I know this isn't your beat, but damn are you good at it, perhaps, one might argue, because your own biases are so muted as to make it virtually impossible to know which side politically you're on. It's almost like you're just trying to report, which is a shocking thing in 2024.
I’ve subscribed to the Post for over a decade and I agree with everything here. If it wasn’t my local paper I would’ve cancelled a long time ago.
There’s some good writers in the opinion section, both conservatives and libs, but the politics-adjacent news sections are a bunch of ideologically captured midwits. The book review of Rob Henderson’s Troubled was an absolute hit piece. Instead of having a staff writer review it they brought in an outside contributor with a similar background to misrepresent it and trash it. Just total bullshit.
This is an example of how people notice and walk way. In turn, if your ideological bias coincides with your approval rating dropping into the 20s, of course advertisers and investors will notice and avoid you.
…many of the people crying structure come across as maladaptive and repellent. I’d wager if you push them as to why their personal/social lives are/were less than great the’d point the finger at systemic bias and not their own obnoxiousness.
The people shrieking about the lack of a WaPo endorsement are hilarious. Honestly, who gives a shit whether a newspaper endorses anyone? Stephen King is cancelling his subscription! How virtuous! These people just can't seem to function unless everything and everyone around them are constantly bellowing, at max volume, with max energy, how horrifically awful Trump is. I mean, if your mind is made up about Trump, then what does it matter? Why do your beliefs need to be validated so much, and so often? Their attitude reveals such insecurity, and they have no idea.
They remind me of the people who seem to want any movie that depicts Bad Behavior to all but have a character turn to the camera and go "Now, remember, this is unacceptable. We don't approve of this Bad Person, and neither should you." They're such children.
Also, thank you for reminding me what an insufferable, condescending twit Magary has become. Christ, he really sucks now.
The endorsement in and of itself doesn't matter, but the ownership of one of the biggest newspapers in the US intervening to stop an endorsement as a way to kowtow to one of the candidates is absolutely awful.
He should have set this policy in January or something.
I think what I appreciate most about your writing is that by reading what you say I find that I can better make sense of something I had observed but couldn’t quite put words too. You always have such great insights and articulate the points so well!
2nd - Jeff Bezos is what the 2nd richest man in the world? His newspaper not endorsing Kamala Harris feels to me and a lot of other people like he’s kowtowing to Trump before the results are even in
3rd - as you even said, Bezos can single handedly keep the paper afloat
4th - newspapers have editorial sections for a reason. Let them do their job of editorializing! Leave the reporting up to reporters
5th - House Of Strauss isn’t a newspaper so I don’t ask you to endorse. But of all years and elections for the WaPost to stop endorsing… it’s really strange
And I get you genuinely believe what you wrote Ethan but sometimes your “what about the other side-ism” is just weak man!
I know you like to hug the center and I get it probably benefits your bottom line. But I don’t feel bad for Jeff Bezos and his mismanaged newspaper for one second.
The WaPost’s non endorsement is just asinine and cowardly. That’s my take !
Washington Post has only done presidential endorsements since 1976 (all Democrats) except for 1988 when they also declined. (NY Times began endorsements 1852 - post 1912, only 4 Republicans and none after 1956).
Also, saying he is genuine then adding a cheap shot about "benefits the bottom line" is lame. Either call him a sellout liar or allow he is making an intellectually honest observation. Or should he bury any truth detrimental to a left-leaning cause (and essentially be the WaPo)?
Let’s go back almost 40 years when politics was way more milk toast to see when the WaPost failed to endorse!
For the record, I am a proud paying customer to Ethan and HoS. I don’t need to agree or celebrate everything he writes.
And Nobody needs to defend Jeff Bezos, either. And Bezos should never be kissing Trump’s ass.
Would the WaPost really withhold its endorsement if they were confident Harris was going to win ?
Come one now?! Ethan can handle the smoke. Too many people are celebrating his take down on people overreacting to this non-endorsement.
I’m just vigorously offering a different perspective! Because if the Dems were clearly winning, i highly doubt these newspapers would be on the sideline now when they typically offer endorsements every Presidential Election.
