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> "...former Post managing editor Eugene Patterson was publisher of the St. Petersburg Times, he insisted the newspaper report his arrest for driving under the
by specialist 2y ago
> "...former Post managing editor Eugene Patterson was publisher of the St. Petersburg Times, he insisted the newspaper report his arrest for driving under the influence of alcohol on the front page. Similarly, NPR has reported independently on controversies and the travails of its own leaders.
Lewis comes from a different tradition." (Emphasis mine.)
Indeed.
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Journalism is anathema to biz models dependent on advertising and worried about shareholder values(sic).
Lewis was brought in to boost the Post's declining circulation.
Why does the Post even need to make a profit?
I now don't know why I had once hoped that Jeff Bezos would be good patron of the Post. That he didn't squash the stories about Amazon and himself was a really positive signal.
That kind of noblesse oblige was probably MacKenzie Scott's doing.
For future, I'm hoping ProPublica's model becomes the norm. eg They just announced an ambitious plan with their 50 state strategy.
- tootie 2y agoJournalism and nonprofit journalism are all struggling massively and anyone prospering right now is likely at the largesse of a filthy rich donor like Bezos. ProPublica runs no ads, they have a donate button, but there's no way it's sufficient to cover the amount of work they do which is substantial. I'm not sure who their benefactor(s) are but they definitely have an angel. NPR and affiliates are all laying off left and right. The Intercept is on death's door. Even on the obscenely commercial side, The Messenger burned through $70M in like 9 months and couldn't survive. Old stalwarts like Newsweek are now spammy content farms. NY Times has done an incredible job becoming a total lifestyle brand selling news, cooking, games, etc. It's a very, very difficult model to copy. Axios and Politico sell high-priced "enterprise" subscriptions to deep-pocketed niche groups. It's tumultuous to say the least.
- greenburger 2y agoYou can see details of ProPublica’s funding here: https://www.propublica.org/reports https://www.propublica.org/reports $43 million budget in 2023. Looks to me like typical American non-profit funding. Several significant donors rather than an “angel”.
- tootie 2y agoDidn't mean to imply one person funds the whole thing out of their pocket, but it's likely that the chairman, Paul Sagan, is both giving a ton and recruiting a lot of other wealthy people. Maybe a quarter or less of revenue comes from donations <$10K. That's not uncommon, but I don't think it's how most non-profits are funded. Either way, my point is that they could not sustain themselves as a for-profit business by just selling ads or subscriptions. And they are very much dependent on staying in the good graces of a small handful of people.
- anotheruser13 2y agoI wonder what Bezos's rationale was behind hiring all these British right wingers. Does anyone believe taking the Post in that direction is really going to steer that crowd away from Fox "News"?
- specialist 2y agoSome additional context: The Washington Post has a Bezos problem [2022-09-27] https://www.cjr.org/special_report/washington-post-jeff-bezos.php https://www.cjr.org/special_report/washington-post-jeff-bezo...
- cbsmith 2y ago> Journalism is anathema to biz models dependent on advertising and worried about shareholder values(sic). That presumes that journalism isn't valued. I think a fair case could be made that it isn't valued as much as it used to be, but that's the reason for the "anathema", not intrinsic properties of journalism.