Dear Jeff… You Blew It

Dear Jeff,

I know you’re busy with your new Florida digs and catching a Broadway show and checking on your rockets and all, but I hope you have a minute to consider some events of the past few months.

I’m telling you something you’re not used to hearing. You blew it. Now that’s not easy to say to someone who started years ago shoving books into boxes and now is one of the world’s leading plutocrats.

If a business unit manager at Amazon performed the way your leadership at the Washington Post has in the past few years, said manager would be gone and the team likely reshuffled.

Recognize, please, that the cowardly lack of an endorsement in the election was only the final straw for many. However, the path leading up to it didn’t give those of us who have been dedicated readers of the Post for many years much hope that things would be better.

That semi-disingenuous op-ed you published won’t help, either. The lack of trust in news media is due to any number of factors, including constant attacks from the right. Your actions didn’t help.

My guess is that you bought the paper to bring you something all of your money couldn’t — entrée into the political world at the highest levels. You bought the Post, you bought a Kalorama mansion, said all the right things about wanting to save the institution of the Post as the Graham family couldn’t do.

Somewhere along the way, you changed your mind or got distracted by Blue Origins or moving, or your social life, or any combination of those. It really doesn’t matter.

What matters is that you took your eye off the ball when you named Fred Ryan as Post publisher. He then proceeded to spend millions he thought he had, would have, but ended up not having. The results were more layoffs and cutbacks on top of the ones that had already ravaged the paper. I don’t know whether Ryan didn’t follow orders, or someone didn’t communicate clearly, and I don’t care. I saw the wreckage he wrought.

The nine years he spent in charge ended badly and led to more bad decisions on your part. What were you thinking, hiring Murdoch alumni to run the paper as publisher and editor. If you wanted to mingle in conservative circles, you could have done it the old-fashioned way, with the soirees at your home, or participating in events or private dinners.

Changing the editorial direction of the paper from that which had been in place for decades, more or less, was not the way to go. The Post, you see, is a Washington institution and people, as you have found, have certain attachments to what it stood for in the past, and what it’s supposed to stand for now.

To outside readers like me, you campaign coverage seemed to have a definite Trump tilt, based on story placement and writing. Vice President Harris’ campaign was often buried in the back pages.

Then there was the series the paper has been running the last few weeks, supposedly comparing the candidates on issues. Here’s an example:

“Elections”? Not the future of democracy in America? That sort of downplays things, don’t you think?

This feature puts both candidates on equal footing on abortion, climate, crime and guns, economy, educations, elections, foreign policy and immigration. There is no differentiation that, say, one candidate’s election might mean the end of our democracy. Other than abortion and “elections,” the rest are irrelevant. No one is voting for Harris or Trump on their education policy, if Trump even knows what his is, if he has one.

This isn’t a school board race in which candidates weigh in on class sizes. This is the future of our democracy, concealed behind an “elections” header, with no indication of how crucial it is.

There once was another guy like you. He had lots of money, pledged to revive a flagging Washington institution and at first did all the right things. Over time, the whole thing deteriorated. His management style was different from yours. Where you have checked out, he micro-managed everything.

The result is the same. The only good thing that could be said of Dan Snyder’s reign of incompetence over our professional football team is that he finally sold it, leaving a wreck in his wake for Josh Harris and company to clean up.

Now it’s your turn to decide. If you want to turn the paper into a conservative rag, you’re free to try. I suspect that while many would at least respect you for being straightforward, they would also see that side of the world is already taken care of between Fox, the Wall St. Journal, the whole right-wing media complex and on the side, the New York Times — not on the opinion page but in their coverage. As you can tell, many aren’t happy with changes to the editorial page anyway, with those stupid Ramirez cartoons in a place where the sainted Herblock, as well as Pat Oliphant and Tom Toles published. Put the paper back where it belongs. That’s the tradition you should uphold.

Here’s the rub — if you think turning the paper conservative will benefit your huge cloud contracts Amazon Web Services (AWS — the big moneymaker) has with the government, or help Blue Origin, you are sadly mistaken. If you think turning the paper will get the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) off of Amazon’s back, think again. Trump may be anti-regulation, but he’s also pro using the government to pressure people he doesn’t like.

Bullies know weakness when they see it and have it for breakfast.

If you are willing to reconsider and put the Post back on its traditional path, you have some choices. Get rid of the Murdoch influence and hire some leaders in touch with the newsroom and the community. Or, look around and try to come up with a non-profit solution into which the Post could fit, as the Philadelphia Inquirer did.

Don’t be like Dan and stick around until your good name is ruined even more than it already is. That’s a lose-lose all the way around.

P.S. I don’t have Jeff’s email address, so if you do, would you mind forwarding him this note? Thanks in advance.