I agree with your post . I read where - if Harris wins and the Post wanted Trump - she wouldn’t do anything about it. If Trump won and the Pist picked - Harris then punish punish punish. I think that played a role …. But…,Nieman Lab
@NiemanLab
·
16m
Who says readers don't care about presidential endorsements any more? At least 200,000
This is all such a masturbatory self flagellating echo chamber discussion, I'm sorry, but come on. When all those right wing publications cited in the Baragona tweet (https://x.com/justinbaragona/status/1798202225816440918/photo/1) lose 50-90% of their unique visitors in a 4 year period, do they bring in a bunch of Salon and Jezebel alumni to reset their priorities? Of course not. Because either their owners have deep pockets and are content to lose money as long as they own the libs (think of Ballmer owning the Clippers), or they decide they aren't right wing *enough* for their audience, and replace their management with the guys who founded YummyLibtardTears.com or whatever. The double standard is just never-ending.
The biggest problem the Post has is it basically offers NOTHING for free, so nobody gets a taste of something they like that they might be willing to pay for at some point. People happily piss away a year's subscription on a single NFL bet on Sunday morning. It isn't a cost issue. It's that the Post has been out of sight, out of mind for a lot of people who otherwise might actually consider subscribing.
Comscore is a World Economic Forum "technological pioneer." The Righting.com audience is left leaning. Probably a good idea to take their findings with a grain of salt.
Great column. I lean right and have found the described coverage maddening for a long time. The fact that media has devolved into sides is really sad. I don't know if wokeness causes financial problems, but I do know that they've drawn tighter scrutiny from half the population. There are many examples all around media and entertainment. They're only hurting themselves.
Unasked for and somewhat related hot take: Disney's Snow White remake doesn't get released.
And with regards to Snow White, genuinely don’t get why the people at the top who don’t care about that sort of thing (only in performative terms) don’t put their foot down on this sort of thing as it’s hurting their bonuses/options, and hardly anyone cares if a movie doesn’t have every single group represented in some way or another they just care if it’s good not whether their 4ft one armed two spirit friend is ‘represented’ by one of the main characters.
I’d guess there are so many options for ‘woke news’ now that it’s not very profitable bar a few, low barriers to entry with Twitter/ YouTube so there is always new options which means keeping paying customers difficult as there is always options for the customer, and as we all know you say one thing slightly off the accepted viewpoint that is common sense and you lose half your subscribers (e.g. people who fail sex tests shouldn’t be allowed to compete in women’s boxing).
The tantrum is instructive in many levels. Here is one. The legacy media was able to push Biden out because the legacy media still has a lot of credibility with the groups who have an outsized voice in the Democratic Party.
The media couldn’t do much to Trump because they have no credibility with everybody else. The response of “let’s try to rebuild our credibility so that our legitimate reporting into Trump hits” is the logical next step. The ongoing tantrum shows that when given the choice between preening, but ineffective, moralism and trying to do something that may actually work, many passionately prefer the former.
1. I have noticed I noticed that the quicker Ethan responds to a topic in the news the more hot take-y/reactionary it is. He really should wait a couple days to sit and think on topics. That's the value of the subscription model vs. clicks! I could have read this article on any conservative site within an hour of the news breaking.
2. I am sure Ethan would have an issue if Substack said he could not write about NBA viewership levels because it would hurt Substacks partnership with the NBA. It's not about the Wash Post not making an endorsement, it's why they are not making an endorsement. It might even be the right decision for the paper overall but that is clearly not why they are not making an endorsement.
3. I think newspapers should probably get rid of editorial sections all together because everyone thinks the news section of the paper and the editorial are one in the same and clearly just re-enforces the claim of biased media when reporting the true.
4. Hopefully, Ethan reads this and finds it interesting. I once did a study for school where I took a random edition of the NY Times and looked up on linkedin where every writer with a byline went to school and there were more IVY league plus Northwestern alumni then every other college combined. Just 1 person went to community college, and even that one guy went to Berkeley afterwards. The NYT gets a higher percentage of its writers from the Ivy leagues than the NFL gets from the SEC. There are more Ivy league Alumni as a percentage than at GOLDMAN SACHS! Like, how is that even possible? Most journalists don't even know they want to get into journalism UNTIL college.
5. I love the WSJ and think despite being a business focused newspaper it has done some of the best political and foreign news reporting for the last few years. However, Its hilarious to me that Ethan thinks the WSJ editorials are middle of the road. My friends and I have a running joke about the WSJ Editorial section where according to them EVERYTHING can be solved with repealing the Estate Tax. Global Warming? Solved! Global Poverty? Solved! Feminism? Solved!
