Michael Tae Sweeney: Maybe cutting the metro desk instead of Megan McArdle's column wasn't such a brilliant move idk

Maybe cutting the metro desk instead of Megan McArdle's column wasn't such a brilliant move idk

From Dylan Byers of Puck News re: the scale of the Washington Post's business problems.

The thing where if you click a link from social media you are booted onto the home screen if you're not a registered subscriber - maybe it makes sense logically but the results seem bad! bsky.app/profile/kris...

Lack of free articles and unreadable interface don’t help

In general my feeling is that the people at mainstream publications who spend all day writing pro-Trump and anti-Dem stuff do it because they sincerely believe it, not because they are trying to juice ratings bsky.app/profile/xtda...

they really do think that if they gin up enough backlash to liberalism that they can get Trump back and we'll RETVRN to the boom times of selling subscriptions to resist libs who thought that the next scoop would be the one to shame Trump out of office

yes and i think something that in particular is bad is that giving genuinely popular conservatives a voice at the paper would maybe be at least a good business decision. instead its all "moderates" who write columns targeted to liberals about why opposing conservatives is actually illiberal and dumb

like if your goal was just making money youd hire someone with a huge built in conservative audience like ben shapiro or joe rogan to write columns for you and not hire like ross douthat or megan mcardle to write the "you think opposing trump is good, but is Biden the REAL authoritarian?"

because the project isn't about making money or about informing their audience or even about robust debate its about using a platform with a big audience of highly educated bourgeois liberals to undermine liberalism. Turns out that's boring and unpopular though!

Yes. bsky.app/profile/russ...

the myth of David French is that he's proof that conservatism has a heart. in reality, conservatives openly despise him and his role in society is to hoodwink credulous liberals into letting down their guard. so of course he's an nyt opinion columnist

bsky.app/profile/russ...

the myth of David French is that he's proof that conservatism has a heart. in reality, conservatives openly despise him and his role in society is to hoodwink credulous liberals into letting down their guard. so of course he's an nyt opinion columnist

yeah but giving those people jobs in your paper is a choice, and while a lot of those editors are true believers, not everyone may be

It’s not the writers, who are who they are, but those that make the hiring decisions that this would apply to

It's a shame news websites never figured out micro transactions - I'd pay 50 cents to read an article if it was convenient enough to pay for it.

Right? And I'd forget that was 20th that week and so spend exponentially more than if I paid a sub... I thought business people ran the paper?! c'mon man.

If you turn javascript off you can read the article, but the photos/illustrations are borked.

I mean with hard-hitting journalism investigating mysteries of life why are they losing subscribers?

shit, did millennials kill the washington post too?

Napkins, Applebee's, and the WaPo are only the beginning! Nothing can sate our bloodlust!

I think Bezos did that

he sure did:

these are all actual headlines from the washington post. you can literally track the rightwing ideological shift over time towards supporting billionaires & transphobia.

I don't understand They put "Democracy dies in darkness" up at the top there

And then turned out the lights.

Yeah it all makes sense when you realize the opposite of whatever bullshit tagline they use is what they really believe. Not just WaPo. Pick a big business.

Well him and these guys. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... And the war machine that works in a similar way.

What links Rishi Sunak, Javier Milei and Donald Trump? The shadowy network behind their policies | G...www.theguardian.com The Atlas Network’s dark-money junktanks are behind neoliberal policies around the world, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

#Inshallah Like around the time Bezos bought them (or during?)/2016 is when I checked out on them. You could see the moment Bernie had some sort of momentum with the working poors that they turned around and spit in those folks' faces and it was like "yeah, not worth checking their stuff out."

Multiple decades of cutting access to birth control combined with “don’t have kids if you can’t afford them” plus skyrocketing cost of living and a whole generation says, “okay I guess we will skip having kids then.” Generation responsible: not like that! Who will change our beds??

The ocean is wet. So, why is there so much wetness on the ocean? In our search for answers, we found clues to a bigger mystery: why is the ocean full of water?

Lemme guess, somewhere in this article there’s a lot of covert hand-wringing about the lack of white babies?

If we’re gonna kick out the brown hordes, someone born here is gonna have to wash dishes at TGI Fridays.

It's not hard hitting journalism when they don't actually ask any millennials

It's a pretty stupid question to ask in the first place, everybody knows the reasons *points in the general direction of everything*

Lol. Mystery solved: 1. Kids are expensive and folks just cant afford them and somewhere to live 2. People no longer believe they must have children to feel satisfied in life and maybe would rather spend all that time on other things

"Why aren't there more only children?" lol, lmao even

I'd be ashamed to have my name next to that drivel. Like damn

WaPo: it's time to re-think primogeniture...

Actual American money. WaPo paid someone actual American money for this.

Takes like this are why y’all keep cutting prices and begging for subs

bsky.app

i really honestly would love to see breakdowns on how many people read op-eds vs how many read the news (the results would likely be discouraging)

Also does WaPo really need SIX conservative leaning columnists?

i know that’s part of the NYT’s business model, but i would bet wapo could reduce the section a lot more

Exactly. NYT's default mode is establishment Republican (even though that isn't really a thing any more). WaPo's is normie Democrat. SIX.

I don't know who needs to hear this, but people who liked Trump mostly continue to like Trump, especially in the places where they live. Let that sink in. Where's my column Bezos

Need a “read headlines” category to be properly depressed.

A lot of the loss has to be, POTUS isn't a nut job I need to constantly monitor, right?

Definitely a lot of readers for some columnists

I feel like this was bad even in the physical paper days though. People want the low barrier to entry content.

WaPo subscriber here. The big draw of the Post for me is the Capital Weather Gang. Aces work on forecasting and all that.

Lack of free articles and unreadable interface don’t help

the Washington Post having a revenue crisis likely has something to do with their integrity being compromised by a billionaire, along with all the vicious transphobia they keep publishing. good. WaPo should fix their hearts or shutter.

these are all actual headlines from the washington post. you can literally track the rightwing ideological shift over time towards supporting billionaires & transphobia.

Transphobia? I don't particularly follow them but I haven't heard of that before. Could I have some examples? For the other thing, you're not getting a neoliberal pro-establishment outlet to back down on praising billionaires, it's just how they always tend to be.

Let's be frank. Four years ago we had a president who was horrible for the country but awesome for the news industry .

they really do think that if they gin up enough backlash to liberalism that they can get Trump back and we'll RETVRN to the boom times of selling subscriptions to resist libs who thought that the next scoop would be the one to shame Trump out of office