The Post Gets Cancelled

I have subscribed to the Washington Post forever.  As long as I can recall.  

My Dad, being a journalist, always got the paper, and when we were stateside and home in DC, that meant the Post.  Overseas, it'd be a carefully selected assortment of local papers, plus the International Herald Tribune, which was, at the time, a joint venture between the Post and the New York Times.  

When my friend with a paper route went on vacation, I'd fill in for him delivering the paper, back when a Post arrived on the doorstep of every other house.  I'd trundle about in the dark of the morning, pulling a cart full of newsprint, grateful that I wasn't going to be doing this every day.

The arrival of the morning paper has remained a part of my life, and it's been a welcome respite from the chattering distraction of online media.  It's a dying thing, fading away like so much of twentieth century culture, its place usurped by the cuckoo hullabaloo that passes for news on tha socialz.  

The Post's recent decision not to endorse a candidate for the first time since Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford were contending has caused an avalanche of subscription cancellations.  My social feeds are full of outraged progressive friends publicly declaring their disgust, which is their right, even if it's a wee bit on the nose.  It's also the tiniest bit ironic.

I mean, what are progressives going to read now?  The New York Times?  I mean, the Times endorsed Harris, straight up.  But Progressives loathe the Times, because the Times is...I don't know...too DavidBrooksy.  The Times is, without question, less progressive than the Post, a distinction that has deepened in the years of the Post's ownership by The Jeff.  In fact, under Bezos, the Post has become notably more intersectional, as a younger leaner newsroom focuses on all of The Issues.  There are times where more-conservative-I will roll my eyes at yet another representation article or thinkpiece centering the margins, not so much because that's offensive, but because it can get a tick monomaniacal.

This is the paper y'all are cancelling?  Do the substantive coverage and the clearly progressive slant of the editorial board not matter?  Do you think that a newspaper editorial board endorsement in 2024 is changing a single vote?  That both of the Trumpists who still read the Post will be, oh, golly, I'd not factored the Post endorsement into the equation?  Of course it's an exercise in capitalism realpolitik by the corporate master of the Post, for whom AWS is a waaaaay more lucrative venture.  Of course Trump is a catastrophic mistake, and a marker of the perilous decay of the Republic.  And sure, it's hard being so pointedly reminded that Democracy Dies in Darkness is a nice slogan, so long as it doesn't threaten the profit margins of our All-Powerful Oligarchs. 

But even as it chafes under the leash of The Jeff, the Post still tries for journalistic integrity, still attempts to shine a light that isn't partisan, but seeks that elusive objectivity so necessary for the functioning of liberal democracy.  There's value there, one that shouldn't be cast aside lightly or impulsively.  

I think back to my father, the journalist.  Dad was also a lifelong Republican.  The sort of Republican who, back when he was young, worked for the party by standing on the street corners in Queens with a bullhorn.  Dad would swear, up and down, that the best president of the 20th Century was...um...Richard Milhous Nixon.  The EPA!  Got us out of Vietnam!  Rapprochement with China!  It was a familiar refrain, and not exactly a thing we ever agreed upon.

But Dad still subscribed to the Post.  

If a Nixon supporter could still subscribe to the Post, well, yeah.

The News Within the News

Newspapers are a dying thing. It's a source of sadness for me, because my morning paper is a deeply ingrained ritual, one I've sorta passed on to my kids.

It began for me when I was a youngling, and would eagerly anticipate the comics page each day. As a tweener living in London, I started actually reading the news. It'd be the Guardian in the morning, and the International Herald Tribune in the evening. The Tribune had the comics, eh? I've always subscribed. Always.

Now, things look grim. DC still has a few papers, but they're all on life support. The venerable Post which graces my breakfast table each morning survives because of it's profitable Kaplan educational subsidiary. The others are dependent on the patronage of folks who want a particular spin on the news. The Washington Times only cranks out it's right wing froth because of the generous and ongoing support of it's owner, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. The Examiner is similarly bankrolled by a wealthy ultraconservative.

Though I think my WaPo will be around in some form for a while, I'd miss it if it were gone. There are elements of print media...like the ability to see more broadly and encounter things that don't reflect your particular interests...that seem necessary for liberalism in the classical sense to exist. It opens our eyes in ways that online media simply doesn't.

Today, as I was reading the recently redesigned Post over my morning coffee, the news that most struck me wasn't the news that was in the national/world/business section, or the news that was in the metro section. It weren't the Sports Page, neither.

It was the classified section. Classified ads have faded with the advent of online sales, but I've been watching with interest over the last couple of months as my struggling paper has seen a massive increase in one area of advertising. That area is the legally required publication of trustee sales and notices of foreclosure. It's been growing and growing, slowly but surely, over the last few months.

Today, it was the single largest section of the Washington Post. 28 large pages of tiny fine legal print dryly detailing the financial collapse of hundreds of lives in the Washington area. It felt like a particularly ill omen, a dying media published on dead wood chronicling the demise of the ill founded hopes of so many families.

Fox News: Truth in Advertising

I've blogged before about the strange state of advertising here in DC. On the #1 radio station in the area, it's not uncommon to hear ads for major weapons systems. It's a government town, and major corporations buy up lots of ads to hawk their wares to government procurement specialists. There are also political ads, run by interest groups or oppressive regimes, which are intended to fall on the eyes of lawmakers.

Today's Washington Post had an interesting one. It was a full page color ad from Fox News lambasting all of the other networks for "missing" the 9.12 demonstrations. A major news event! And those pinheads in the Main Stream Media missed it! Included in the ad were pictures. One large one showed folks gathered in front of the Capitol. Another was an aerial shot, which showed a moderate crowd extending five or six blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue. I have three reactions to this:

1) Fox News seems to be misrepresenting...intentionally...the coverage of this event. CNN, NBC, ABC, and MSNBC didn't "miss" the event. Missing an event means not covering it. The other networks did cover it. They didn't give it quite the prominence that Fox News did, but there was a rather significant reason for that, and that is...

2) Fox News was responsible for the event. It was the brainchild of one of their more successful infotainment personalities. Other conservative organizations signed on, sure. But this isn't something that occurred, and that was then "covered" by Fox News. It was whole-cloth created by Fox News. This isn't invective. Just reality. Heck, Fox is still pitching the event.

3) Fox News seems to be misrepresenting...intentionally...the size of the event. The two images in the ad are juxtaposed in a way that implies a huge crowd. The largest image is shot from the mall, and shows a densely packed group on the National Mall. It's not a particularly long shot, though. We're not seeing a large expanse of the Mall...just a block or so. There's then that second shot, which shows the demonstration as it moves down Pennsylvania Ave. towards the Capitol. But that street is comparatively narrow...and filling it for six or seven blocks is something that could be done with a moderate crowd..between 65,000 and 70,000. What the images are *intended* to convey is a significantly larger crowd. They are presented to imply that the Mall crowd extended as far as the one on Pennsylvania Avenue, which it did not. There've been immense conservative demonstrations in DC...one pro-life event back in the 90s had at least 450,000. This was not one of them.

Honesty is, as I'm recalling, the first of the "Twelve" principles being pitched by Fox. Evidently "irony" is number two.