I urge everyone concerned for the future of the US to read the latest article in The New Yorker about Jeff Bezos’s destruction of the once and former beacon of journalism, The Washington Post by Ruth Marcus. Personally I think Bezos is intentionally destroying the paper to curry favor with Cheeto Mussolini so he will continue his lucrative Blue Origin contracts.
I would love to read it but, I had to cancel my New Yorker subscription. I have limited means. I only subscribed to the New Yorker, The New Republic and The Baffler. Would love to pay for more left wing media along with The Professional Left. I cannot afford it. Oh, yeah, I had a Wapo subscription which I cancelled last week of October 2024.
I canceled WaPo too. Did that a while ago. I checked about the New Yorker. If you haven’t read any this month and are not a subscriber you might not encounter a pay wall. “The New Yorker's feed is free to follow, allowing all readers to enjoy a limited number of articles per month at no charge. New Yorker subscribers have unlimited access to the feed, with subscriptions available on a monthly or annual basis.”
So why doesn’t Bezos just sell the paper? Perhaps because he thinks it looks better to DJT if Bezos is seen as dismembering that particular piece of the “woke” MSM? A service to the uberlord.
In addition to the book Bad Company - Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream by Megan Greenwell, folks also should read Empire of AI - Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI (about AI industry in general) by Karen Hao and Dark Money by Jane Mayer (about the Koch brothers and others whose money has turned the Republican Party into the monster it is today).
One cannot underestimate the importance of the three main human institutions that are concerned with ‘trustworthy information’: science, an independent judiciary, and a free press.
I would be willing to bet self-made billionaires don't think in terms of their aggregate wealth vs 1 project. Their core competitive nature means each investment is a win or a loss on its own. Something like the yacht is a status marker, a hole in the ocean you pour money into, and a swell toy for the kid who has everything. Funding a historic newspaper could be a similar status marker, and probably it was for a while since he did "write a check". But like every other billionaire CEO he is totally spooked by Trump, and that threat overrides any mere money-losing status marker
So he's got the paper which apparantly he's unwilling to sell, on the other he's got his Murdoch editor-in-chief who's sold him some screwball plan to reinvent "the newspaper", and on the gripping hand he has the threat of Trump making his life hell if his paper somehow displeases him. He's completely squandered the goodwill of the paper on trusting a British tabloid buffoon and fearing a doddering old man with an army of lawyers at his command. Ironicslly, he got lucky twice by supporting 2 money-losing ideas, Amazon and AWS until they took off, trusting his vision for what they could be. He's thrown that model away with the Post.
The Democrats cannot sustain power or relevancy by relying on the charity of billionaires and their foundations to fund charities and nonprofits. The sooner the leadership realizes this and decides to make a clear moral decision if they want to be the party of billionaires and aspiring billionaires or, the party of working people, the sooner they can have the moral clarity to decide who they are.
If they make the latter decision, they are going to have to focus more on not appealing to media that belongs to billionaires or into expanding white supremacy and patriarchy. They will have to fund their own army of podcasters, bloggers, newspapers and journalists. They will have to start supporting unions which are the best way to communicate their values, and vision for the country that is independent of the conspiracy theories flooding the social media. They will also have to raise their funding from the voters and members.
If leftist activists can't pay their mortgages raising children and caring for their elders through the movement, they drop out when they are getting experienced and can keep the movement from constantly having to reinvent and relearn because every 10–15 years people drop out. These things are all related to the media and expecting members to just give money, not their enthusiasm. The top-down model of organizing is not working. I remember the essay Dave wrote about organizing and the wisdom he gained from being in the Sierra Club. I remember that and look forward when I can get into organizing in my community again.
Someone described us as on deathbed vigil for the Post before Bezos hired Baron. It was good for a few years.
Once they skipped the 2024 endorsement, I went back to deathbed vigil. It’s no longer useful as a local paper and the op-ed page sucks. Just another thing destroyed by proximity to Trump.