Bill Maher nailed them with his bit on them a few months ago, democracy dies in dumbness i think the piece was.
Just seems like the classic case of the bosses letting the children run the show when things are going relatively well, but when things go to shit they start reminding them who is in charge they throw their toys out of the pram
Real question is why bezos let it get to this point as I doubt he likes the idea of owning a newspaper that is probably a massive joke in his circle and probably got ripped by them over the adult babies he employs there, and I highly doubt he’d have let that happen at Amazon at any point
I think people just plain don't want to have their intelligence insulted. It's like what you demonstrated in WaPo completely burying the Biden and Trump debate from earlier this year. People want to talk about 60 Minutes splicing up and editing the footage of their Harris interview. I was suspicious of them 3 years ago. Soon after they aired this one story in which they were completely gushing over the people who started the Lincoln Project, they did a story on Ron Desantis including a carefully edited press conference answer. They edited it such that it made it seem that Desantis was colluding with Publix, the drug store, for vaccine rollouts. Anyone could easily access the full answer and know that 60 Minutes carefully crafted it to make him look bad and have people believe something that isn't true. I saw it as something straight out of Rock Bottom in the Simpsons episode "Homer Badman". This is a news organization that has been well respected for decades just straight up lying and not caring about it.
What's even more concerning, as you continue to point out so many times, is that it's even happening with so many people in sports media. Our intelligence is being insulted. That's why you're one of the people in sports media I trust the most. I don't feel like you're trying to insult my intelligence and that you're helping me to find truth. Thank you.
I know this isn't your beat, but damn are you good at it, perhaps, one might argue, because your own biases are so muted as to make it virtually impossible to know which side politically you're on. It's almost like you're just trying to report, which is a shocking thing in 2024.
I’ve subscribed to the Post for over a decade and I agree with everything here. If it wasn’t my local paper I would’ve cancelled a long time ago.
There’s some good writers in the opinion section, both conservatives and libs, but the politics-adjacent news sections are a bunch of ideologically captured midwits. The book review of Rob Henderson’s Troubled was an absolute hit piece. Instead of having a staff writer review it they brought in an outside contributor with a similar background to misrepresent it and trash it. Just total bullshit.
This is an example of how people notice and walk way. In turn, if your ideological bias coincides with your approval rating dropping into the 20s, of course advertisers and investors will notice and avoid you.
…many of the people crying structure come across as maladaptive and repellent. I’d wager if you push them as to why their personal/social lives are/were less than great the’d point the finger at systemic bias and not their own obnoxiousness.
I feel compelled to highlight Andrew Van Dam's "Department of Data" aspect of the WaPo that is unique and well done, just to give WaPo a bone here.
The people shrieking about the lack of a WaPo endorsement are hilarious. Honestly, who gives a shit whether a newspaper endorses anyone? Stephen King is cancelling his subscription! How virtuous! These people just can't seem to function unless everything and everyone around them are constantly bellowing, at max volume, with max energy, how horrifically awful Trump is. I mean, if your mind is made up about Trump, then what does it matter? Why do your beliefs need to be validated so much, and so often? Their attitude reveals such insecurity, and they have no idea.
They remind me of the people who seem to want any movie that depicts Bad Behavior to all but have a character turn to the camera and go "Now, remember, this is unacceptable. We don't approve of this Bad Person, and neither should you." They're such children.
Also, thank you for reminding me what an insufferable, condescending twit Magary has become. Christ, he really sucks now.
The endorsement in and of itself doesn't matter, but the ownership of one of the biggest newspapers in the US intervening to stop an endorsement as a way to kowtow to one of the candidates is absolutely awful.
He should have set this policy in January or something.
I think what I appreciate most about your writing is that by reading what you say I find that I can better make sense of something I had observed but couldn’t quite put words too. You always have such great insights and articulate the points so well!
