The spiral that could strangle the 'Washington Post'

The carnage perpetrated in the Washington Post Jeff Bezos's situation doesn't bode well. The newspaper that has become the epitome of a press capable of holding power to account, even to the point of bringing down a corrupt president, will now shrink. Impunity will grow (even more). I read that the newspaper was losing $100 million annually. And, being aware of how frivolous it is to judge the use of money when it's not your own, when I see the millions invested in that farcical documentary about Melania Trump, or read the day after the axe incident that Amazon will invest $200 billion in artificial intelligence and robotics, I can't help but wonder. Will the newspaper last another ten years? In reality, of course, it's not about money, because we're talking about pocket change when we're dealing with hundreds of billions of dollars in the US. No, the problem isn't the $100 million a year, but rather the expectations Bezos had when he bought the newspaper—to claim credit for saving a flagship of journalism by applying his digital logic to expose the shortcomings of traditional publishers—and the bitter contrast with the results—a newspaper that has continued—once Trump decided he'd had enough of the charade.

If the money saved isn't invested—and no one has announced any—the destructive spiral is inevitable: they'll sell fewer copies and advertising revenue will plummet. This is in addition to those already leaving en masse as a gesture of protest. The newspaper will fall back into losses. It will have to be downsized again. More layoffs. And so on. "Democracy dies in darkness" is the sumptuous slogan Bezos adopted for his image-boggling whim and added to the newspaper. Rather, it dies from a lack of commitment. Or from cowardice.