JimofPennsylvan
Platinum Member
- Jun 6, 2007
- 952
- 714
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Bloody Wednesday, two Wednesdays ago, the Washington Post cut a third of their staff approximately 300 journalists and essentially shut down the Sports Section of the newspaper. Many people are crying that this spells the ruin of this storied paper; I agree if this status quo remains but it doesn't have to! Whose to blame here? Jeff Bezos one hundred percent! Bezos ruined the reputation of this newspaper, people read a newspaper because of its reputation. If a person wants to read a newspaper and just get headline news and not focus on heavy stuff they read the USA Today and if they want to get headline news, some in-depth reporting and get knowledgeable about the economy, financials and the markets they read the Wall Street Journal; a newspapers reputation makes the decision for people whether they should read it! Bezos's catastrophic blunders ruined the Washington Post reputation, namely in part prohibiting the Washington Post from endorsing a Presidential candidate within two weeks of the 2024 Presidential election when the editorial board had already made the decision to endorse Kamala Harris and banning editorial articles that go against the promotion of personal liberties and free markets (the globalization economic model). This established the Washington Post's reputation as the newspaper of Jeff Bezos who is a panderer, enabler and sellout to President Donald Trump Bezos its reputation is no longer of a great and really first-rate newspaper!
These blunders by Bezos significantly hurt circulation the Presidential endorsement blunder at least caused the loss of three hundred thousand digital subscribers and the editorial page blunder cost at least 75,000 digital subscribers per NPR, the Washinton Post has said they gained back many of these subscribers but they fail to say by offering huge discounts. The bottom line because of Bezos's damage to the reputation of the Washington Post subscription is way down and at the yearly rate of $140 per year for a digital subscription at the Post each 100,000 loss of subscribers cost the paper $14 million dollars.
These are the facts before Jeff Bezos severely mismanaged the Washington Post, the Washington Post was in the top tier of national newspapers in the country this tier was made up of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post these papers were far above the next tier in terms of consistent wide range of stories and depth and quality of stories if someone really wanted to become a knowledgeable citizen they consistently read one of these newspapers. Bezos by cutting over five hundred journalist from the Washington Post since 2022 has taken the Washington Post out of this top echelon of newspapers. These newspapers not only made the Americans that consistently read them well informed but made them better citizens and made government more accountable and more transparent these newspapers played a vital role in making our country and Democracy strong and effective! Bezos by ruining the Washington Post has ruined an asset of our country and our Democracy; this really bad act by Bezos should not stand! Many sources including the writers guild for Washington Post journalists have called for Jeff Bezos to sell the Washington Post and they are spot on Jeff Bezos should sell it to a good buyer not one of these private equity firms that look at businesses short term (and cause great harm with their ownership) sell it to a wealthy individual (America has plenty of such people) that will invest in it and be concerned with the long-term well-being of the newspaper. Today the print edition of the Washington Post is one hundred thousand that should readily be able to be lifted to two hundred thousand copies per day America has an abundance of Americans that passionate and have an almost unsatiable desire for political and sports news (bring back the Sports Section) this newspaper should be found on newsstands all along the east coast just like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times is today and digital subscriptions should readily be able to be increased another half a million. The new owner needs to invest significantly for five to seven years to turn it around and rebuild the Post's reputation and I am not saying that the paper should be a continual money pit which operates in the red just the opposite I think it can and should be profitable of course the media landscape has changed from years past and the competition for media dollars is intense with the internet and its social media outlets and podcasts, etc. so legacy newspapers like the Washington Post have to be run lean but they can and need to survive for the American people's sake!
Jeff Bezos has what I call Executitis which is he has been an Executive too long he has lost perspective he thinks every idea that enters his mind as a good idea is in fact a good idea he doesn't scrutinize enough. On Bezos idea to stop the Washington Post from endorsing on Presidential elections he thinks that newspaper endorsements don't in and of themselves cause people to change their vote and so newspapers shouldn't lose their independence endorsing a candidate that may be true they don't sway individual voters in large numbers but newspapers endorsements help form public opinion and public opinion moves individual citizens in significant numbers to vote one way or another and the American people like and think it is a good thing when newspaper editorial boards endorse candidates because newspaper editorial boards are full of people that are knowledgeable about the issues so they offer a well informed decision on who are the best candidates and that is an asset for good communities and a good country. On the editorial page restriction decision Bezos is wrong on many fronts but one that stands out is his promotion and protection of the globalization economic model this model is pure evil (as evil as entities like slavery) considering how it has destroyed individuals, families and communities; a government's top duty is not to get low priced goods for consumers but to create livable wage jobs for its people and domestic manufacturing industries are the fertile field to create these jobs almost all domestic manufacturing industries whose price point of goods can support middle class incomes should be protected at least at a sixty percent level for domestic producers, free market ideology like what Bezos promulgates which is against this should have no place in America! An owner of a major newspaper that protects this evil should be continually pressured and the like to sell that newspaper!
