By Joel Thurtell
I liked Jennifer Rubin’s columns. I will miss reading them in the Washington Post. I am sorry that she resigned, but I doubt that I will be hunting for her work on the new platform she is creating.
Unlike some 250,000 people who have cancelled their subscriptions, I will continue paying to read the Washington Post. I originally subscribed to the Post for its excellent coverage of US and world news. I still need to read that kind of news, and will therefore continue subscribing. I just finished a triple-byline Post story explaining why Hamas finally agreed to release Israeli hostages. I do not recognize any of the writers’ names, but the article was written to the high standard I expect from the Post.
It should be remembered that highly-paid columnists like Jennifer Rubin act as bait to draw readers to the product. With Rubin gone, the Post will either recruit a new “name” writer from outside, or it will elevate one of the fine writers now covering major beats. With or without Rubin, the Post still has a large staff of journalists who write stories that I need to read.
Those who cancel their Post subscriptions out of anger at Post owner Jeff Bezos’s apparent kowtowing to Donald Trump should consider that they are exchanging deeply and broadly sourced Post reporting for an intensity and quality of reporting that are unproven on platforms with one or a handful of contributors. Who is making rounds of cop calls at the upstarts? The cancellers are trading known quality for guesswork. Small operators can’t afford to have staffs who develop relationships with numerous government and private organizations that make news.
Now I come to the question of why people are canceling. Are they trying to punish Jeff Bezos for spiking the Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris instead of Donald Trump? That seems highly quixotic. Bezos is a billionaire. The Post’s budget, to him, is chump change. Still, it seems that 250,000 spite cancellations have affected the Post’s bottom line. The paper has laid off 4 percent of tis non-editorial staff. That means the loss of not writers and editors, but of people who sell or promote the sale of advertising and people who help distribute the paper. Their work is essential to a newspaper’s survival.
What message does damaging the paper’s ability to prosper send to Jeff Bezos? What message does it send to the Post news staff? Does it tell the Post that its readers are so disloyal that they are willing to sabotage the paper’s ability to survive? Was it the aim of the cancelers to damage the quality of the news product? Was it their aim to force the shut-down of the Post?
If the Post closed, it would be just one of hundreds of newspapers that have been lost over the last half century. Was it the purpose of the cancelers to kill off the valuable news reporting of the Post? Newspapers are absolutely essential to the survival of our democracy. Donald Trump has vowed to go after news organizations. He says he would like to harass or sue them into extinction.
If the cancelers succeed in closing the Post, they will have accomplished what Donald Trump was not able to do by bullying Jeff Bezos into spiking the Harris endorsement. They will have aided and abetted Trump in eroding a pillar of our democracy, which is a free press.
The Washington Post is part of that free press, even if its publisher squelched an editorial.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
