It seems the most obvious market are to get back the people you lost. Maybe figure out why they left?
If not that… it seems like getting the tens of millions who do not consume news is a tall order. Of course they’re going to do the tech bro thing instead. Sigh. It’s like news with NFTs!
It's a ridiculously impossible goal for a newspaper that's been hemorrhaging readers and money for years. I doubt Bezos will spend much more money on it, and there's no one left to fire.
WaPo lost readers partly because of all the right wing crap coming from their op-ed columnists, and the wishy washy job Sally Buzbee was doing. I canceled my subscription in August, 2023, along with my subscription to the NY Times.
I don't give a damn who the new crew is. It's just more crap from Jeff Bezos, who has been slowly destroying the paper ever since he bought it.
Eric’s death was a terrible loss. His book “Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush” is still worth reading — or re-reading — if only to remind people that the mainstream “liberal: media helped set the stage for Trump.
As bad as things are the one bright light for me is far more people recognize it when the mainstream media biases their coverage by downplaying or ignoring egregious anti-democracy behavior from the right while portraying Democrats as equally bad. Years ago few commenters would slam a journalist for those tactics but today readers never miss both-sidesing, downplaying outrageous Republican acts, etc.
Back in the 90s and early 2000s you had to go to sites like Media Matters for that kind of criticism but today you can just read the comments on WaPo articles. In fact today Media Matters is so obsessed with Fox News coverage they do far less criticism of the mainstream media which is where — as Steve Bannon once said — the real damage is done to Democrats.
When Eric died, we lost a great critic of mainstream media, It great that we still have Dan Froomkin, who I began reading at the same time I found Eric on Substack years ago.
Thanks for this post. Most people don’t realize that British media is dominated by pro-Tory conservative and rightwing owners. Now that they have helped burn the Tory Party to the ground with their insane, dishonest support for Brexit and the narcissist clown Boris Johnson, these guys probably believe there is more opportunity in the US media for them to destroy democracy and promote their vision of a plutocratic utopia.
Love the way you've taken them all out to the proverbial woodshed, Dan. All these people deserve unbridled criticism. This is especially true of the parsimonious Bezos (that means cheap, Lewis), who spent less to buy the Washington Post, lock stock and barrel, than he did on his support yacht.
It seems the most obvious market are to get back the people you lost. Maybe figure out why they left?
If not that… it seems like getting the tens of millions who do not consume news is a tall order. Of course they’re going to do the tech bro thing instead. Sigh. It’s like news with NFTs!
It's a ridiculously impossible goal for a newspaper that's been hemorrhaging readers and money for years. I doubt Bezos will spend much more money on it, and there's no one left to fire.
WaPo lost readers partly because of all the right wing crap coming from their op-ed columnists, and the wishy washy job Sally Buzbee was doing. I canceled my subscription in August, 2023, along with my subscription to the NY Times.
I don't give a damn who the new crew is. It's just more crap from Jeff Bezos, who has been slowly destroying the paper ever since he bought it.
And damn it, I miss Eric Boehlert.
Eric’s death was a terrible loss. His book “Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush” is still worth reading — or re-reading — if only to remind people that the mainstream “liberal: media helped set the stage for Trump.
As bad as things are the one bright light for me is far more people recognize it when the mainstream media biases their coverage by downplaying or ignoring egregious anti-democracy behavior from the right while portraying Democrats as equally bad. Years ago few commenters would slam a journalist for those tactics but today readers never miss both-sidesing, downplaying outrageous Republican acts, etc.
Back in the 90s and early 2000s you had to go to sites like Media Matters for that kind of criticism but today you can just read the comments on WaPo articles. In fact today Media Matters is so obsessed with Fox News coverage they do far less criticism of the mainstream media which is where — as Steve Bannon once said — the real damage is done to Democrats.
When Eric died, we lost a great critic of mainstream media, It great that we still have Dan Froomkin, who I began reading at the same time I found Eric on Substack years ago.
Oh. Eric. He was amazing. 😭
Excellent piece, Dan!
Thanks so much, Neil! We should talk sometime.
Thanks for this post. Most people don’t realize that British media is dominated by pro-Tory conservative and rightwing owners. Now that they have helped burn the Tory Party to the ground with their insane, dishonest support for Brexit and the narcissist clown Boris Johnson, these guys probably believe there is more opportunity in the US media for them to destroy democracy and promote their vision of a plutocratic utopia.
Love the way you've taken them all out to the proverbial woodshed, Dan. All these people deserve unbridled criticism. This is especially true of the parsimonious Bezos (that means cheap, Lewis), who spent less to buy the Washington Post, lock stock and barrel, than he did on his support yacht.