People like Jeff Bezos who are enormously successful and powerful don't think in a spiritual sense that if you do really bad things, badness comes back to you "but it does" and often it haunts you in much larger proportion! Donald Trump is a perfect example with his enforcement of America's immigration laws in a really bad manner, his use of the Department of Justice as a tool to punish his enemies, his trying to take one of our Nato's allies sovereign territory that is Greenland from Denmark, the Big Beautiful Bill which he captained through which significantly helped big business and the wealthy by increasing the burden on the poor, needy and middle class; there is almost countless other bad things that he has done even from his first term the 2017 tax bill which permanently ruined the country's finances, to be responsible for the withdrawal from Afghanistan which betrayed the veterans who fought, died and were wounded there and Americas allies that fought with us there. This badness has left Donald Trump as a plague of badness that is unredeemable and unsavable he will just be spewing badness in the extreme until he has left the public stage! Another example, Elon Musk what he did as the head of DOGE was bad in the extreme the shuttering of large parts of USAID has cost the lives of tens of thousands of people throughout the world the other cuts he made blocking grants that had already been authorized and many times promised by the Federal government has caused immemorable harm. Elon has paid a dear dear price for this badness I don't think many people would take a TESLA car if you gave it to them free they see Elon Musk as having atrocious character as a financial whore who will shape shift into whatever is called for to benefit himself financially even to help a deplorable and despicable person like Donald Trump. A person attuned to what is bad and good can see it loud and clear with Musk's pursuit of making his XAI company like Anthropic or Open AI or Google AI it ain't going to happen he is too far behind he is just going to end up hurting the finances of Space X, not to mention Musk foolish pursuit of widespread utilization of autonomous cars in America the American people won't go along with the cost of human lives this will incur!
There is a lot of ways that badness can creep into Jeff Bezos's life if he is culpable in the ruin of the Washington Post, a valuable asset of America's Democracy, by not selling this newspaper which he has taken a meat clever to and ruined its reputation. One, the Amazon corporation has a phenomenal retail business with the Amazon website but a financial golden goose for the corporation is the unit called Amazon Web Services which makes tons of money selling Information technology services like cloud services, data storage, etc. and that whole business is changing with AI; will there be new winners will AWS be able to make the AI jump it needs to to successfully compete, the jury is out on the whole industry, nevertheless, this is an area which misfortune could befall Bezos better for Jeff to let the Washington Post go and put it on a trajectory to equal its past success and focus on his gooses that lay golden eggs!
These blunders by Bezos significantly hurt circulation the Presidential endorsement blunder at least caused the loss of three hundred thousand digital subscribers and the editorial page blunder cost at least 75,000 digital subscribers per NPR, the Washinton Post has said they gained back many of these subscribers but they fail to say by offering huge discounts. The bottom line because of Bezos's damage to the reputation of the Washington Post subscription is way down and at the yearly rate of $140 per year for a digital subscription at the Post each 100,000 loss of subscribers cost the paper $14 million dollars.
These are the facts before Jeff Bezos severely mismanaged the Washington Post, the Washington Post was in the top tier of national newspapers in the country this tier was made up of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post these papers were far above the next tier in terms of consistent wide range of stories and depth and quality of stories if someone really wanted to become a knowledgeable citizen they consistently read one of these newspapers. Bezos by cutting over five hundred journalist from the Washington Post since 2022 has taken the Washington Post out of this top echelon of newspapers. These newspapers not only made the Americans that consistently read them well informed but made them better citizens and made government more accountable and more transparent these newspapers played a vital role in making our country and Democracy strong and effective! Bezos by ruining the Washington Post has ruined an asset of our country and our Democracy; this really bad act by Bezos should not stand! Many sources including the writers guild for Washington Post journalists have called for Jeff Bezos to sell the Washington Post and they are spot on Jeff Bezos should sell it to a good buyer not one of these private equity firms that look at businesses short term (and cause great harm with their ownership) sell it to a wealthy individual (America has plenty of such people) that will invest in it and be concerned with the long-term well-being of the newspaper. Today the print edition of the Washington Post is one hundred thousand that should readily be able to be lifted to two hundred thousand copies per day America has an abundance of Americans that passionate and have an almost unsatiable desire for political and sports news (bring back the Sports Section) this newspaper should be found on newsstands all along the east coast just like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times is today and digital subscriptions should readily be able to be increased another half a million. The new owner needs to invest significantly for five to seven years to turn it around and rebuild the Post's reputation and I am not saying that the paper should be a continual money pit which operates in the red just the opposite I think it can and should be profitable of course the media landscape has changed from years past and the competition for media dollars is intense with the internet and its social media outlets and podcasts, etc. so legacy newspapers like the Washington Post have to be run lean but they can and need to survive for the American people's sake!
