thmHow Jeff Bezos Brought Down the Washington Post
I'd been a relatively long-time subscriber (since 2016) and preferred the Post to the Times for political and international news; more focused, a little drier, easier to follow. I canceled my subscription early last year, not because of anything Bezos did, but because the Times had improved to the point where I just wasn't reading the Post very often.
In understanding everything that's being written about the Post layoffs, one thing you absolutely have to understand (you can weight it however you'd like) to have a coherent take is: the New York Times is an anomaly. Newspapers are a terrible business. People don't get news from newspapers anymore, and advertisers don't reach customers through them.
The Times is thriving because they've pivoted from being a newspaper to being a media business. The games vertical is the first thing people talk about, but cooking is arguably a better example. The verticals have dedicated users, their own go-to-markets, their own user retention loops.
Like basically every other newspaper, the Post failed to replicate this. They're staffed like a big media business, not like a targeted vertical like Politico, but they don't successfully operate like a media business.
NYT is good for games and cooking. Their news editors are garbage.
I was a subscriber until last year. They produce outstanding journalism with the exception of their Zionist pro-war bias, which I was ok ignoring until my disgust with their genocide whitewashing became too much.
Have you considered, and hear me out here, that the bias is yours?
I mean if their reporting about everything but this one topic is good, perhaps their “Zionist pro-war bias” and “genocide whitewashing” only seem that way to you because you’ve assumed an extremist position on the issue?