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‘Real threat of autocracy’: Washington Post editorial staffers resign in forceful letters
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2024
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Bozos: goooood, gooood, now I can hire cheaper loyalists. I win again! Boy it's good to be the king.
Yeah, and rake in that sweet, sweet online newspaper money.
Hang on a second...
I think he'd be better served to just sell it. I don't know if these things are even on his radar, and from the aggressive cluelessness on display in his editorial trying to justify it, I suspect not. But whatever he was hoping to gain from controlling the Post is no longer going to be accomplished, at this point, whether he realizes that or not. He can either hang on to it as it crumbles and dies, or get rid of it and give it some semblance of a chance at continued life, and get back a little bit of money. Those are the options.
I think from his point of view it's more like he either makes the media he buys (and their readers) obedient or he destroys the media taking away a chanel of his opposition. Either way he wins. The same works for Musk and Twitter.
There's some money to be had in subscription. There's way more to be had in brand recognition and blind trust. Owning something like WaPo means that when a newer and more adventurous outlet publishes "Amazon drivers caught running over babies," you can publish "No we didn't, trust us, were WaPo" and when people read the article from the smaller outlet, they'll feel it's less credible.
Owning the narrative is power and a money-printing machine.
Yeah, maybe. It seemed like he was mostly leaving it alone to do some pretty serious journalism up until this point, but maybe he was just being very judicious with when he would intervene. Or maybe he was just distracted with other things and didn't care. What you're saying would make sense as a reason to have it, maybe even to keep it while it decays into a mockery of its former good thing.
I think he left it alone because he didn't need it. It was an investment and he sat on it until he suddenly needed it again. Well, here we are.
Analogy: a knife doesn't increase much in value over time and certainly isn't the most powerful weapon. But when people start to forget that you have a knife and what knives can do, your knife suddenly becomes incredibly valuable when someone says they're about the punch you in the face.
I suppose that's a good point. I don't actually know how much they make in terms of profit for him to even care about that aspect.