1st - this was a very Matt Taibbi-esque post
2nd - Jeff Bezos is what the 2nd richest man in the world? His newspaper not endorsing Kamala Harris feels to me and a lot of other people like he’s kowtowing to Trump before the results are even in
3rd - as you even said, Bezos can single handedly keep the paper afloat
4th - newspapers have editorial sections for a reason. Let them do their job of editorializing! Leave the reporting up to reporters
5th - House Of Strauss isn’t a newspaper so I don’t ask you to endorse. But of all years and elections for the WaPost to stop endorsing… it’s really strange
And I get you genuinely believe what you wrote Ethan but sometimes your “what about the other side-ism” is just weak man!
I know you like to hug the center and I get it probably benefits your bottom line. But I don’t feel bad for Jeff Bezos and his mismanaged newspaper for one second.
The WaPost’s non endorsement is just asinine and cowardly. That’s my take !
Washington Post has only done presidential endorsements since 1976 (all Democrats) except for 1988 when they also declined. (NY Times began endorsements 1852 - post 1912, only 4 Republicans and none after 1956).
Also, saying he is genuine then adding a cheap shot about "benefits the bottom line" is lame. Either call him a sellout liar or allow he is making an intellectually honest observation. Or should he bury any truth detrimental to a left-leaning cause (and essentially be the WaPo)?
Let’s go back almost 40 years when politics was way more milk toast to see when the WaPost failed to endorse!
For the record, I am a proud paying customer to Ethan and HoS. I don’t need to agree or celebrate everything he writes.
And Nobody needs to defend Jeff Bezos, either. And Bezos should never be kissing Trump’s ass.
Would the WaPost really withhold its endorsement if they were confident Harris was going to win ?
Come one now?! Ethan can handle the smoke. Too many people are celebrating his take down on people overreacting to this non-endorsement.
I’m just vigorously offering a different perspective! Because if the Dems were clearly winning, i highly doubt these newspapers would be on the sideline now when they typically offer endorsements every Presidential Election.
I agree with your post . I read where - if Harris wins and the Post wanted Trump - she wouldn’t do anything about it. If Trump won and the Pist picked - Harris then punish punish punish. I think that played a role …. But…,Nieman Lab
@NiemanLab
·
16m
Who says readers don't care about presidential endorsements any more? At least 200,000
@washingtonpost
subscribers sure seem to
https://buff.ly/48s4JSM
This is all such a masturbatory self flagellating echo chamber discussion, I'm sorry, but come on. When all those right wing publications cited in the Baragona tweet (https://x.com/justinbaragona/status/1798202225816440918/photo/1) lose 50-90% of their unique visitors in a 4 year period, do they bring in a bunch of Salon and Jezebel alumni to reset their priorities? Of course not. Because either their owners have deep pockets and are content to lose money as long as they own the libs (think of Ballmer owning the Clippers), or they decide they aren't right wing *enough* for their audience, and replace their management with the guys who founded YummyLibtardTears.com or whatever. The double standard is just never-ending.
The biggest problem the Post has is it basically offers NOTHING for free, so nobody gets a taste of something they like that they might be willing to pay for at some point. People happily piss away a year's subscription on a single NFL bet on Sunday morning. It isn't a cost issue. It's that the Post has been out of sight, out of mind for a lot of people who otherwise might actually consider subscribing.
Comscore is a World Economic Forum "technological pioneer." The Righting.com audience is left leaning. Probably a good idea to take their findings with a grain of salt.
Great column. I lean right and have found the described coverage maddening for a long time. The fact that media has devolved into sides is really sad. I don't know if wokeness causes financial problems, but I do know that they've drawn tighter scrutiny from half the population. There are many examples all around media and entertainment. They're only hurting themselves.
Unasked for and somewhat related hot take: Disney's Snow White remake doesn't get released.
And with regards to Snow White, genuinely don’t get why the people at the top who don’t care about that sort of thing (only in performative terms) don’t put their foot down on this sort of thing as it’s hurting their bonuses/options, and hardly anyone cares if a movie doesn’t have every single group represented in some way or another they just care if it’s good not whether their 4ft one armed two spirit friend is ‘represented’ by one of the main characters.
I’d guess there are so many options for ‘woke news’ now that it’s not very profitable bar a few, low barriers to entry with Twitter/ YouTube so there is always new options which means keeping paying customers difficult as there is always options for the customer, and as we all know you say one thing slightly off the accepted viewpoint that is common sense and you lose half your subscribers (e.g. people who fail sex tests shouldn’t be allowed to compete in women’s boxing).
