Billionaire and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has been reportedly shaking up the Washington Post after the paper engendered severe backlash for spiking an endorsement of Kamala Harris on the eve of President-elect Donald Trump’s victory.
Jeff Bezos set off a firestorm in the political world this year when he reportedly stepped in to spike the paper’s editorial board from endorsing Kamala Harris, which then prompted an exodus of over 250,000 subscribers and a a whirlwind of backlash from various media figures. Given that the paper has been hemorrhaging revenue to the tune of $77 million for well over a year, editors and managers have been secretly panicking behind closed doors over Bezos’s plans to make the Post functional again.
“The level of anger is through the roof, and fear is also through the roof. There’s huge concern that Bezos is going to pull the plug,” one insider told New York Magazine.
The Amazon founder’s first order of business was tapping publisher Will Lewis as the paper’s CEO, sidelining executive editor Sally Buzbee “by trying to put her in charge of a newly invented “third newsroom” (focused on service journalism and social media, among other innovations) while planning on bringing in a friend from the U.K., Robert Winnett, to take her old job overseeing the legacy newsroom,” per NY Magazine.
Buzbee quit, seeing the move as a potential demotion, which then put former Wall Street Journal editor Matt Murray under temporary control of the newsroom through the election, sparking a potential power struggle as outlined by NY Mag:
Now Murray is angling for a version of the classic top newsroom job, overseeing both newsrooms, new and old. And he has moved his family to D.C. But there’s no guarantee he’ll get it. The search for the job is underway and expected to conclude by the end of the year. Patty Stonesifer, a longtime Bezos confidante who served as interim Post CEO before Lewis came aboard, is involved in the process, I’m told, along with Lewis and Bezos. Candidates delivered memos last week. The other internal candidate is managing editor Matea Gold. (The Post approached some alumni — former managing editor Steven Ginsberg, who is currently running The Athletic, and Kevin Merida, a former Post managing editor who had spent 22 years at the paper before a three-year stint running the Los Angeles Times — early on in the search process, but neither were interested.)
Staffers at the Washington Post were less-than-enthusiastic about Murray’s leadership when pressed, with one insider telling NY Mag that he pushed “completely the wrong message” by telling people to deal with incoming changes.
“The message should be ‘We’re not doing anything different journalistically, and I’m going to be out there defending you guys,’” the staffer said.
Jeff Bezos himself also signaled his willingness to have the paper return to objective journalism when he publicly defended the Post‘s non-endorsement of Harris despite an overwhelming pressure campaign from industry insiders.
“Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election,” Bezos wrote. “No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, ‘I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.’ None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.”
Bezos also issued a “big congratulations” to Trump for what he called a “decisive victory” against Harris.
“Big congratulations to our 45th and now 47th President on an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory,” Bezos wrote after the election.
Paul Roland Bois directed the award-winning Christian tech thriller, EXEMPLUM, which has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes critic rating and can be viewed for FREE on YouTube, Tubi, or Fawesome TV. “Better than Killers of the Flower Moon,” wrote Mark Judge. “You haven’t seen a story like this before,” wrote Christian Toto. A high-quality, ad-free rental can also be streamed on Google Play, Vimeo on Demand, or YouTube Movies. Follow him on X @prolandfilms or Instagram @prolandfilms.