Adapt Or Perish: Washington Post

Back in the stone age I had a newspaper route.  This was back when it was considered a good thing for youths to work.

One effect of my righteous, underpaid, non-minimum wage, child labor paper route was that I read the paper every morning before school.  I learned a lot:

  1. “Journalists” at my crappy paper were terrible at reporting the news.  I later learned this applied to nearly all “journalists”.
  2. “Journalists” at my crappy paper might as well tattoo “I am a Marxist” on their otherwise hollow foreheads.  I later learned this applied to nearly all “journalists”.
  3. For some reason, people like to read about sports.

I chalked up #1 to public schools.  As a kid, I experienced public schools as warehouses and factories of intellectual mediocrity.  (It is as true now as it was then.)  “Journalists” sounded exactly like my teachers.  It was all there; everything from biased suppositions, to  illogical conclusion, to a weak application math.  Each day’s paper varied in quality but excellence was rare and thick layers of condescension were constant.  I simply assumed “journalists” were the end product of public schools.  I’m not sure my opinion has changed.

I chalked up #2 to insecurity.  I assumed people who write cannot do.  What’s worse, people who can’t do are naturally antagonistic to those that can.  The natural breeding ground of socialist thinking is people who can do little and yet think very highly of themselves.

As for #3; “sports journalism” remains a mystery.  It bored me then and it bores me now.

Optimistic youth that I was, I assumed that crappy newspapers (like mine) would fold.  They would be replaced by superior newspapers.

I was wrong.  Either “journalists” are unteachable or their corporate nest is too fouled.  Eventually they killed themselves off.  The few remaining print outlets are zombies shambling around losing money until they finally collapse.

If I had to point out when their demise was essentially unavoidable I’d call it the presidential election campaign of 2008.  That’s when the press quit even pretending to be journalists and became fluffers for whatever party advocated the biggest government (territory currently staked out by the party of D).

They earned themselves the title “legacy media” while newer forms of reporting crushed them.  In 2011 I mentioned that Newsweek, a piece of the Washington Times Company, was officially worth $1.  It’s demise was essentially “fait accompli“.  This is what I wrote:

“The press truly pulled out all the stops for their guy in 2008.  I felt dry humped and discarded.  I was not alone.  The press periodically abandons all pretense of objectivity but this time was different.  It bit them on the ass and they’ve lost their shirts. Newsweek claimed we are all socialists now and crashed so hard they were sold for $1. The Washington Post’s profits dropped 50% in one quarter. The New York Times was trading at $48 in 2004 and now it’s trading at $8. There’s nothing new about a biased press (ask Orson Welles) but now is when events have run them down like dogs.  Their refusal to adapt is a self inflicted mortal wound.”

So two years later has the Washington Post learned anything?  Did they adapt?  Of course not.  Recently they passed another benchmark and were purchased for $250 million, far less than their supposed value at their apex.  Their stock price has reflected their long slow glide path from a Watergate contact high to irrelevancy and the company is grasping at straws:

“As soon as it was announced that The Washington Post would be bought by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, shares rose by 5%. This means that investors trust the abilities of a man with zero experience in running a newspaper more than they trusted the liberal family that owned the paper for four generations.”

Wow, that hurts!  Let me repeat that because I like the way it rolls of the tongue.

“…investors trust the abilities of a man with zero experience in running a newspaper more than they trusted the liberal family that owned the paper for four generations.”

Ouch!

The chimps that run the “legacy media” killed their host.  I suppose they’ll all get jobs as teachers now.

About AdaptiveCurmudgeon

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One Response to Adapt Or Perish: Washington Post

  1. cspschofield says:

    One of the major causes of the lockstep in the Legacy Media is the myth that modern Liberals managed to sell of Unbiased Reporting. In the heyday of great reporting, between the end of the American Civil War and the end of WWII, it was generally understood that newspapers would reflect the various biases of the people who worked for and/or owned them. Nobody expected otherwise. The idea that an unbiased newspaper was desirable, or even possible, is entirely a Liberal Intellectual fantasy; one that has helped them dismiss any Conservative media as ‘biased’. Because the world bought into the myth, Conservatives wasted decades bitching about Liberal Bias instead of buying newspapers in order to get their own bias in print. It worked for a long time, but it also reduced the entire newspaper business to a humorless joke. Consequence? The New York Times corporation’s stock is valued at the value of its real estate holding, and not one dime more.

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