The tantrum is instructive in many levels. Here is one. The legacy media was able to push Biden out because the legacy media still has a lot of credibility with the groups who have an outsized voice in the Democratic Party.
The media couldn’t do much to Trump because they have no credibility with everybody else. The response of “let’s try to rebuild our credibility so that our legitimate reporting into Trump hits” is the logical next step. The ongoing tantrum shows that when given the choice between preening, but ineffective, moralism and trying to do something that may actually work, many passionately prefer the former.
A few issues with Ethan's article:
1. I have noticed I noticed that the quicker Ethan responds to a topic in the news the more hot take-y/reactionary it is. He really should wait a couple days to sit and think on topics. That's the value of the subscription model vs. clicks! I could have read this article on any conservative site within an hour of the news breaking.
2. I am sure Ethan would have an issue if Substack said he could not write about NBA viewership levels because it would hurt Substacks partnership with the NBA. It's not about the Wash Post not making an endorsement, it's why they are not making an endorsement. It might even be the right decision for the paper overall but that is clearly not why they are not making an endorsement.
3. I think newspapers should probably get rid of editorial sections all together because everyone thinks the news section of the paper and the editorial are one in the same and clearly just re-enforces the claim of biased media when reporting the true.
4. Hopefully, Ethan reads this and finds it interesting. I once did a study for school where I took a random edition of the NY Times and looked up on linkedin where every writer with a byline went to school and there were more IVY league plus Northwestern alumni then every other college combined. Just 1 person went to community college, and even that one guy went to Berkeley afterwards. The NYT gets a higher percentage of its writers from the Ivy leagues than the NFL gets from the SEC. There are more Ivy league Alumni as a percentage than at GOLDMAN SACHS! Like, how is that even possible? Most journalists don't even know they want to get into journalism UNTIL college.
5. I love the WSJ and think despite being a business focused newspaper it has done some of the best political and foreign news reporting for the last few years. However, Its hilarious to me that Ethan thinks the WSJ editorials are middle of the road. My friends and I have a running joke about the WSJ Editorial section where according to them EVERYTHING can be solved with repealing the Estate Tax. Global Warming? Solved! Global Poverty? Solved! Feminism? Solved!
They should get some under-employed sports reporters to cover politics like sports.
Beats, updates, sources say...insane they can't compete in politics
Bill Maher nailed them with his bit on them a few months ago, democracy dies in dumbness i think the piece was.
Just seems like the classic case of the bosses letting the children run the show when things are going relatively well, but when things go to shit they start reminding them who is in charge they throw their toys out of the pram
Real question is why bezos let it get to this point as I doubt he likes the idea of owning a newspaper that is probably a massive joke in his circle and probably got ripped by them over the adult babies he employs there, and I highly doubt he’d have let that happen at Amazon at any point
Bezos and his papers non-endorsement was purely for Bezos and his billionaire friends to keep access to Trump if Trump wins.
There is nothing virtuous or high minded about this, non-endorsement.
It isn’t a smack down of the left either. It is purely billionaires wanting to making sure they are as close to the levers of power as possible.
This is exactly correct and that people can't see this is maddening.
Fine, Strauss, but have you booked Klinman for the Pod? It's been forever, you delinquent. Hurry.
This was amazing
I think people just plain don't want to have their intelligence insulted. It's like what you demonstrated in WaPo completely burying the Biden and Trump debate from earlier this year. People want to talk about 60 Minutes splicing up and editing the footage of their Harris interview. I was suspicious of them 3 years ago. Soon after they aired this one story in which they were completely gushing over the people who started the Lincoln Project, they did a story on Ron Desantis including a carefully edited press conference answer. They edited it such that it made it seem that Desantis was colluding with Publix, the drug store, for vaccine rollouts. Anyone could easily access the full answer and know that 60 Minutes carefully crafted it to make him look bad and have people believe something that isn't true. I saw it as something straight out of Rock Bottom in the Simpsons episode "Homer Badman". This is a news organization that has been well respected for decades just straight up lying and not caring about it.
What's even more concerning, as you continue to point out so many times, is that it's even happening with so many people in sports media. Our intelligence is being insulted. That's why you're one of the people in sports media I trust the most. I don't feel like you're trying to insult my intelligence and that you're helping me to find truth. Thank you.
Part of the problem is that Drew Magary was not Racist Sandwich subscriber
BINGO