'Washington Post' publisher tried to kill a story about allegations against him | Hacker News Reader

'Washington Post' publisher tried to kill a story about allegations against him

text.npr.org

69 pointsrntn28 comments

He’s been accused of perverting the course of justice:

> Will Lewis, now chief executive of an eminent US newspaper, stands accused of destroying crucial phone-hacking evidence when working for the Murdoch empire

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/media/phone-hacking...

Since I read about the new publisher, I've been considering canceling my WaPo subscription. Even before that, I do feel like WaPo's quality has been degrading; they've been engaging in some low-quality, disingenuous both-sides-ism, and have hired some truly awful writers.

It's so hard to know where to put my money when it comes to journalism. In general I don't pay for online journalism, because I don't really have any "allegiance" to one publication, and I consume most of my news from places like HN (that is, aggregators). So I find it hard to justify paying $30/mo to any one website when I might read only 2 or 3 articles a month there. (I ended up with a WaPo subscription after a friend gifted me one for a year, and then I decided to continue it after it ran out.)

I think it depends on what you’re looking for in journalism. I think America is divided into three groups: those who want news that only speaks to their political values, those who are just looking for the basic headlines, and those who want substantive news, but without the political or opinionated persuasion. I sense that the breakdown is that people are not getting one or the other from mainstream media.

That's a good point, and I'm sometimes not really sure what I'm looking for. I don't want to live only in my liberal/progressive bubble, but I also don't want to see right-wing propaganda pieces.

I'm fine with partisan articles to some extent, but I do often just want deep, well-researched stories about what's happening in the world, without partisan slant. Granted, anyone who writes is going to bring their own biases to their journalism, no matter how much they try to avoid it.

FWIW, I've found the most joy by subscribing to very local, independent news outlets. For me in the Twin Cities, that means places like RacketMN and MN Reformer and Minneapolis Voices. (I also subscribe to Ars Technica because I think they're a good tech/science news aggregator.) In general I've found the really big names, and even my local statewide newspaper, to be too enthralled with "both sides-ism" and eager to publish rage-bait trash, so they don't deserve my money.

I think 'independent' is the operative word. Here in Britain, almost no local newspapers are independent. The majority are owned by a company called Reach PLC (formerly Trinity Mirror, probably renamed to avoid association with their history of phone hacking). You can tell that they're focused more on the SEO than the story - the word-salad headlines give that away, by how they attempt to squeeze in as many vague keywords as possible whilst omitting basic facts. They do genuinely report on local affairs, but it feels to me like most of the articles are prepared nationally from sources such as social media rather than by local correspondents.

Unfortunately I don't know what the answer is - non-profit newspapers are at least mostly immune from consolidation by Murdoch-style media giants, but they seem to survive only on existing loyalty. I've wondered what it would take to establish a genuinely local newspaper for my area, but to compete against the dross of Reach and News International seems like it would need deep pockets and a strong tolerance for debt. Ideas welcome!

I have no idea if this translates across the pond, but over here what's been happening is the newspapers that were around in the 80s and 90s and died in the 2000s and 2010s left a bunch of unemployed journalists around. Occasionally, a handful of the brave ones will come together to start up a new news outlet, usually with a much smaller and more casual scope than the outlets they left. Some succeed, some don't, but that's where we're at right now. I try to support the ones I like.

As for how to find them, it's largely social media & word of mouth, and maybe some advertising if they pitch it just right. Maybe poke around the social media accounts for some journalists from local outlets you do know about and see if they have some links to new places you haven't heard of.

(I don't know if it's just a language thing, but I definitely wouldn't call these outlets "newspapers." Certainly there's no print component to any of these.)

> FWIW, I've found the most joy by subscribing to very local, independent news outlets.

Watch local news outlets when there are local elections, you might find that their independence was just thay they were dependent to someone you agree with. It's very hard to find truly independent media, because unethical media eats their lunch.

