Democracy Dies in Broad Daylight

"Last week- after the Wall Street Journal broke more news about the Trump family's dodgy crypto-business dealings and before the President shared a racist video of the Obamas depicted as dancing apes-the Amazon entrepreneur Jeff Bezos decided that one of his smaller properties, the Washington Post, has proved such a drag on his two-hundred-and-thirty-billion-dollar fortune that prudence required that he obliterate much of its newsroom."

"Early in his proprietorship, Bezos endorsed a new motto for the paper: "Democracy Dies in Darkness." It turns out that one of democracy's most celebrated media institutions can be strangled in broad daylight. On Wednesday, Bezos and the paper's leadership fired a third of the staff. They shuttered or vastly reduced an array of sections. Lizzie Johnson, one of the Post's leading foreign correspondents, received her digital pink slip while working in the war zone of Ukraine."

"As someone who worked happily at the Post for a decade a long time ago, and as an ardent reader of the paper, I am sick about all this. I feel like someone forced to watch an arsonist torch the house he grew up in. I cannot imagine how it must feel for the current staff and the hundreds forced to leave. If that is sentimentality or worse, well, then guilty as charged. The loss is terrible, the behavior is beyond heedless."

Jeff Bezos cut roughly one-third of the Washington Post newsroom, shuttering or drastically reducing multiple sections and terminating reporters, including foreign correspondent Lizzie Johnson while she worked in Ukraine. Bezos offered no public explanation or gesture of regret. Publisher and CEO Will Lewis did not appear at the staff webinar announcing the cuts and attended Super Bowl festivities; he resigned by Saturday and will be replaced by CFO Jeff D'Onofrio. Former staff and readers expressed deep sorrow and called the behavior heedless. Remaining reporters will continue work but face reduced resources and capacity.

Read at The New Yorker