Matt Murray, under the direction of Jeff Bezos, has sounded the death knell for The Washington Post. The paper isn’t actually deceased, but it’s a close thing. Despite cutting some 300 staffers in the past weeks, and another combined 300 since 2023, it still lumbers on, half-starved and sickly, overburdened by its legacy and the unbearable weight of an owner who has chosen to use it as a political bargaining chip. It might have been more humane, though certainly more malicious, if Bezos had just executed the paper properly and spared it the indignity of a miserable half-life. Instead, it has been put to pasture like a racehorse past its prime, condemned to pretend to be a functioning paper of record when it will be utterly incapable of living up to the task.
Among all the great papers in the United States, The Post has a particularly distinguished legacy. It claims 76 Pulitzers, the highest honor in journalism, to its name, second only to The New York Times. The Post broke the Pentagon Papers in 1971, fundamentally altering the relationship between the public and the federal government, and helped bring down President Richard Nixon with its reporting on the Watergate scandal. Through the ups and downs of the American experiment during the 20th century, it was a trusted, respected paper that the American people could rely on. It was, in every sense of the word, an institution of democracy. That is no longer the case.
In the past few years, Bezos has worked hard to align The Post with his worldview. Prior to the 2024 election, Bezos, in a stunning display of anticipatory compliance, blocked The Post from endorsing Kamala Harris in a move that was widely criticized within and without the journalism industry. Following President Trump’s inauguration, Bezos announced that The Post’s opinion section would only publish pieces that support “personal liberties and free markets.”
With Bezos so clearly mutilating The Post in an effort to impress and woo President Trump, it is easy to blame him entirely, but we are at fault, too. Like many papers, The Post has struggled for years to maintain profitability while also exercising its democratic duty; that is, to report the truth to the American public and to hold the powerful to account. Bezos may have held the knife and done the bloody work of cutting up The Post, but the abandonment of hard, democratic journalism by the public has been poisoning it for years. We built the coffin. No paper can survive long without making a profit, even when it is doing a vital, important duty to the United States.
That’s the thing about democracy, though. It’s hard to properly appreciate it when it’s flourishing. When the results of our elections are easily agreed upon, our political disagreements are civil and our newspapers are strong, we tend to forget how fragile it all is. We let the little things go. We forget that this republic goes both ways. We have a duty to support the institutions that protect us, and all too often we fail in that duty.
If there’s a lesson to be had from this, it’s that supporting your newspapers and magazines is vital. The Post may be beyond saving, but other papers are not. Get that subscription to The New York Times, donate to The Guardian and get a copy of The Atlantic every month. Read your local newspaper, if your community still has one. Whatever you read, support it, and when billionaires threaten our institutions of democracy, hold them to account however you can. Remember what The Washington Post used to say. Democracy dies in darkness.
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia
