a great scoop on some governmental scandal that made it worth the cost.)
But the Post’s diminishment, which looks like its demise, isn’t just a “media story.” Reaction shouldn’t break down along ideological lines, in which the left feels journalism is its precinct and is sad, and the right feels journalism is its hulking enemy and isn’t sad. Treat it that way and we’ll fail to see the story for its true significance. The capital of the most powerful nation on earth appears to be without a vital, fully functioning newspaper to cover it. That isn’t the occasion of jokes, it’s a disaster.
I fear sometimes that few people really care about journalism, but we are dead without it. Someday something bad will happen, something terrible on a national scale, and the thing we’ll need most, literally to survive, is information. Reliable information—a way to get it, and then to get it to the public. That is what journalism is, getting the information.
You have to think of it as part of your country’s survival system. Maybe the government will or won’t tell you the truth about what’s going on, maybe the Pentagon will or won’t, but if you know you’ve got this fabulous island of broken toys, professional journalists working for a reputable news organization, you’ve got a real chance of learning what’s true.
It takes years to make good reporters—people who are trained, who love getting the story so much, who love the news so much, that they will wade into the fire, run to the sound of the guns. They are grown only in newsrooms, not at home with laptops. They are taught by older craftsmen and professionals, through stories and lore.
The Post’s greatness and expertise can’t easily be replaced and perhaps can’t be replaced at all, or at least not for decades of committed building.
It is possible what we’re witnessing is an owner, Jeff Bezos, deciding that his newspaper is a 20th-century structure in a 21st-century world, that it couldn’t be changed or gradually moderated, so he and his executives are tearing it down to the studs. Maybe he’ll sell it, maybe he’ll keep it and rebuild it. But that will take a long, long time. You can’t immediately get or win back the stature of a thing, the presence, the professionalism. You can’t snap your fingers, wash away a whole world, erect a new one, and have it work well and quickly.
And this will have an impact on our democracy.
Why is the end of a great newspaper not good for democracy? Let’s journey back to Thomas Jefferson, in Paris in 1787, as American minister to France. Back home they were debating the U.S. Constitution. In a letter dated Jan. 16 to his friend Edward Carrington, a member of the Continental Congress, his thoughts: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” He wasn’t being flip. He understood journalism was a defense against tyranny.
Government by its nature always wants to accumulate power and use it. A watchful press slows this process, sometimes stops it, by exposing its abuses.
If citizens are informed, they can self-govern from a rough baseline of realism. “The good sense of the people,” Jefferson wrote, is always “the best army.” True, they can be “led astray,” but their mistakes will be limited and can be corrected through information that can “penetrate the whole mass of the people.” When the public is uninformed, those running government “shall all become wolves.”
He absolutely knew those who report could produce work that was partisan, inaccurate, sensationalistic. He himself became quite the mischievous manipulator of the press. But again, the process could self-correct, especially if a nation had a big, burgeoning information culture, with everyone keeping an eye on everyone else.
In any case he was certain a free press was safer for the republic than what would otherwise become government censorship and propaganda.
This is so self-evidently true—and so pertinent to this moment!—that it becomes obvious that the capital of the most powerful nation in the world, operating without a big main newspaper to monitor it, is a danger and a threat.
I do not understand the figure of Mr. Bezos. Nice man, met him, always treated as kind of business visionary, and fair enough! But what is he about right now? I can’t believe the fourth-wealthiest person in the world (and in history) would dash his own historic reputation to curry favor with the Trump administration. For what, more contracts? He’s got enough contracts! It’s so small-time, so penny-ante. What matters is honor, that’s the thing that lasts, what history says of you, how you helped your country.
As for those who execute diminishments, we are in the midst of a continuing technological revolution, the internet upended the business model, it’s hard out there. But I’ll tell you, I have been meeting the same media executives for 20 years, and there’s something wrong. Their eyes light up as they offer lengthy, detailed explanations of the challenges to modern journalism—why it’s dying, why nothing works. When talk turns to what to do, how to negotiate the landscape, their eyes turn dead. It isn’t just that they don’t know how, it’s that they’ve fallen in love with the doom loop. Their only creativity is in describing everything that is killing their company, and they have vivid words for it—“strangling,” “pummeling.” They have no words for coming alive and enduring. Might this be part of the problem?
Finally, losing the one major newspaper left in the great nation’s capital—and during the Trump administration no less, during a time of the easy abuse of standards and traditions, of inching up to and then inching over the law, in a pattern that promises not to get better but worse—is more than a Jeffersonian nightmare, it is a kind of sin. The kind history doesn’t easily forgive
The good news is that we still have the Daily Northwestern to inform us.
"The left-wing of the Democratic Party for years has advocated violence as a means to political change. They have voiced support for..."
Who is "they"? This is a canard, and certainly not true generally. One might ask, who is now carrying out violence against Americans on a massive scale in our streets? You seem to want to end any discussion in which you cannot defend your position. The war on the free press is but one aspect of a generally repressive regime. You support that?
That’s a tremendous stretch. That makes almost literally anything NU related.
They = left wing of your effed up party
Your vice president is a never your president guy. Not sure I’d be throwing stones at an institutional level.
