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Jen Rubin Resignation Watch: Day Four
After cheering the “brave” resignations of LA Times employees, it was expected that faux Republican Jen Rubin would follow suit when the Washington Post also failed to endorse Kamala Harris.
My theory is that precisely because she is so principled, she is merely delaying her resignation to achieve maximum effect. And then it’s Take that Jeff Bezos!
A reported 200,000 readers have cancelled their WaPo subscriptions in protest even though there has not been even a hint of an editorial shift in favor of balanced, more objective coverage or something equally terrifying and fascistic. Does anyone believe that there is any employee, editor, reporter or opinion writer at the WaPo who is openly to the right of Trotsky or Whoopi Goldberg?
Those cancellations could be a loss of maybe $30 million per year on top of the $77 million annual deficit Bezos is currently paying out of pocket to fund these ingrates. And some have even vowed to stop using Amazon.com! My guess is that even if Jen turns out not to take the “brave” option, the Bobs of Office Space will soon have a major role at the Post.
And then the public gets to decide, individually, if they do it right often enough to be worth paying.
Bald-headed Bezos is right about the public surveys. Here is the latest chart from Gallup that I posted in another thread:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/651977/americans-trust-media-remains-trend-low.aspx
I remember from a past thread that you used to be the paperboy for the owner (or was it CEO?) of the Washington Post. Twas about the same time that I was a paperboy in Cleveland.
Grifters never give up a gig – they just look for the next sugar daddy (see Bill Kristol)
Maltese? Is that the nationality or the canine genus?
(Sorry, it was just too good of a straight line)
The headline made me LOL.
However, I agree with Mollie — Jen Rubin is mentally unstable. If the WaPo cared about her, they’d be looking for a good psychiatrist/therapist and a comfortable retirement for her. Of course, Michael Savage diagnosed liberalism as a mental disorder years ago.
One question. Given her background as a labor lawyer (not that there’s anything wrong with that), how did she ever sell herself as “conservative?” Mickey Kaus was supposed to be liberal on that podcast, wasn’t he? It makes sense now that I tended to like his commentary better than hers.
If Bezos wants to restore credibility to his news outlet, his “journalists” should
What we have instead is “advocacy” “journalism” (for Democrats), which a less polite person would call “propaganda.” They have a long way to go to fix their problem. Hiring more Jen Rubins isn’t going to do it.
Comfort the afflicted.
Afflict the comfortable.
Note: Republican ≠ comfortable.
Front page of HotAir:
Also, I hope these people don’t learn to code – I don’t want them screwing up my industry
Exactly. Well done.
However, I’m not sure the slogan “All The Propaganda That’s Fit To Print” would carry the weight of the former expression.
These two guys make me wonder if someone shouldn’t give Jen R her stapler back!
####
It would be misrepresentative of the product by being true.
This reminds me of the episode of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette actually shifting to a more neutral political tone. This occurred multiple years back after years of the Gazette being a left leaning to an out right Democrat newspaper.
The Gazette is a very long running newspaper which has had the same economic issues that many local papers were challenged with – decreasing revenue and circulation decline. A competing paper the Pittsburgh Tribune Review was a competing paper that decided to differentiate themselves and capture market by having a right of center editorial position. The Trib seemed to do alright and sold to the more maturing newspaper audience. The owners of the Gazette I think came to realize that the demographics near term were bad for the paper and made a decision to broaden its appeal.
The result was the Gazette making a concerted effort to become a more objective paper and actually include conservatives on the Op Ed. The Gazette also announced this publicly and declared in an election cycle that it would NOT endorse the Democrat as it had in years past. The Outrage poured in, including declarations of subscription cancelations. The Gazette didn’t say it would be conservative, just more down the line in an attempt to appeal to a broader audience as it was in the past. Just the thought of not being specifically partisan and “platforming” the enemy was untenable to the Democrat readers accustomed to being insulated to critical stories of their side and different opinions.
Btw, The Gazette survived this episode and is still continuing on to this day.
Yep, also the news pages of the WSJ have been increasingly irritating to me with how left leaning they are. Especially the headlines and language used. The Opinion page seems to break more news stories now than the actual news pages. The WSJ has increasingly become a polarized paper between the Editorial side and the News side. I would actually call the WSJ news pages liberal nowadays. It’s not a “conservative” newspaper.
I pretty much only read the “front page” (online) and the editorials, so…
A new editor (from the U.K., with no apparent background in United States business or politics) was installed at the WSJ news division earlier this year (maybe very late last year). She apparently announced fairly broadly that she expected the news division to generate more on-line clicks and “engagement,” which means participate more in the outrage sweepstakes that drive on-line traffic. Many have interpreted comments she has made surrounding this effort as instruction for news staff to take on more of a leftward slant, and specifically to target Donald Trump for negative coverage.
Even small-town papers are stridently liberal despite the demographics of the surrounding area. Our two local newspapers are relentlessly liberal, and one in particular regularly publishes letters to the editor from one person with lengthy and nasty denunciations of Trump and his supporters. Our county voted 73% for Trump in 2020. The merely liberal paper is holding its own, but the nastily liberal paper is dying. You would think there would be a lesson in there somewhere.
It is also been true that for decades, the WSJ has been captured by the financial firms and pharmaceutical firms. Any publications out of NYC tend to have a leaning to their buddies there on Wall Street.
And Big Pharma holds almost all news outlets hostage by the amount of ad revenue that is offered to those who toe the line. If this were not the case, the public would have been told by headline after headline that there were cheap available and proven remedies for COVID in 2020. And by mid 2021, the public would be told about ivermectin being far better than any untested bioweapon.
Yep, I remember see one of those left-right graphs and where the news pages versus editorial pages stood for each outlet at least a decade ago. The WSJ news pages have long been well to the left of the editorial pages. I stick almost entirely to alternate media anymore (American Greatness, The Federalist, Townhall, Powerline, PJMedia, Daily Wire. . .). Mr. C still reads corporate media. . . and it shows. He’s usually at least a few days behind the news I have, if he even learns it all.
He was a conventional conservative when he married a brain-dead liberal 40 years ago and now I’m so far to his right, I make Wm F. Buckley look moderate.
Never trust corporate media. Not for a New York minute.
Buckley died a pot-head New York Commie, may the Lord have mercy on his soul.
Writers at small town papers are usually trying to move up the food chain. They want a collection of articles that will impress the folks at the bigger papers. Showing that they’ll fit into the newsroom is an important part of that.
Now? I’ve been saying that since the 90s. Maybe even the late 80s.
The open disdain for facts and accuracy that caused Hugh Hewitt to resign from the Washington Post is likely to make it harder for Jeff Bezos and his stated goal of restoring trust in the newspaper.
He said he wanted to do that by hiring more conservative opinion columnists. But, he’s getting a lesson that maybe the problem is more entrenched than just counting opinion columns.
Who are the “conservatives” writing for the WaPo now that Hugh has quit? Google won’t tell me. It certainly isn’t Jen Rubin.