knowledge center

Washington Post mortem

State of Play:

The Washington Post is shedding both staff and subscribers — but making friends in the White House — as its owner, Jeff Bezos, remakes its opinion pages and lops off major areas of coverage.

The Times and Post: diverging paths, but a shared fixation on Mamdani

It’s a tale of two newspapers.

March 19, 2026

Trump’s golden ballroom has friends at the Post

As we try to reckon with the rapid changes in our politics, so it goes with the coverage. This past week, it was the Washington Post — yes, the same Washington Post that was the institutional hero of the successful effort to thwart the last rogue president — that was despoiling itself, for all to see.

As you may have heard, Donald Trump last week had the East Wing of the White House torn down, with plans for a parking-garage-sized, gilt-saturated ballroom. The reaction to this unilateral act was broadly, and predictably, one of outrage and lament at the loss of national heritage. But not at the Post, whose editorial board offered us, “In defense of the White House ballroom,” with the subhead, “Donald Trump vs. the NIMBYs.”

Oct. 29, 2025

here today, more tomorrow

We’ve launched briefing.center with a focus on the press and media.

And we’ve added Citizen Cartwright, a daily quick-read news summary by veteran Washington journalist Linda Cartwright. We’ve also created a new voting rights knowledge center for Citizen Cartwright subscribers. (You can sign up for a dedicated morning email at citizencartwright.com.)

You can sign up here for full access to press and media and Citizen Cartwright on briefing.center.

You can use briefing.center as the center of your information management, or just one of your tools. We’re happy to discuss your information needs.

Sign up