Where Jeff Bezos Went Wrong With The Washington Post

<div><div><div><div><p>The billionaire handled his ownership admirably for more than a decade. But his courage failed him when he needed it most.</p></div></div><div><div><img alt="A collage of cut-out strips of Jeff Bezos interspersed with the Washington Post building" src="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/yva0YifO4m-UMSuGYAYR8iIG7Po=/0x0:21…; width="648"></div>Illustration by Akshita Chandra / The Atlantic. Sources: Gareth Cattermole / Getty; Andrew Harnik / Getty.</div></div><div><p>T<span>he day the world learned</span> that Jeff Bezos would buy <i>The Washington Post</i>, the Amazon founder offered assurances that he would not cower when faced with threats from a vengeful president and his appointees.</p><p>He <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/did-you-catch-bezo… memories</a> of Richard Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, who warned that the legendary publisher Katharine Graham was “gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer” if the <i>Post</i> published one of its Watergate stories. “While I hope no one ever threatens to put one of my body parts through a wringer,” Bezos wrote to the paper’s anxious journalists in August 2013, “if they do, thanks to Mrs. Graham’s example, I’ll be ready.”</p><p>I led the newsroom at the time Bezos bought the <i>Post</i>. For a long while, he fulfilled his promise to the paper and its readers, exceeding my expectations. Then he faltered badly.</p><p>Now we know that Bezos is no Katharine Graham. It has been sad and unnerving to watch Bezos fall so terribly short of her standard as he confronts the return of Donald Trump to the White House. It’s been infuriating to observe the damage he has inflicted in recent months on the reputation of a newspaper whose investigative reporting has served as a bulwark against Trump’s most transgressive impulses.</p></div></div>