At the Washington Post, a mortal wound

When I was a senior editor in the Journal’s Washington bureau in the 1980s and ’90s, I often ran the few blocks to the Post’s building at 9 p.m. to grab early copies of the paper to see if we’d been beaten on a big story.

When I was executive editor of the Times, I was devastated when the Post broke the story of widespread domestic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency, but it made me extra determined to break other aspects of this important coverage. The Post’s coverage deservedly won it a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2014.

The Post’s excellence inspired great work across the profession, beginning with Watergate, which forced the resignation of then-president Richard Nixon. Reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein inspired young journalists, including me, to make a career of investigative reporting and holding power accountable. Its cartoonists and photographers were the best in the business.

So I was stunned when the Graham family decided to sell the paper in 2013 to Jeff Bezos for $250 million.

The sale came at the bumpiest and most disruptive point in journalism’s digital transition. The Post was no longer profitable, and other newspapers across the nation were closing left and right. Donald Graham, the publisher, had worked on every desk and department of the newspaper (he loved sports the best), but he could not see a clear path forward for his family’s beloved company or the newspaper they had made into a precious national institution.

In interviews for a book I wrote about the digital transformation of journalism, Graham told me that he had total confidence Bezos would be a good steward of the Post. He said he had found a white knight.

For years, Bezos pumped money into the Post. He allowed its editors to brandish “Democracy Dies in Darkness” across the Post’s front and home pages after Donald Trump moved into the White House in 2017. Under editor Martin Baron, Post journalism was the gold standard, and Bezos did not interfere with coverage.

But as the 2024 election loomed, Bezos inserted himself into his publication. A supporter of Trump, Bezos killed the paper’s endorsement of Trump’s opponent, Kamala Harris, a Democrat. More than 200,000 readers canceled their subscriptions, and some of the Post’s best journalists began what became a tidal wave of resignations.

Then came another controversial kill, this one by the Post’s opinion editor, of a cartoon by Pulitzer-winning Ann Telnaes that showed billionaires, including Bezos, courting Trump with bags of money. Looking back, it’s clear that the cartoon was spot on. Telnaes quit.

Sally Buzbee, who was hired as editor after Baron retired, was abruptly pushed out. The paper was still bleeding talent and money.

Buzbee was replaced with Matt Murray, who was hired from The Wall Street Journal. He has tried hard to right the ship, and his newsroom was still scoring important scoops through Wednesday’s staff massacre. But three friends still at the Post told me the publisher, Will Lewis, was to blame for not having a clear strategy for making the Post profitable.

Why would Bezos buy a storied news publication only to weaken it, they asked? He has a net worth of nearly $250 billion, so the Post’s losses, however big, were the equivalent of a billionaire’s pocket change. After all, he readily shelled out $1 million for Donald Trump’s second inauguration through Amazon and has been among the tech titans invited to the White House. He spent $47 million to $56 million on his recent Venetian wedding, according to Reuters.

And then there’s this: On Thursday morning, the Post’s website hosted a story about the bloodletting — written by an Associated Press reporter. For this once-great media organization, the retreat from the news couldn’t be signaled any clearer.