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Would you inherit a rare Stradivarius violin, polish it up for a few years, and then decide to take a hammer to it?
Would you somehow acquire the Hope diamond, set it in a blue velvet case, and then toss the whole thing into the Potomac River?
These incomprehensible acts are not too far afield from what Jeff Bezos is doing these days with the Washington Post, where self-inflicted wounds are wreaking what may be permanent damage to a great newspaper.
I worked on staff at the Post for six years, until 2022, as its media columnist, after admiring the paper for decades; it was an inspiring place to work, and I got to know its readership and its staff from the inside.
It breaks my heart to see what’s happening now, and has been happening for more than a year.
As a major round of newsroom layoffs is threatened – losses that would further weaken an already decimated staff – Bezos is doing what should be unthinkable.
And he is doing so at a time when strong, fact-based journalism could not be more important in America and around the world.
He should reverse course. He can preserve a great news organization and maybe even recover his own legacy as the paper’s steward – a legacy that was looking good for years until he took a strange, Trump-related bad turn.
The turn began in earnest when Bezos – apparently trying to protect his other commercial interests – spiked the draft of an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris for president. Whatever one thinks about endorsement editorials, the timing was terrible; it was the 11th hour, shortly before the 2024 election.
Unsurprisingly, droves of Post subscribers canceled. They were disgusted by the apparent effort to please Donald Trump at the price of editorial independence.
Later, even more subscribers decamped after Bezos made it clear that he wanted its opinion section to take a sharp right turn. Some of the nation’s best columnists departed, and a fine cartoonist, Ann Telnaes, left after she tried to publish a cartoon depicting Bezos and others of his ilk cozying up to Trump. On the news side, many of the paper’s star reporters and editors left for places like the Atlantic, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
Since then, Bezos only continued down this misbegotten path, with Amazon contributing to the Trump inauguration and putting a ridiculous $40m behind a regrettable Melania Trump documentary that is leaving seats empty in a theater near you.
While it’s true that the Post is losing money, maybe $100m a year, Bezos could clearly afford to simply support the paper. For someone whose net worth is inexhaustibly huge (roughly $250bn), this is essentially pocket change, or as the statistics expert Nate Silver put it, “a rounding error”.
Silver wrote recently that the Post had drastically lost influence, or “mind share”, after alienating so much of its core audience, changing its coverage and losing so much talent.
The financial losses are far from inevitable. Consider the New York Times, which is profitable and expanding, or the Guardian US, which is also thriving.
Less than a decade ago, the Post reportedly was profitable (it doesn’t publicly report its finances because it is privately held), as it did strong accountability reporting in the first Trump administration under editor Marty Baron. It was competing successfully for scoops and top talent with its arch-rival, the Times.
Instead of finding a way to build on that, Bezos’s handpicked publisher, Will Lewis, has gone the other way, though even now the Post’s journalists manage to report and publish excellent journalism on a daily basis and get their full share of scoops.
It’s understandable that Bezos wants the Post to be self-sustaining. There was a path to getting there without destroying the newspaper and alienating its core readership. Maybe the Post did need to trim its staff and rethink how it uses resources – but not in such a draconian way, and not in a way that will severely weaken foreign coverage or sports coverage, which are foundational.
When Bezos bought the Post in 2013, he got a bargain – he paid a mere $250m – and suddenly, the Amazon co-founder had the chance to be something much greater than a billionaire.
He had the chance to be the steward of a national treasure, a storied news company with a staff as talented as any in the nation, maybe the world. The newspaper that had won endless Pulitzer prizes, including one for uncovering the Watergate scandal and another for breaking the Edward Snowden revelations, along with the Guardian, and also for its culture writing and international coverage.
It’s strange. For years, the Amazon co-founder seemed to take his responsibility seriously. He seemed to understand how high the stakes were.
When the Post’s Tehran bureau chief, Jason Rezaian, was captured and imprisoned for many months in Iran, Bezos took an active interest in getting him freed, and celebrated with the staff and Rezaian’s family.
When Trump, in his first administration, threatened the Post and disparaged its owner personally, Bezos didn’t buckle.
And, remarkably, he seemed to understand how to speak to journalists about their mission in a democracy. He even got the tone right, urging the proud and energetic staff to be a little bit badass as they got their mojo back after surviving tough times.
But now, what matters more is turning the Post around financially while staying in Trump’s good graces.
Better, this billionaire should turn himself around, heal the self-inflicted wounds, and help Washington Post journalism survive and thrive at this crucial time for American democracy.
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Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture
