Two stories broke on Monday that are intertwined. One is the realization by liberals that President Trump may win by a landslide because of the kangaroo courts of New York.
The Hill reported, “The guilty verdict rendered against former President Trump is bringing moderate Republicans and longtime Trump skeptics to his side in a way that Trump’s campaign has failed to do for months.
“Longtime Trump critics, including Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and moderate Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), among others, are rallying to Trump’s defense after the verdict — and other Trump-leery Republicans including Nikki Haley are expected to do so as well.”
Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves.
The other story is the Sunday night massacre at the Washington Post — the firing of its editor — which sent shockwaves through the credentialed media, which only goes to show how out of touch the media is.
The Daily Beast said, “The Washington Post’s executive editor Sally Buzbee has resigned, according to a press release issued by the newspaper.
“The move is a sudden and unexpected leadership change at one of the country’s largest newspapers—one that just last month won three Pulitzer Prizes for national reporting, editorial writing and commentary.”
Her resignation was so sudden and unexpected that Jeff Bezos, owner of the paper, had already lined up a temporary replacement until the permanent one can take over after the election.
Will Lewis, the chief executive and publisher of the Bezos Post, said, “Sally is an incredible leader and a supremely talented media executive who will be sorely missed. I wish her all the best going forward.”
That’s what they say as they shove you off on the iceberg.
While the nabobs of negativism nattered on about Pulitzers, CNN reported, “The changes to leadership come as Lewis moves quickly to turn around the Post, which soared with audience growth during the chaotic Donald Trump presidency but has since struggled to find its footing.
“Lewis, who unveiled the main contours of his revival plan last month, disclosed to staffers that the newspaper lost $77 million last year and 50% of its audience since 2020.”
Ah, the chaos of President Trump. He shut the border, didn’t surrender to Afghanistan, didn’t start a war and kept inflation down. But he fed the fish wrong, right?
Not to be a spoilsport, but he fed the fish correctly.
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donsurber.substack.com/p/media-pays-for-getting-trump-wrong
“Let’s Not Sugarcoat it … People are Not Reading Your Stuff:” Publisher Drops Truth Bomb at Post
Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis is being denounced this week after the end of the short-lived tenure of Executive Editor Sally Buzbee and delivering a truth bomb to the staff. Lewis told them that they have lost their audience and “people are not reading your stuff.” It was a shot of reality in the echo chambered news outlet and the response was predictable. However, Lewis just might save this venerable newspaper if he follows his frank talk with meaningful reforms to bring balance back to the Post.
As someone who once wrote for the Washington Post regularly, I have long lamented the decline of the paper following a pronounced shift toward partisan and advocacy journalism. There was a time when the Post valued diversity of thought and steadfastly demanded staff write not as advocates but reporters. That began to change rapidly in the first Trump term.
Suddenly, I found editors would slow walk copy, contest every line of your column, and make unfounded claims. In the meantime, they were increasingly running unsupported legal columns and even false statements from authors on the left. When confronted about columnists with demonstrably false statements, the Post simply shrugged.
One of the most striking examples was after its columnist Philip Bump had a meltdown in an interview when confronted over past false claims. After I wrote a column about the litany of such false claims, the Post surprised many of us by issuing a statement that they stood by all of Bump’s reporting, including false columns on the Lafayette Park protests, Hunter Biden laptop and other stories. That was long after other media debunked the claims, but the Post stood by the false reporting.
The decline of the Post has followed a familiar pattern. The editors and reporters simply wrote off half of their audience and became a publication for largely liberal and Democratic readers. In these difficult economic times with limited revenue sources, it is a lethal decision. Yet, for editors and reporters, it is still professionally beneficial to embrace advocacy journalism even if it is reducing the readership of your own newspaper.
Lewis, a British media executive who joined the Post earlier this year, reportedly got into a “heated exchange” with a staffer. Lewis explained that, while reporters were protesting measures to expand readership, the very survival of the paper was now at stake:
“We are going to turn this thing around, but let’s not sugarcoat it. It needs turning around,” Lewis said. “We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”
Other staffers could not get beyond the gender and race of those who would be overseeing them. One staffer complained “we now have four White men running three newsrooms.”
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