There isn’t even a cynical explanation for Jeff Bezos destroying The Washington Post

[ad_1] 300 journalists have misplaced their jobs at The Washington Submit. Over 300,000 readers have canceled their subscriptions. Proprietor Jeff Bezos, who bought the legendary publication in 2013, has pushed his repute into the bottom by utilizing his huge empire to churn out content material designed to make President Donald Trump pleased: Amazon MGM Studios spent $40 million to supply a fawning documentary about Melania Trump, which premiered days earlier than the Submit despatched out mass layoff notices. And but, he’s gotten nothing out of his makes an attempt to suck as much as Donald Trump — a minimum of, nothing that’s a web constructive to his backside line.

Which begs the cynical query: Why does he even personal The Washington Submit in any respect?

The Trump period is, in spite of everything, a cynical and transactional time. Billionaires, CEOs, and world leaders have shortly realized that sucking as much as Trump will get them what they need — pardons, tariff exemption, an export management lifted, a merger deal accepted, an investigation quashed. And relating to media firms, the Paramount-Skydance merger has set the bar for sucking as much as Trump. To ensure that the merger to get regulatory approval, Skydance CEO David Ellison pushed CBS to settle a defamation go well with filed by Trump, canceled The Late Present with Stephen Colbert, and employed Bari Weiss, a right-wing Substacker with nearly no newsroom management expertise, as CBS Information’s editor-in-chief. Briefly, Ellison needed to decide to neutering CBS’s capability to criticize Trump. However he did get a $28 billion merger out of it.

Bezos’ media performs, alternatively, appear self-contradictory. Financing a fawning documentary about Melania Trump doesn't mesh with proudly owning a media firm with a 150-year-old legacy of holding politicians accountable, particularly one which famously held Trump accountable throughout his first administration. (If the purpose was to neuter the Submit too, then bafflingly, his deputy, Will Lewis, fired everybody apart from these on the political desks.) Even his try and separate the political views from the Submit’s journalism, an try and have it each methods, backfired. After he introduced that the opinion web page would now mirror extra conservative views, reporters started leaving the Submit in droves, and subscriber numbers plummeted even additional. Because the Submit’s former editor-in-chief Marty Baron put it in a column shortly after the layoffs, it was “near-instant, self-inflicted model destruction.”

One might argue — as WaPo insiders should media reporters — that the layoffs had been crucial as a result of the paper was dropping cash. However billionaires have loads of face-saving methods to get an unprofitable media outlet off their fingers, in a fashion that doesn't embody mass layoffs (or a minimum of, offloads the layoffs onto its subsequent proprietor). The Philadelphia Inquirer, as an example, had been donated by its billionaire proprietor to a nonprofit, whereas Fb billionaire Chris Hughes ended up promoting The New Republic to Win McCormack after his personal failed try and reshape the 100-year-old journal. The Submit, which had grown its digital viewers all through Bezos’ possession, would have instantly attracted consumers: final 12 months, tech journalist Kara Swisher introduced that she and several other traders had been ready to buy the Submit from Bezos, however reportedly by no means heard again from him.

Maybe Bezos must suck as much as Trump to additional Amazon’s pursuits, which might make extra sense if Bezos nonetheless ran the corporate. Besides he doesn’t. He stepped down as CEO in 2021. Amazon, whose subsidiary AWS holds the lion’s share of federal authorities contracts, has been capable of independently suck as much as Trump by way of donations to the White Home’s new ballroom fund. (Admittedly, Bezos’ authorities contracts with NASA are on the desk, and he was reportedly noticed hanging out with Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth at a Blue Origin facility in Florida on the day of the Submit layoffs.)

Possibly this pile of self-contradictions — or, as he as soon as described his possession of the Submit, a “complexifier” — was inevitable when Trump got here again into workplace and made it clear that he would punish the Large Tech entities that displeased him. However there’s no clear and logical rationalization for why Bezos goes about his supplication: not one which makes monetary sense, nor one which instantly furthers his personal political standing with Trump, nor one which reaffirms the dedication he as soon as made to defending the First Modification. And that lack of readability solely makes the Submit’s decapitation much more mindless.