Feeling the Pinch

Here's some content for ya, with context.

On Thursday afternoon Jeffrey Bezos, the multibillionaire owner of TheWashington Post, met with the newspaper’s top-tier executives and editors and a selected group of reporters at his D.C. mansion to discuss what was going on at the great newspaper he has been methodically dismantling. This summit was evidently intended to be seen as a candid, trust-building effort with staff. The first thing Bezos did was demand that everyone leave their phones outside.

Details of the hush-hush luncheon nevertheless leaked out … somehow!

The food was swell — a choice of halibut or steak —served on Washington Post dinnerware. The message was not so swell. Much of it appears to have consisted of defensive justifications for the mass firings that have eliminated whole swaths of the newspaper’s coverage areas— notably sports, local news, pop culture and the arts, and international news — the entire Middle East staff was canned just before the war.

At the meeting, the Boss and his minions reasserted his belief in a “data-driven” business model, which is the antithesis of judgment-driven journalism. It is what the news media has been sliding towards in the last twenty years or so, transforming themselves from a national trust, a fourth estate, to bottom-line bottom-feeders, doing what makes money, eliminating what does not, regardless of what an informed public needs to know.

“Data-driven” business models are one of a number of sterile terms that have taken over the management-media lexicon. Another is “content.” “Content” lumps all nature of information into one thick goo — indistinguishable and un-appraisable except for its ability to attract eyeballs in between advertisements. Stuff to fill space. Cement is the “content” of a cement mixer.

The writers and editors at the event asked, politely, whether Bezos was sucking up to his political benefactor, Donald Trump, by throwing $75 million of Amazon’s money down the drain to help finance “Melania,” the dreadful, vapid, first-lady documentary that Trump is hawking. Bezos’s answer was curt, and telling: He denied he had personally made that decision, but felt that the low-grossing movie will eventually deliver a return on the investment. Good content!

The remaining rank-and-file Washington Post journalists have been doing a heroic job under seemingly unendurable circumstances. They’ve even nailed some scoops, most notably revealing the chilling fact that Russia seems to be sharing intelligence with Iran to help the Iranians identify and neutralize U.S. and allied targets. “Neutralize” means destroy. “Targets” is a euphemism for ships and planes and control centers, all containing people.

Anyway, as this meeting was going on this week, the Wapo was continuing to fall apart at the seams. The seams are the places on, say, a submarine, that begin to separate and fray before the whole thing implodes. In a newspaper, the seams are the little things —headlines, captions and the like, now being shepherded by wildly overtasked professionals trying to do their job in a threadbare infrastructure decimated by layoffs.

Consider this, which recently made it into print:

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Or consider this one. Read the captions:

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The good news for Bezos: This sort of thing won’t affect the bottom line. Not this quarter, anyway!

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Today’s extraneous Gene Pool Gene Poll:

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And finally, The Gene Pool needs your support. We have run out of money for halibut and steak. Might you consider becoming a paying subscriber? We’ve held out on market demands and still cost only $5 a month or $50 a year. And the content is great!