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Jeff Bezos wants Washington Post’s newsroom budget halved, productivity doubled
- ray023 7mo agoHow would one even measure productivity in a newsroom, who write more propaganda pieces without sounding like AI?
- gmerc 8mo agoThere’s a typo in the headline. “ended”, not “upended”
- prpl 8mo agoThe last year it has really gone down hill — hard. Reporting is mediocre, photojournalism is forgettable, and the opinion section is absolute garbage.
- black_13 8mo ago[dead]
- laughing_man 8mo agoThat's not just WaPo. That's the newspaper business. The business model for newspapers just doesn't work anymore, and they've all been trying to come to terms with it since Craigslist launched in 1995.
- nayroclade 8mo agoThe WP reportedly lost $100m in 2024. So one the one hand, you might understand Bezos wanting things to change. On the other hand, Blue Origin reportedly loses multiple billions of $ per year, and has done for decades, which Bezos pumps in without insisting on massive cuts or layoffs.
- ballooney 8mo agoAbout the same as Bezos invested in the Melania documentary, watched by about six people.
- rwmj 8mo agoThe Melania documentary is an important artifact that historians will be talking about for decades, although not in the way those involved anticipated.
- emchammer 8mo agoLeni Riefenstahl taught me everything I know about lighting and camera angles!
- nearbuy 8mo agoWikipedia says it "had the highest opening for a non-concert documentary since the $10.7 million opening for Chimpanzee (2012)". It did well by documentary standards, poorly compared to its budget, and the stories about empty theaters are mostly in areas with very weak Trump support. Those stories spread mainly because they makes us feel good.
- DoesntMatter22 8mo agoBlue Origin in theory could make money some day. WP definitely not
- zzleeper 8mo agoI'm sure he didn't bought the WaPo to make a profit. More like to have an influence.
- mrwh 8mo agoIt's noblesse oblige, or rather an example of the end of noblesse oblige, that the super rich don't even have to pretend to do things for others any more. Which, I would suggest, is a short-sighted and ultimately hubristicaly stupid change...
- ithkuil 8mo agoAnd influence he got. Gutting it was an act of influence and carried the message he wanted to carry across quite perfectly
- GolfPopper 8mo agoHis reason for buying it has been right there in front of us all along: Democracy Dies In Darkenss It's just like "To Serve Man".
- thomassmith65 8mo agoThis is absurdly pedantic, but the fact that the Twilight Zone episode relies on a pun makes the two phrases somewhat different. They would be alike if the book title had been "If Mankind isn't at the Table, Mankind is on the Menu"
- deaux 8mo ago> The WP reportedly lost $100m in 2024. So one the one hand, you might understand Bezos wanting things to change. You don't even "might understand" this, because you're intelligent enough to grasp that its profitability as a newspaper was never a factor in Bezos' desire to purchase the WP.
- potro 8mo agoThere is quite a bit of difference between not making a profit and consistently losing around $100m a year with apparently no path to at least revenue neutrality.
- rapnie 8mo agoSo it loses pocket change for a multi billionaire? Edit: The consideration being that perhaps billionaire toys need not be profitable per se, but are purchased for different reasons. Twitter is another example here.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- potro 8mo agoA $100m here, a $100m there, pretty soon, you're talking real money.
- cenamus 8mo agoYeah, he could only keep this going for another 2600 years
- bravetraveler 8mo agoY'all are talking about the real Scrooge McDuck.
- ZeroGravitas 8mo agoThat's assuming the pro-billionaire propaganda it produces doesn't make him many hundreds of millions more. In that light an arbitrary but vaguely plausible reason to fire anyone who insists on doing actual journalism and not billionaire propaganda is a useful tool.
- bell-cot 8mo agoRich businessmen have expensive hobbies, and those can look a lot like real businesses. Jeff could also buy a couple oceanographic research vessels tomorrow, spend a few years looking for sunken Spanish treasure ships, then get bored and sell the whole "business" in a liquidation auction. Yes, Jeff and his companies keep making idealistic, pro-social statements. Unfortunately, such statements are little more than socially mandated lies. Which millions of people really want to believe - so be cautious about calling them out.
- LarsDu88 8mo agoThere's an obvious difference between the two in that Blue Origin is the gateway to multibillion dollar prospective markets that current have virtually no incumbents (other than one very big obvious one). Whereas the WP does not have any prospective future growth trajectory whatsoever b/c it's competing with the endless turd spigot that is social media.
- thrance 8mo agoThe WP is his propaganda tool contributing to maintaining this billionaire-friendly environment. Trump gave the bourgeoisie trillions in tax cuts last year, and Bezos is a major receiver of this present himself. It's hard to quantify, but these captured media together are much more valuable to oligarchs than any other ventures of theirs, certainly more than their space toys. Hence why Ellison would spend $100B of his personal wealth to add CNN to his catalogue, or why Musk spent so much on X and doesn't seem to care too much about making it profitable.