Yes, in the sense that they were not able to offer a better option to corruption and repression, I definitely agree with you. However, there is no comparison in terms of decency vs. villainy. Are there articles in your local papers about the underground economy that has sprung up here in the TC because citizens, and I stress citizens, are afraid to leave their homes?
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Haven’t made it to the back page. Still getting through the Somalian day care fraud articles or was it health care.
Very few are disagreeing with you, mistakes were made. However, you appear to be equating the tyranny that is unfolding with bad judgement. Everyone makes mistakes, some do it consciously, continuously and with mendacity. Your ground is quicksand. The national TV news here now feels like the local news, including FOX. Are you really trying to defend this massive corruption, criminality and dismissal of the constitution by saying everyone does it? Or, perhaps you just enjoy being lied to? Look, most everyone wants the southern border problems fixed, but almost no one by the Federal government declaring war arbitrarily on everyday citizens, and lots of them all over the country. That is what is happening here. I cannot believe you (and HJ) are radical right, but you sure are sounding like it. Maybe read the Constitution tonight and get back to us?Haven’t made it to the back page. Still getting through the Somalian day care fraud articles or was it health care.
Thank you Cappy for indulging us with this most important discussion. It has not gotten out of hand yet, and hopefully won't. You may see the need during very troubled times for a conversation board outside of NU Sports, which is why we are here primarily.
Won’t find it at NYU or Columbia. They are Progressive waste lands.
The perfect validation of the need for NPR and non profit non partisan TV. Ezos is only interested in making money and sniffing Trump's diapers! He has already shown multiple times that he is a Magat and doesn't want an informed general public criticism of his God, Der Dope. Another dangerous step towards a plutocratic, authoritarian State
Holman Jenkins reported that Twitter is burning $1 billion per month. That eventually will die too.
He will Cap it if it descends into personal insults and name calling. As long as you behave it will be fine. Don’t get all triggered if I make horse jokes or poke fun at Bernie and Gavin.
Read the constitution? You mean the part where it says States can’t override Federal law?
What a load of utter BS. "Most everyone wants the southern border problems fixed"??????? Horseshiite. For 4 years your side wanted an open border. No one in liberal mainstream media gave a rat's *** that millions of predominantly unvetted illegal aliens were pouring into the country. Very, very few on the left gave a crap about the Laken Rileys killed, raped etc. by the criminal illegals the Biden Administration let in. The current Administration promised to try to fix the problem the Left created. So Walz and Frey and other leftist hacks keep crying Gestapo etc. to encourage agitators to interfere with ICE agents doing their job. And you echo that BS about "massive corruption", dismissal of the Constitution etc., which defines what Minnesota and its leaders have done and continue to do with the massive Somali fraud and encouragement of illegal activities (which would go unprosecuted in your State anyway).
That said, watching lonely bitter white women at checkpoints making sure any ICE agents passing through are harassed and obstructed so that criminal illegals are protected in their sanctuary MN locations is somewhat amusing.
How many women did your hero Trump and his best buddy Epstein rape?
Pathetic, all of you. The retribution against this terrible regime will be glorious once Trump is finally out of power, pooping his pants full time at Mar A Lago
Cat lady patrols?
Seriously, we would not have this horrendous ICE situation if the Biden administration had simply been reasonable about the border. They opened the floodgates in the midst of a pandemic.
this does not excuse ICE, who is tragically unprepared for the job. But if the progressives in blue states would perhaps drop the sanctuary policy and allow ICE to vet the local criminal justice populations, this could be avoided. There could be compromise.
My former alderman Cappleman warned me about Progressives a few years ago. They refuse any bit of compromise, and play nasty games. It’s why he retired.
Man, I used to think you were smarter than the average MAGA bear.
Trump and his cronies has shredded the Constitution as quickly as he sh#ts his pants these days.
Instead of fixing the immigration process, he has set back America while Canada and every other country steals the PhDs who used to clamor to be Americans.
Thank God my kids have dual citizenship and can get out if they want to someday.
I would encourage your kids and any other citizens that don’t want to be here, to explore their options.
They’re too young to choose or comprehend what is happening to the Bill of Rights and Constitution on a daily basis. But they’ll have the option, which is nice.
Don’t worry brother - I ain’t going nowhere!
You are wrong on so many of your points, that a response is not needed, you have just proven your ignorance of what is happening here.
Well, you are correct about one thing--early in Biden's term there was a very uncontrolled open border policy, which was caused by a number of factors, including Biden's policy. And you are not correct, most people want a controlled southern border, including those of us on the left. Minnesotans in particular are dramatically and widely opposing this massive attack on ordinary citizens as a way of pretending to solve what has been a crisis at our southern border. This is not some small fringe group of leftist radicals, it is massively widespread and includes all stripes. If you had any clue who is being harrassed, beaten, arrested and in some cases deported, and why, you wouldn't have been able to write this nonsense. It's basically a regurgitation of FOX News talking points.
Is that the same Constitution that asserts that states must obey federal laws?
hope your kids have fun in Canada.
They’re not half Canadian
Did you see that ICE is now free to enter churches and homes without barriers? What’s about those pesky 1st and 4th amendments?
This country has been on the wrong trajectory for sometime.
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