Wow, man, far out. Pass the doobie, I think we're about to bust the whole system wide open.

> "...former Post managing editor Eugene Patterson was publisher of the St. Petersburg Times, he insisted the newspaper report his arrest for driving under the influence of alcohol on the front page. Similarly, NPR has reported independently on controversies and the travails of its own leaders.

Lewis comes from a different tradition." (Emphasis mine.)

Indeed.

Journalism is anathema to biz models dependent on advertising and worried about shareholder values(sic).

Lewis was brought in to boost the Post's declining circulation.

Why does the Post even need to make a profit?

I now don't know why I had once hoped that Jeff Bezos would be good patron of the Post. That he didn't squash the stories about Amazon and himself was a really positive signal.

That kind of noblesse oblige was probably MacKenzie Scott's doing.

For future, I'm hoping ProPublica's model becomes the norm. eg They just announced an ambitious plan with their 50 state strategy.

Journalism and nonprofit journalism are all struggling massively and anyone prospering right now is likely at the largesse of a filthy rich donor like Bezos. ProPublica runs no ads, they have a donate button, but there's no way it's sufficient to cover the amount of work they do which is substantial. I'm not sure who their benefactor(s) are but they definitely have an angel. NPR and affiliates are all laying off left and right. The Intercept is on death's door. Even on the obscenely commercial side, The Messenger burned through $70M in like 9 months and couldn't survive. Old stalwarts like Newsweek are now spammy content farms.

NY Times has done an incredible job becoming a total lifestyle brand selling news, cooking, games, etc. It's a very, very difficult model to copy. Axios and Politico sell high-priced "enterprise" subscriptions to deep-pocketed niche groups. It's tumultuous to say the least.

You can see details of ProPublica’s funding here:

https://www.propublica.org/reports

$43 million budget in 2023.

Looks to me like typical American non-profit funding. Several significant donors rather than an “angel”.

Didn't mean to imply one person funds the whole thing out of their pocket, but it's likely that the chairman, Paul Sagan, is both giving a ton and recruiting a lot of other wealthy people. Maybe a quarter or less of revenue comes from donations <$10K. That's not uncommon, but I don't think it's how most non-profits are funded. Either way, my point is that they could not sustain themselves as a for-profit business by just selling ads or subscriptions. And they are very much dependent on staying in the good graces of a small handful of people.

I wonder what Bezos's rationale was behind hiring all these British right wingers. Does anyone believe taking the Post in that direction is really going to steer that crowd away from Fox "News"?

Some additional context:

The Washington Post has a Bezos problem [2022-09-27]

https://www.cjr.org/special_report/washington-post-jeff-bezo...

> Journalism is anathema to biz models dependent on advertising and worried about shareholder values(sic).

That presumes that journalism isn't valued. I think a fair case could be made that it isn't valued as much as it used to be, but that's the reason for the "anathema", not intrinsic properties of journalism.

UK newspaper ethics are not great.

To those confused like I was, the story was about the current CEO William Lewis, not Bezos himself.

I merely read the article, which cleared it up in the first sentences. In my experience, reading only the headline tends to leave out the nuance we used to consider the content.

> I merely read the article

Yeah we don't usually do that here :-)

In newspapers and magazines, 'publisher' is an executive title and is usually a different than 'editor' and 'owner'.

This is a significant story with reportedly serious breaches of journalistic ethics by a senior executive at the 'Post'.

Off topic but how awesome is it NPR has a text only version? What a mess the internet is that basic getting news requires checking off 3 privacy requests, newsletter asks and ads littering the story

You might enjoy https://lite.cnn.com/ also.

or ublock origin with annoyance filters enabled, which they aren't by default.

Only one of these options requires you to turn over total control of your browser and all your private data to pseudonymous github contributors.

ublock does not give anyone your private data, and it's not handing over control any more than you're doing to google when using chrome - and i trust altruistic open source devs more than I do the billionaire profiteers at google who want to serve me as many invasive ads as possible

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