The fallout from the non-endorsement of Kamala Harris at The Washington Put up is right here: more than 200,000 canceled subscriptions, NPR reviews. That is about 8 p.c of the paid subscriber bottom, and the choice of cancellations remains to be rising.
To position that during standpoint, in an Oct. fifteenth tale about Put up CEO Will Lewis’s way to get extra paying subscribers, The Fresh York Occasions reported that the Put up had added 4,000 subscribers since the beginning of 2024 through September. Like, I’m in truth flabbergasted: that’s fifty occasions as many cancellations in a single weekend as The Put up earned within the higher a part of a presen.
“This is obviously an effort by Jeff Bezos to curry favor with Donald Trump in the anticipation of his possible victory.”
Now, there were a couple of reviews at this level — from NPR, The Columbia Journalism Overview, and The Washington Put up itself — that the decision to prohibit endorsing applicants got here from Jeff Bezos himself. The similar age as Lewis’s bizarre announcement of The Post’s non-endorsement, executives from Bezos’s field corporate, Blue Beginning, met with presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Lewis would really like us to let go needy Bezos isolated. Bezos “was not sent, did not read and did not opine on any draft,” the CEO advised CNN in the type of observation that we within the industry know as a non-denial denial. This is — this is a sparsely worded recitation of items Bezos did now not do. It doesn’t disclaim that Bezos made the decision for negative endorsement. And as of late, The Fresh York Occasions’Ben Mullin reported that Bezos had expressed reservations a couple of presidential endorsement as early as September.
The blowback has been so intense that Bezos has taken it upon himself to provide an explanation for the verdict in The Washington Put up. “I would also like to be clear that no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here,” he wrote. Rather, he claimed that it was once “a principled decision.” That it was once introduced so akin to the election was once only a slight whoopsy-doodle that Bezos claims was once “inadequate planning.”
To again the verdict, Bezos writes concerning the nosedive agree with in media has taken. It’s true that fewer crowd agree with the media than prior to, however that will also be as a result of crowd don’t essentially know as many journalists anymore. Within the days of wholesome native journalism, journalists have been your mates and neighbors, standard crowd that you just interacted with on a familiar foundation on the grocery collect. This is not the case; reporters are slim at the grassland, and wildly outnumbered by way of PR crowd. Fox Information, particularly, has long past out of its strategy to sow mistrust. Dumping on alternative publications is a primary technique for drumming up Substack subscriptions — simply ask Bari Weiss.
However I don’t be expecting the founding father of Amazon to grasp this historical past any longer than I be expecting him to know the way to function The Put up’s CMS. And but even so, the agree with in media factor is a distraction. The op-ed is a sunny try at harm keep watch over — an try to prohibit the bleeding. It’s too slight, and too overdue.
I assume I must point out the numerous govt oaths Bezos’s alternative companies have — between them, Amazon’s $10 billion NSA contract and Blue Origin’s $3.4 billion NASA contract. Trump has prior to now centered Bezos for The Washington Put up’s reporting. A columnist who leave the Put up over the verdict, Robert Kagan, advised CNN, “This is obviously an effort by Jeff Bezos to curry favor with Donald Trump in the anticipation of his possible victory.” Kagan pointed to the industry oaths as motivation.
Bezos would additionally like us to let go needy Bezos isolated. “I would also like to be clear that no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here,” he wrote. “Dave Limp, the chief executive of one of my companies, Blue Origin, met with former president Donald Trump on the day of our announcement. I sighed when I found out, because I knew it would provide ammunition to those who would like to frame this as anything other than a principled decision. But the fact is, I didn’t know about the meeting beforehand.”
Bezos made his bones at Amazon by way of relentlessly focusing on customer satisfaction. Over and over again, he advised crowd to concentrate on making shoppers satisfied. Right here’s a amusing quote from his 2016 letter to shareholders:
There are lots of tactics to heart a industry. You’ll be able to be competitor targeted, you’ll be able to be product targeted, you’ll be able to be generation targeted, you’ll be able to be industry type targeted, and there are extra. However personally, obsessive buyer focal point is by way of a ways essentially the most protecting of age one energy.
That’s more than likely just right recommendation for working a industry, and it sounds as if to be recommendation neither Lewis nor Bezos himself took. Via spiking a presidential endorsement, Bezos has created the illusion of a war of pastime — and in journalism, this is as sinful as an fresh war of pastime as a result of now you’ve misplaced the agree with of your target audience.
(Lewis, regardless that, is not any stranger to journalism, since he does have enjoy as an scribbler. Alternatively, a few of that have is being investigated in the Sunday Times phone hacking scandal, so possibly he’s not the best person to consult on these matters.)
The blowback is larger than The Put up
Nonetheless, if there’s something Bezos is understood for, it’s his cutthroat method to capitalism. And right here, he has failed at that, too. The shoppers were talking very obviously: NPR reviews that 3 of the supremacy 10 tales at the Put up’s website online Sunday have been from staffers frustrated concerning the killed endorsement. Probably the most-read was once by way of the paper’s loved slapstick comedian Alexandra Petri: “It has fallen to me, the humor columnist, to endorse Harris for president.” After I checked The Put up’s website online once more as of late, the supremacy two tales have been concerning the controversy.
“Now more than ever the world needs a credible, trusted, independent voice,” Bezos writes. That is true. It’s additionally why he shouldn’t have rented Will Lewis within the first park. A man concerned about a telephone hacking scandal is just now not credible. Between Lewis and the pulled endorsement, it’s sunny Bezos does now not perceive his shoppers. I miracle if he even understands credibility.
The blowback is larger than The Put up. Something our tech overlords were very unsatisfied about in recent times has been the federal government’s renewed method to antitrust beneath Joe Biden. What the Put up scandal highlights — but even so Will Lewis’s incompetence — is precisely what number of companies Bezos owns, and the way conflicts of pastime may stand. He has skillfully drawn consideration from standard voters to overreaches of energy in industry. There may be, after all, an answer: breaking apart companies that experience gotten too fat.
Smartly, I supposition that’s a lesson for us all. That is what occurs whilst you focal point on your self and now not at the shoppers. Now not most effective do they let go you in droves, however they are going to in truth revile you plethora to be politically bad.
Replace, October twenty eighth: Provides Jeff Bezos’s Washington Put up op-ed explaining why he selected to explode his personal newspaper within the foundation.
