The Washington Post is about to embrace the darkness

By Drew Magary : sfgate – excerpt

It’s easy to execute a news dump when you’re one of the scant few remaining places that bother to properly cover news at all. Such was the case earlier this week at Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post, when executive editor Sally Buzbee — who had replaced venerated former news chief Marty Baron — was unceremoniously forced out by Post leadership after just three years at the helm. The news that Buzbee was given the gate arrived via a companywide email late Sunday night, seemingly without much in the way of advance notice down the masthead: Many of Buzbee’s closest colleagues were caught off guard by the move, Vanity Fair reported, as were the rank and file…

After casually dumping on his employees’ work (conveniently eliding any external or managerial factors that surely played a much larger role in the paper’s decreased readership), Lewis then told them that the search for Buzbee’s successor was an “iterative, messy” one that he couldn’t describe in any further detail. All reporters there were allowed to know was that their CEO had settled on two men that, by sheer coincidence, happened to be his friends: Matt Murray (who will serve as interim editor) and Robert Winnett (who will assume the job permanently after the election). Not only are all three of these men as white as a block of Monterey Jack, they also happen to have deep roots in upscale conservative media. Lewis and Murray both did long stints with Rupert Murdoch, with Lewis running News Corp’s Dow Jones and Murray coming over from the Wall Street Journal. As for Winnett, he currently runs England’s Daily Telegraph, purveyor of such fine op-ed pieces as, “No one ever says it, but in many ways global warming will be a good thing.”…

“The aim is to give the millions of Americans — who feel traditional news is not for them but still want to be kept informed — compelling, exciting and accurate news where they are and in the style that they want.”…

This is what happens when journalism and profit end up going head-to-head. It happened before, and now it will happen again. The lights in the Post newsroom are flickering. One day soon, they could go out entirely.…(more)