- UncleMeat 8mo agoYep. One of the big lessons of the last decade is that media can have billionaires as their primary market. The Free Press got huge because of infusions of cash from the rich. Media that flatters the opinions of billionaires and projects their propaganda into the world can be enormously valuable even if it isn't making traditional cash. It is a return to a patronage model. Garry Tan has even said this expressly. That the rich should simply own their own parallel media so they can project their will against the will of the people.
- LarsDu88 7mo agoHere's a controversial opinion -- it's actually always been this way. Hearst used his newspapers to manipulate the American public into war against the Spanish Empire. Government lies (babies in incubators, yellow cake...) were used to push two Iraq wars on the American public by the media. The abnormal thing is that we had maybe 10-15 years where the press put up at least a pretense of acting impartial as power shifted from pineapple and arms companies to tech monopolies.
- vasco 8mo agoThat's about 3 years of his boat's upkeep, regardless if it goes anywhere or not.
- phplovesong 8mo agoWP used to be left leaning, and with bezos the move has gone right. So naturally all readers move on to some other medium. Business 101
- halJordan 7mo agoWP was not sold to him because it was healthy and thriving in the first place.
- beAbU 8mo agoYou can't compare the two. BO is essentially an R&D firm.
- tpm 8mo agoSo it's a cost center. Exactly like the public relations tool that WP is. Until due to cuts public loses interest in it, at which point it ceases to be an effective tool and keeps being only a cost center.
- tren_hard 8mo agoBO definitely does layoffs, and is run just as awfully as Amazon (look who the CEO of BO is as of 2024). Doesn’t matter if you’re in an office or on the manufacturing floor, the hours and demands are terrible there. Everyone I know that has worked there echoed the same problems that Amazon had.
- thunderbong 8mo agohttps://archive.ph/jDX3O https://archive.ph/jDX3O
- shablulman 8mo ago[dead]
- fbistrash 8mo agoWashington Post opinion section is just garbage. I would call it propaganda section.
- Animats 8mo agoIt is explicitly that now. Bezos policy change back in 2025: "Billionaire Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos is directing the paper’s opinion section to focus on “personal liberties and free markets,” he announced Wednesday, leading to editorial page editor David Shipley’s resignation."[1] [1] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/26/jeff-bezos-washington-post-opinion-022790 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/26/jeff-bezos-washingt...
- timr 8mo ago[flagged]
- redserk 8mo agoNo, the opinion section was absolutely not pushed towards libertarianism. Have you read it recently?
- timr 8mo agoYes.
- watwut 8mo agoLibertarianism is just an euphemism for "authoritarian righ-wing, but dont want to admit it out loud" in most cases.
- bnlxbnlx 8mo agoby now [1], yes. but in my experience not a very popular view on HN. expect downvotes. [1] i find peter thiel's speech at libertopia in 2010 a great early reflection of that shift: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgH7Lv2gQdk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgH7Lv2gQdk
- whatever1 8mo agoHe is a billionaire he owns the paper he can do whatever he wants with it. Who cares anyway today about newspapers and tv. Public opinion is shaped by social media.
- csb6 8mo ago> Who cares anyway today about newspapers and tv Maybe the subscribers of the Post? They (reportedly) left in droves after Bezos interfered to stop the opinion board from endorsing a candidate and more recently fired nearly all international reporters. (including those in warzones) He owns the paper and can do what he wants within the bounds of the law, but anyone is also free to criticize the decisions he makes, and subscribers are free to unsubscribe. Criticism is about what someone ought to do, not what they can do. (these are very different)
- whatever1 8mo agoObviously his strategy with WA post seems to be working (for him and his ventures). He secured contracts both for AWS and Blue Origin from a seemingly hostile gov. Even if everyone unsubscribes and journalists leave, it was still a good investment. So the shareholders of Amazon are happy. He did the right thing. Was it moral or good for the American republic? Again, he is not an elected official so it doesn’t matter. We opted to give him so much unchecked power.
- csb6 7mo ago> Was it moral or good for the American republic? Again, he is not an elected official so it doesn’t matter. Not sure where you have gotten this idea that morality or "doing the right thing" only applies to elected officials. The choices people make can be criticized even if those choices were legal or beneficial for their investors. Destroying the credibility of a leading newspaper for some lucrative government contracts seems to be a net loss for society, but hey, at least Amazon's investors are happy and Bezos' tremendously unprofitable space company has some more cash.
- laughing_man 8mo ago
- shevy-java 8mo agoThe big problem is that the greedy TechBros want to influence legislation and politics. Right now there is an orange TechBro in charge, so the oligarch mafia will succeed (aside from their own intrinsic stupidity) - but eventually voters in the USA need to decide whether they really want the superrich to pull all strings on the puppet. It's the economy, s.....
- booleandilemma 8mo agoTrump is a lot of things but he's certainly not a tech bro.
