A sad day for the Washington Post and Washington DC

As Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon and of the Washington Post, announces the op-ed pages will shift to coverage on "freedom of markets" and "personal liberties"   ("Post owner Bezos announces shift in opinions section," Post, "Washington Post opinion editor departs as Bezos pushes to promote ‘personal liberties and free markets’," Guardian).

While I think it'll likely be "Wall Street Journal-lite"), it is a sad diminishment of the range of opinions offered by the paper.  It's not like I can read George Will or his politically leaning colleagues because of their arguments, but I never minded that they took up space on the pages.

With all the talk about disinformation and misinformation and the need for reliable sources of information, it's sad that the Post is throwing in with this dis- and mis-informatives, as an under-information or incomplete-information provider.  

It's not that you can't write about personal liberties and freedom of markets.  But you're telling an incomplete story if you avoid discussion of real discrimination, minoritarian rule, etc., as well as the need for regulation of markets to reduce the chance for overreach and economic collapse.

It's a long way from what the Graham Family thought were the strengths of Bezos digital knowledge in a future that was and is very uncertain for newspapers ("A Newspaper, and a Legacy, Reordered," New York Times).

From the Washington Post article, "The sale of The Washington Post: How the unthinkable choice became the clear path:"

Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth presented her uncle, company chief executive Donald E. Graham, with a once-unthinkable choice at a lunch meeting at downtown Washington's Bombay Club late last year. The paper was facing the like­lihood of a seventh straight year of declines in revenue, with one preliminary budget estimate showing the possibility of $40 million in losses for 2013. And despite years of heavy investment in new digital offerings, there was little sign that robust profits were about to return, she reported.

That left three choices, Weymouth told Graham. The family could continue presiding over the gradual decline of the newspaper they loved. They could move more aggressively to cut the paper’s staff more deeply than ever, hoping that they could return The Post to sustained profitability by sacrificing its longtime excellence.

Or they could sell, cutting ties to one of America’s iconic news organizations after four generations of family control in the hopes that The Post could thrive again under a new, deep-pocketed, civic-minded owner.

... Several factors allowed the deal to come together with relative speed. They included a long-standing friendship between Bezos and Graham, 68, an executive steeped in traditional newspaper publishing who had become a respected elder for a newer generation of tech magnates. Bezos was among the most successful of those, and the two men had on several occasions traded insights on their businesses.

“The Post is his baby,” Weymouth said of Graham. “He was not going to give his baby to anybody who he thought would not care for it properly.”

Looks like the baby got sold to a serial killer ("Post endorsement controversy sparks staff resignations, protests ," The Hill).

Then again, significant change was predicted, it just took 11 years to see how bad it could be ("No Change? Jeff Bezos Will Turn the Washington Post Upside Down," MediaShift).  First on the list, although actually much later:

So what can we expect to change within the next five years and why? Here are some reasonable assumptions:

The editorial policies, the coverage and the content will reflect the interests and ideologies of the owner. For the U.S. government’s hometown newspaper, that’s something to really be aware of.