Another sad day in the life of a once-great newspaper
The Washington Post is killing off its sports section, its Sunday Books and cutting foreign correspondents around the globe. Thanks, Jeff Bezos.
Woke up this morning, checked X, and I saw what I was expecting to see:
No, not a Benn Mathurin trade, although I’m keeping my eyes peeled for that to happen today or by the trade deadline tomorrow.
What I saw instead was a chorus line of Washington Post reporters and editors denouncing the death of the paper’s sports section, the diminution of the foreign desk and the cancellation of the Sunday Books section, among other journalistic atrocities. The list of reporters included an old friend and IndyStar colleague, Candace Buckner, who is one of the best young columnists in the business. (And I’d be shocked if she wasn’t hired somewhere in about 10 minutes).
Anyway, all of this happened Wednesday, but we’ve known for some time the hammer was going to fall. It seems that Jeff Bezos, the heartless, gutless multibillionaire, succumbed to both business pressures and pressure from the Administration and tore the newspaper asunder. It’s terribly sad when any news-gathering operation ceases to exist or sees its staff get cut (see: the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), but the Washington Post was, and is, different. It’s an American institution, a true journalism behemoth that speaks truth to power and was responsible for exposing Watergate, which brought down the Nixon presidency.
It’s not just sports. It’s Metro. It’s Sunday Books. It’s the foreign desk with several foreign correspondents getting the boot, some learning the news while they were reporting in war zones.
