At long last, it appears that one of the crown jewels of far-left American journalism, The Washington Post, is about to breathe its last.
Publisher Will Lewis quit his post two days after the newspaper fired hundreds of journalists, which in turn followed the shuttering of its famed sports department, once host to such luminaries as the late Shirley Povich and John Feinstein.
The question about the paper’s future seems to be how long, not if it can survive, given its staggering losses and a media milieu in which Americans needn’t rely on reporters from the Post or any other leftist media megaphone to provide news through their sinistral filter.
Now, they can get their news directly from podcasters and independent journalists such as Nick Shirley. He uncovered the Somali daycare scandal in Minnesota, a stunning rebuke of legacy media.
Publisher Quits After Layoffs
Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos bought the newspaper, long owned by Katharine and Phil Graham, in 2013. The paper declined in prestige as its editors dealt with myriad scandals, notably its smear of Nick Sandmann, the Covington, Kentucky, Catholic high-schooler, in 2019. It was forced to publish a free-standing editor’s note about its coverage of the events of January 18, when a left-wing activist and military faker, Nathan Phillips, confronted Sandmann at the Lincoln Memorial after the March for Life. The Post attached another note to a story that explained revisions to clarify it.
Last Saturday, publisher Will Lewis quit his job after the newspaper “came under widespread criticism for laying off hundreds of its journalists,” The New York Times reported:
Mr. Lewis said in a statement that he had made the decision “in order to ensure the sustainable future of The Post.” His email, which was terse, thanked only Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Post, and did not mention journalists at the newspaper.
Mr. Lewis left three days after the company, facing years of financial losses, undertook a significant round of layoffs that cut 30 percent of the staff — more than 300 journalists — decimating The Post’s local, international and sports coverage. Marty Baron, the celebrated former editor of The Post, called it one of the “darkest days in the history of one of the world’s greatest news organizations.”
In a news release announcing Mr. Lewis’s departure, Mr. Bezos said that The Post has “an essential journalistic mission and an extraordinary opportunity.” He added, “Each and every day our readers give us a road map to success.” He did not mention the cost-cutting in his statement.