- throwaway81523 8mo ago> Jeff Bezos wants Washington Post’s newsroom budget halved, productivity doubled Sort of like Moore's Law. If he can do that every 18 months then in a few decades the newsroom will really fly! News flash: it doesn't work like that. :(
- ErrorNoBrain 8mo agohalf budget double productivity 4 x 'value' so he wants AI written slop i hope this ends badly
- rwmj 8mo agoIt will end badly, and destroy an American institution.
- mort96 8mo agoI can't see where the article defines how it measures "productivity". Is it just words produced per hour? Journalism is, I imagine, much like programming: a lot of the words are "boilerplate" and cheap to produce, but those aren't the important parts of a story. Some of the words require a lot of work. Getting a direct quote from a relevant person. Doing the deep research to expose a claim as false instead of blindly parroting it. Getting multiple sources to voice contrasting views on a topic. Fact checking an article before publication. I worry that whatever their definition of "productivity" is, it ignores these important yet time consuming aspects, and as such, what looks like "increased productivity" in their metrics is really just a decrease in quality.
- shrubby 8mo agoLOC equivalent of the news!
- whattheheckheck 8mo agoAlso the whole manufactured consent thing
- niek_pas 8mo agoMore with less, huh?
- ece 8mo agoWhy doesn't he sell while he can still get something for it? Continuing the trajectory it has been on in the last two years will mean shuddering the paper or turning it into X hoping some users will switch.
- laughing_man 8mo agoNewspapers just aren't worth that much. They don't make money, in general. He was losing $100m a year at WaPo. You buy a newspaper because you're rich and you want your opinions disseminated. Not because you think you'll make money. So the number of potential buyers is really small.
- ece 8mo agoTheir last peak of subscriptions was when Trump got elected in 2016. It was a good time for newspapers and TV. The NYT is having an even higher peak now[1]. Surely the Sulzbergers aren't the only family competent enough to run a newspaper. Lots of papers aren't owned by billionaires and manage to do ok. Wapo didn't have games in 2016 and people still subscribed. It just lost it's value to readers, so people unsubscribed. I certainly did. Bezos is literally just showing his incompetence at this point in running a paper, and the NYT is probably loving it. Sure billionaires can buy social networks and papers, but people can also subscribe to and use things not owned by billionaires. [1] https://www.natesilver.net/p/the-sad-and-self-inflicted-decline https://www.natesilver.net/p/the-sad-and-self-inflicted-decl...
- laughing_man 8mo agoThe NYT almost went out of business before they were rescued by billionaire Carlos Slim. The NYT is probably doing okay because the local papers everywhere else are a pale shadow of what they once were, so people sign up for NYT looking for what they used to have.
- ece 8mo agoBut they did switch to a pretty good online presence, the NYT did games, others could try to go after classifieds or other online pastimes without neutering the news room like Bezos has done. Sure it takes investment, Bezos seems to have had no problems doing that with Amazon.
- advael 8mo agoYea we should simply get more done with less money, why didn't I think of that? Dude's a genius Maybe if we halved his budget he could be twice as productive too. Could you imagine? We could call it financial intermittent fasting
- b00ty4breakfast 8mo agoJeffy wants to have his cake and eat it, too; a propaganda apparatus that turns a profit. The obvious solution would be to not own a spin machine if it's not turning a profit if you're looking to make money. But of course that would leave him without a mouthpiece. I also wonder how much having his name attached to the thing is responsible for the awful balance sheet ca 2024. It may never turn a profit as long as it's a known Bezos operation.
- Mountain_Skies 8mo agoSimple solution: quantify the value of the propaganda and add that to the Post's balance sheet. Problem then is that the worker bees might decide they should get a slice of that value, which would offend Jeff's core sensibilities.
- polotics 8mo agoI think you hit the jackpot here. Taking it further: the value of facts° presented henceforth by the WaPo should be traced back to explicit gains. Not gains for the Post itself though, but for its owner, for example in regulatory capture. Those can be computed pretty precisely or estimated. How is this income generation not then inputted to the owner as income? It is said that the USSR failed because of incorrect accounting. Let's not let the Land of the Free fail in the same way!
- phplovesong 8mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- laughing_man 8mo agoLooks like he intends to treat them like Amazon employees. I wonder if he'll do stack ranking as well. Or maybe they'll pee in bottles at their desks.
- doe88 8mo agoIt is like a guy seeing headlines "wapo is losing" money and feeling ashamed in its "genius entrepreneur's ego / could never be wrong" and taking revenge on whoever he can take revenge and inflict pain just for the sake of it.
- 28304283409234 8mo agoI wish Bezos would buy GRRM. I am sure it would result in top quality final books to Sing of Ice and Fire.
- stotemoat 8mo agoJeff Bezos is an awful person.
- phs318u 8mo agoAI oh, AI oh, It’s off to work we (used to) go.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- thiht 8mo agoWhy does he not want /10 budget for x10 productivity instead? Is he stupid?