I urge everyone concerned for the future of the US to read the latest article in The New Yorker about Jeff Bezos’s destruction of the once and former beacon of journalism, The Washington Post by Ruth Marcus. Personally I think Bezos is intentionally destroying the paper to curry favor with Cheeto Mussolini so he will continue his lucrative Blue Origin contracts.
I would love to read it but, I had to cancel my New Yorker subscription. I have limited means. I only subscribed to the New Yorker, The New Republic and The Baffler. Would love to pay for more left wing media along with The Professional Left. I cannot afford it. Oh, yeah, I had a Wapo subscription which I cancelled last week of October 2024.
I canceled WaPo too. Did that a while ago. I checked about the New Yorker. If you haven’t read any this month and are not a subscriber you might not encounter a pay wall. “The New Yorker's feed is free to follow, allowing all readers to enjoy a limited number of articles per month at no charge. New Yorker subscribers have unlimited access to the feed, with subscriptions available on a monthly or annual basis.”
I don’t know if the New Yorker does gift articles like NY Times, if it does I will sent to you!
So why doesn’t Bezos just sell the paper? Perhaps because he thinks it looks better to DJT if Bezos is seen as dismembering that particular piece of the “woke” MSM? A service to the uberlord.
In addition to the book Bad Company - Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream by Megan Greenwell, folks also should read Empire of AI - Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI (about AI industry in general) by Karen Hao and Dark Money by Jane Mayer (about the Koch brothers and others whose money has turned the Republican Party into the monster it is today).
One cannot underestimate the importance of the three main human institutions that are concerned with ‘trustworthy information’: science, an independent judiciary, and a free press.
I would be willing to bet self-made billionaires don't think in terms of their aggregate wealth vs 1 project. Their core competitive nature means each investment is a win or a loss on its own. Something like the yacht is a status marker, a hole in the ocean you pour money into, and a swell toy for the kid who has everything. Funding a historic newspaper could be a similar status marker, and probably it was for a while since he did "write a check". But like every other billionaire CEO he is totally spooked by Trump, and that threat overrides any mere money-losing status marker
So he's got the paper which apparantly he's unwilling to sell, on the other he's got his Murdoch editor-in-chief who's sold him some screwball plan to reinvent "the newspaper", and on the gripping hand he has the threat of Trump making his life hell if his paper somehow displeases him. He's completely squandered the goodwill of the paper on trusting a British tabloid buffoon and fearing a doddering old man with an army of lawyers at his command. Ironicslly, he got lucky twice by supporting 2 money-losing ideas, Amazon and AWS until they took off, trusting his vision for what they could be. He's thrown that model away with the Post.
In a world of Randolphs and Mortimers, be a Billy Ray or Louis
The Democrats cannot sustain power or relevancy by relying on the charity of billionaires and their foundations to fund charities and nonprofits. The sooner the leadership realizes this and decides to make a clear moral decision if they want to be the party of billionaires and aspiring billionaires or, the party of working people, the sooner they can have the moral clarity to decide who they are.
If they make the latter decision, they are going to have to focus more on not appealing to media that belongs to billionaires or into expanding white supremacy and patriarchy. They will have to fund their own army of podcasters, bloggers, newspapers and journalists. They will have to start supporting unions which are the best way to communicate their values, and vision for the country that is independent of the conspiracy theories flooding the social media. They will also have to raise their funding from the voters and members.
If leftist activists can't pay their mortgages raising children and caring for their elders through the movement, they drop out when they are getting experienced and can keep the movement from constantly having to reinvent and relearn because every 10–15 years people drop out. These things are all related to the media and expecting members to just give money, not their enthusiasm. The top-down model of organizing is not working. I remember the essay Dave wrote about organizing and the wisdom he gained from being in the Sierra Club. I remember that and look forward when I can get into organizing in my community again.
Someone described us as on deathbed vigil for the Post before Bezos hired Baron. It was good for a few years.
Once they skipped the 2024 endorsement, I went back to deathbed vigil. It’s no longer useful as a local paper and the op-ed page sucks. Just another thing destroyed by proximity to Trump.
Democracy dies.