Buck Fezos

The Washington Post just laid off 30% of its reporters, shuttering its sports desk, it's Middle East offices, it's Silly Con Valley offices.

Amazon Bezos never wanted the paper as anything beyond a political bargaining chip that would allow him to generate legislation to facilitate his rent seeking at Amazon. 

If you recall the story of the frog and the scorpion, the question as to why he would do this is simple, it is his nature.

In August of 2019, Senator Bernie Sanders faced negative coverage of his Presidential campaign by a vaunted national newspaper, the Washington Post. This publication was revered in D.C., having broken the Watergate scandals and brought down Richard Nixon in the 1970s. It had delivered a host of important stories over the decades since, seen as a public trust so important that Steven Spielberg made a movie about the publisher’s decision to help publish the Pentagon Papers. But like most newspapers, it had stumbled in the early 2010s.

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In 2013, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post for $250 million. Local elites in D.C. were immensely grateful to Bezos. The paper adopted the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” and took on a sharp edge against Donald Trump. Bezos had deep pockets, and had saved the town’s pride.

Six years later, Sanders, running for President against what he called the billionaire class, did something unusual in polite liberal society. He said Bezos had an incentive to shade coverage of politicians he didn’t like. Sanders had been discussing how Amazon doesn’t pay enough in taxes.

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And that comment created a bitter reaction within D.C. towards the populist politician. The executive editor of the Washington Post, a deeply respected man named Marty Baron (played by Liev Schreiber in the 2015 film “Spotlight”), responded the way all of D.C. felt. He called Sanders a conspiracy theorist.

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What a difference six years makes.

Yesterday, the Washington Post engaged in layoffs across the organization, getting rid of the Middle East team, war correspondents, its entire sports department, and everyone in the West coast office who covers big tech. Local coverage will be cut to just 12 people. Overall, Bezos is firing 300 out of 800 reporters, decimating what is widely regarded as a key newspaper covering government in America. “It’s an absolute bloodbath,” said one employee.

Importantly, the paper also fired the reporter tracking Amazon. The stated reason is that the company is losing money due to a loss of local market power, falling ad revenue, and generative AI. 

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As Louis Brandeis once said, “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.”

That is a lesson Jeff Bezos is helping to impart to all of us, once again. 

The power of these people needs to be broken, period, full stop.