Jeff Bezos has what I call Executitis which is he has been an Executive too long he has lost perspective he thinks every idea that enters his mind as a good idea is in fact a good idea he doesn't scrutinize enough. On Bezos idea to stop the Washington Post from endorsing on Presidential elections he thinks that newspaper endorsements don't in and of themselves cause people to change their vote and so newspapers shouldn't lose their independence endorsing a candidate that may be true they don't sway individual voters in large numbers but newspapers endorsements help form public opinion and public opinion moves individual citizens in significant numbers to vote one way or another and the American people like and think it is a good thing when newspaper editorial boards endorse candidates because newspaper editorial boards are full of people that are knowledgeable about the issues so they offer a well informed decision on who are the best candidates and that is an asset for good communities and a good country. On the editorial page restriction decision Bezos is wrong on many fronts but one that stands out is his promotion and protection of the globalization economic model this model is pure evil (as evil as entities like slavery) considering how it has destroyed individuals, families and communities; a government's top duty is not to get low priced goods for consumers but to create livable wage jobs for its people and domestic manufacturing industries are the fertile field to create these jobs almost all domestic manufacturing industries whose price point of goods can support middle class incomes should be protected at least at a sixty percent level for domestic producers, free market ideology like what Bezos promulgates which is against this should have no place in America! An owner of a major newspaper that protects this evil should be continually pressured and the like to sell that newspaper!
People like Jeff Bezos who are enormously successful and powerful don't think in a spiritual sense that if you do really bad things, badness comes back to you "but it does" and often it haunts you in much larger proportion! Donald Trump is a perfect example with his enforcement of America's immigration laws in a really bad manner, his use of the Department of Justice as a tool to punish his enemies, his trying to take one of our Nato's allies sovereign territory that is Greenland from Denmark, the Big Beautiful Bill which he captained through which significantly helped big business and the wealthy by increasing the burden on the poor, needy and middle class; there is almost countless other bad things that he has done even from his first term the 2017 tax bill which permanently ruined the country's finances, to be responsible for the withdrawal from Afghanistan which betrayed the veterans who fought, died and were wounded there and Americas allies that fought with us there. This badness has left Donald Trump as a plague of badness that is unredeemable and unsavable he will just be spewing badness in the extreme until he has left the public stage! Another example, Elon Musk what he did as the head of DOGE was bad in the extreme the shuttering of large parts of USAID has cost the lives of tens of thousands of people throughout the world the other cuts he made blocking grants that had already been authorized and many times promised by the Federal government has caused immemorable harm. Elon has paid a dear dear price for this badness I don't think many people would take a TESLA car if you gave it to them free they see Elon Musk as having atrocious character as a financial whore who will shape shift into whatever is called for to benefit himself financially even to help a deplorable and despicable person like Donald Trump. A person attuned to what is bad and good can see it loud and clear with Musk's pursuit of making his XAI company like Anthropic or Open AI or Google AI it ain't going to happen he is too far behind he is just going to end up hurting the finances of Space X, not to mention Musk foolish pursuit of widespread utilization of autonomous cars in America the American people won't go along with the cost of human lives this will incur!
There is a lot of ways that badness can creep into Jeff Bezos's life if he is culpable in the ruin of the Washington Post, a valuable asset of America's Democracy, by not selling this newspaper which he has taken a meat clever to and ruined its reputation. One, the Amazon corporation has a phenomenal retail business with the Amazon website but a financial golden goose for the corporation is the unit called Amazon Web Services which makes tons of money selling Information technology services like cloud services, data storage, etc. and that whole business is changing with AI; will there be new winners will AWS be able to make the AI jump it needs to to successfully compete, the jury is out on the whole industry, nevertheless, this is an area which misfortune could befall Bezos better for Jeff to let the Washington Post go and put it on a trajectory to equal its past success and focus on his gooses that lay golden eggs!
