The Washington Post is retreating from Silicon Valley when it matters most

Proclaiming that we unrecorded successful a tech-centric nine understates its saturation. 

Software, specifically instrumentality learning and AI, coupled with precocious manufacturing has delivered exertion to thoroughfare corners, schools, offices, factories, and adjacent workplace fields. This tech, overmuch of it created successful Silicon Valley, sits connected your wrist, is carried successful your pocket, integrated successful the movies you watch, and possibly successful the euphony you perceive to. And it is surely the means successful which that Amazon bundle was ordered, sorted, and delivered to your doorstep. 

It has turned its founders, executives, and mediate managers into king-like figures, whose wealthiness and governmental power mirrors the Gilded Age. Seven of the apical 10 richest radical successful the satellite tin necktie their wealthiness straight to tech. Amazon co-founder, chairman, and Washington Post proprietor Jeff Bezos is third, down conscionable Meta co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and serial entrepreneur Elon Musk, according to Forbes, which tracks wealthiness and the radical who person it. Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and erstwhile Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer circular retired the list.

And successful this moment, the Bezos-owned Washington Post has gutted its sum of them and the tech manufacture astatine ample arsenic portion of a sweeping acceptable of layoffs that affected much than 300 people. The squad that includes tech, science, wellness and concern was chopped by much than fractional from 80 to 33 people, according to tech newsman Drew Harwell. The tech table unsocial chopped 14 people. Its San Francisco bureau is simply a shell.

Among those affected see reporters covering Amazon, artificial intelligence, net culture, and investigations. The paper besides laid disconnected unit covering the media manufacture (which had antecedently reported connected Bezos’ ownership implicit their ain paper). 

The Post chopped its full sports bureau and astir annihilated its overseas reporting teams, including its Middle East desk, and reporters and their editors covering Ukraine, Russia, Iran, Turkey, and others. It closed its Books section, decimated sum of civilization and the DC Metro area, and laid disconnected each reporters and editors covering contention and ethnicity issues nationally. 

The sum of tech isn’t much important than social, economic, and geopolitical issues. But ne'er earlier person the radical exerting outsized power connected the world’s geopolitics and system besides been truthful straight liable for stemming the planetary travel of accusation astir it.

The satellite centers connected tech and is tied to the GDP maturation — oregon retreat — of its superpowers. Tech’s astir almighty executives are asking the nationalist to spot their attraction elsewhere.

The Post’s enforcement exertion Matt Murray couched the layoffs arsenic a reboot of sorts aimed astatine reaching readers and yet profitability, according to the New York Times, which included comments helium made to staff. 

“If anything, contiguous is astir positioning ourselves to go much indispensable to people’s lives successful what is becoming a much crowded, competitive, and analyzable media landscape,” helium reportedly said during a Zoom gathering with staff.

It’s nary concealed The Post has mislaid wealth and subscribers successful caller years, successful immoderate cases owed to policies crafted oregon backed by Bezos. For instance, his directive to extremity statesmanlike endorsements by The Post’s editorial board, axing a drafted portion backing Kamala Harris, reportedly led to “hundreds of thousands” of canceled subscriptions, per NYT. It reportedly suffered $100 cardinal successful losses successful 2024, successful portion due to the fact that of the cancellations.

Its web postulation has besides declined. Semafor reported that regular visits were down to astir 3 cardinal by the mediate of 2024, from 22.5 cardinal successful January 2021.  

The Post chopped its unit from 1,000 to nether 800 past spring, with CEO Will Lewis calling retired the $100 cardinal nonaccomplishment from the erstwhile year.

The layoffs astatine The Post, of course, don’t beryllium successful a vacuum. (The media industry, and not conscionable bequest players, has been plagued by a fragmented assemblage and changes to Google Search algorithms that person directed readers distant from quality outlets and towards its ain AI generated answers.)

The size, scope, and determination of those hatchet strikes merit scrutiny, however. Particularly considering the displacement successful media ownership implicit the past 15 years. 

Bezos’ acquisition of the Post successful 2013 for $250 cardinal was met with a premix of skepticism and hope, by weary journalists who had experienced consolidation, layoffs, and the increasing pains of moving from a print-only to digital-dominant media industry. 

His acquisition became portion of a broader inclination astatine the clip successful which billionaires, galore with backgrounds successful tech, snapped up beleaguered media organizations good worn from the erstwhile spell public-private equity cycle. 

A fewer years aft Bezos bought The Post, Laurene Powell Jobs made her acquisition of The Atlantic, Salesforce laminitis Marc Benioff bought Time Inc., and pharmaceutical enforcement Patrick Soon-Shiong acquired the Los Angeles Times. 

Bezos, similar Benioff and Soon-Shiong (who besides blocked his paper’s endorsement of Harris), moved person to Trump aft helium won the 2024 election. His spaceflight institution Blue Origin relies connected federal contracts, and Amazon had faced accrued scrutiny nether erstwhile administrations.

Lewis was reportedly not contiguous to oversee the unit cuts and changes astatine The Post (Murray told Fox News that the CEO “had a batch of things to thin to today”). Nor was Bezos. As his paper prepared to chopped one-third of its staff, Bezos spent Monday with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth successful Florida, starring him connected a circuit of Blue Origin’s facilities. 

Less than 48 hours later, The Washington Post would laic disconnected the journalist who reported connected Blue Origin.

The darkness, it seems, is creeping in.