As the end of a rather well-known joke goes: We've already established what you are. Now we're just haggling over the price.
Jeff Bezos had lost $77 million in 2023 on the Washington Post, and reportedly lost $100 million more in 2024. In June of that year, publisher Will Lewis warned the Washington Post staff that these losses were unsustainable and that half of the paper's readership had walked away in the past few years. Changes needed to be made ASAP, Lewis warned, or the paper would not survive. Bezos himself wanted to focus less on progressive narrative amplification and instead expand interest in the paper by presenting a more balanced perspective in both the news and opinion sections, in an effort to rebuild the paper's lost readership and credibility.
Rather than cooperate, the WaPo staff balked. They repeatedly tried to push Bezos to keep bleeding red ink on terms dictated by the newspaper's staff. Bezos and Lewis tried to make marginal reductions in staff and focus on reader credibility, but the staff insisted on sailing full speed into the credibility-iceberg field. When Bezos finally lowered the boom yesterday in an attempt to stop dissipating his fortune through annual losses into the nine figures, the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the media – not just WaPo staffers – reached fever-pitch levels of entitlement.
However, this statement from the Washington Post Guild might be the peak of entitlement:
The layoffs come as The Post continues to face significant financial struggles. The outlet lost an estimated $100 million in 2024, according to The Wall Street Journal, adding pressure on management to rein in costs.
“In just the last three years, The Post’s workforce has shrunk by roughly 400 people,” The Washington Post Guild, a union that represents some of the paper’s journalists, said in a statement Wednesday. “If Jeff Bezos is no longer willing to invest in the mission that has defined this paper for generations and serve the millions who depend on Post journalism, then The Post deserves a steward that will.”
A "steward"? Babies, Bezos isn't a steward; he owns the Washington Post. He's not Denethor – he's Aragorn.
What does this even mean? The union has decided it's actually ownership. The guild seems to think that the staff owns the Post, and Bezos is just there to bleed money and shut up.
Now, the WPG wants someone else to take over the Post so that the lunatics can continue to run the asylum into insolvency. They don't want a new owner, nor do they want a steward, because a steward makes decisions on behalf of the owner's best fiduciary interests. (That's Will Lewis in this case.) The WPG is now advertising for a sugar daddy, someone with deep pockets who will keep funding the trophy wife/girlfriend-experience partner's hobbies and interests with no questions asked.
And for what benefit? If you expect a billionaire to spend nine figures a year on you, those sugar-baby efforts had better be mighty impressive, IYKWIMAITYD. We've already established what you are. Now we're just haggling over the price.
Jonathan Turley finds himself equally amused and disgusted:
The question is what is “the mission.” The Post staff has driven one of the greatest newspapers in history into near insolvency by yielding to its own bias and impulses. It abandoned most readers while doing little to adapt to the new realities of the media landscape.
The only response from the Guild is that they should have a billionaire who is willing to lose money and subsidize them. It is the most self-indulgent and frankly entitled attitude that they could take at this moment.
Well ... sugar babies get that way. And as Politico notes, so do their toxic friend groups. A few Democrats decided to demand that Bezos invest his money the way they see fit, rather than make his own choices:
Several Democratic members of Congress also voiced their outrage over the sweeping cuts, calling out Bezos for Amazon’s recent multi-million dollar investment into the “Melania” documentary while proceeding to gut the paper.
“Bezos just spent $40M sucking up to Trump with Amazon’s ‘Melania’, but is now cutting a third of [Washington Post] staff – including much of the international & local teams – for ‘budget’ reasons?” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) wrote on X. “The corporate takeover of media is a threat to our democracy & the delivery of the truth to the American people.”
What's the difference between the Melania documentary and the Washington Post? The film has a pretty good shot at turning a profit in 2026. That is how one invests their capital.
Besides, it's Bezos' money. He can invest it how he likes, and he can decide when to restructure those investments to limit losses. If the WPG and its sugar-baby friend group had understood that two years ago, they would have partnered with Bezos to reform and improve the product and its credibility. Instead, this fit of pique makes it very clear why the Post stopped being relevant years ago.
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