Journalists respond with snark and awe to Washington Post sale

Journalists responded with shock, awe and a predictable amount of snark to the news that Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos had bought The Washington Post.

The news was announced Monday afternoon. Bezos himself, rather than his company, bought the Washington newspaper for roughly $250 million.

The sale includes just the Post and not other publications owned by The Washington Post Company. Esquire's Chris Jones joked about Bezos's decision not to buy the contrarian Slate.com, which The Washington Post Company owned for the last few years.....

The NYT got a measly $70M for selling the Boston Globe for which it paid $1.1B not that long ago. The Post Company probably decided to get while the getting is good. Interesting both The Post and Globe bought by very wealthy individuals vs other media entities.

The Post, the newspaper, has been operating in the red for a long, long time, with profits to sustain it coming from Kaplan and maybe some real estate interests.

We’re not likely to see any shake up in the news room any too soon.

What was the Washington Post (Pest) bought for before? Inquiring Minds want to know.

Answering my own question, it was bought about 40 years ago by the last owners so the question may be difficult to ascertain. However, the liberal/progressive Pests hemorrhaging has been obvious.

The Washington Post has had a 44 percent reduction in operating revenues in 6 years, and a 7 percent decline in its print readership.

Exactly. That would be a good start.

Next up “phony scandals”. I’d cover them daily. I’d start a column called “Get to the Bottom of this” where I’d pick an important story and cover it daily until the full story was out. Too often, journalists cover the breaking story, then it gets brushed under the rug and then we never find out what happened. I’d post daily updates until the issue was resolved.

For example, the birth certificate, or the mysterious deaths of various people associated with the Clintons or with Chicago politics. I’d find out what passport Zippy used to travel to Pakistan. I’d find out why his author’s bio “inadvertently” listed him as being born in Kenya. Lying then or lying now? I’d find out how he got into Columbia and Harvard and whether he was a foreign student.

I’d find out what really happened to TWA 800. I’d find out what we were doing in Benghazi (though I’m pretty sure I know already).

I think another thing that would be interesting to do would be to track the comings and goings of various politicians. I’d pay “citizen journalists” for photos of them and their vehicles with time/date stamps on them and put them in a database available to the public. We’ve been told that it’s perfectly legal and justifiable to have big brother cameras on every street corner and that we have no expectation of privacy when we are on the street. Let’s see how the lawmakers like it when they become the subjects of interest. After all, as they keep telling us, if you have nothing to hide then it should not upset you.

That would be a good start. We’ll see how circulation does after I institute those features.

Another thing I’d cover would be the flip side of biased reporting. I would certainly cover racist acts by whites against blacks, but I would also cover with equal column inches (per event) the racist acts by blacks against whites.

I would run crime statistics very prominently, broken down by race, gender, socioeconomic status or whatever seemed relevant. I would also run statistics on welfare and government handout programs. I’d like people to know who is receiving the benefits that their taxes are paying for.

I might still feature the heartwarming story of the welfare mom who goes on to get her medical degree and save lives, but I’d also balance that with the statistics of how many welfare moms produce another dependent generation, how many die of drug overdoses, etc.

IMO, one of the reasons there is so much black on white violence is that blacks are constantly bombarded with the message that they are being victimized by whites and that whites are racist. I believe that it makes certain individuals feel somehow justified when they lash out and behave in a violent, racist manner. If they (and all of us) were presented with a true picture of what is really happening, it might improve the situation. There will always be jerks of every color, but a few facts might reduce their numbers.

The liberals depend on biased reporting to set one group against another. I’d publish the truth for all to see.

I’d have both liberals and conservatives on staff. I’d let them argue in the pages of the paper. But I would insist that arguments be based on facts and would not publish lies. I’d want to have a point/counterpoint dialog and would force the writers to stay on topic and answer questions that were put to them.

That should do for starters.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.