The Washington Post kills off its "Democracy Dies In Darkness" slogan | Hacker News Reader

The Washington Post kills off its "Democracy Dies In Darkness" slogan

avclub.com

41 pointschoult30 comments

Slogans are _usually_ just for branding anyways. However, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is a riveting, iconic statement, and moving away from it is almost certainly weakening the existing brand significantly. I don’t think companies generally weaken their brand like this just because of new presidents, so I feel that this sacrifice actually does indicate a real change in the paper’s direction :/.

Selfishly I’m sad that “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was perceived to be too liberal, it’s so grizzled and brooding, like something Rorschach from “Watchmen” would say. It was so cool.

I didn't much care for that as a slogan. It doesn't really say what they do. It needs to be a call-to-action, not an identification of the problem.

I understood it as a reaction to the sheer amount of lies passed off as news that influenced the 2016 election, and has not gotten any better. But I don't think "darkness" is a good metaphor for it. The problem isn't too little information, but too much, most of it bad.

They needed something that said more clearly "We are committed to giving you the truth as best we can." I think they were hoping it was implicit, but I don't think it landed.

That said, ditching it on the eve of the inauguration is just fantastic. Following their failure to endorse in 2024, it shouts, "Yeah, we're just throwing in the towel on that whole 'truth' thing".

My advice, though: for a new slogan, find the guy who came up with "Take America Back". That's pure gold. It manages to say both "We're going to reinstate a whole lot of manifest injustices" and "The country should belong just to us, and those other guys don't deserve to live here" all at once, with just a hint of violence.

it really doesn’t need to say what they do when its the Washington Post you are talking about.

A bit like Google removing their "Don't Be Evil" motto

“Democracy drowns in dollars” seems sadly more accurate

Once people started realizing that it was an aspiration and not a warning, the slogan was on its last legs.

Responding to the additional context int he reporting:

If domestically-owned traditional journalism is not able to sustain itself in the US, I suppose that the more critically-minded people will turn to foreign-owned reporting like the traditional newswires like Reuters, AFP, AP for news, as well as new foreign state-funded ones like Al-Jazeera.

I have turned away from domestic reporting almost entirely and really just read European, Asian and Australian news. It's a mixture of distrust and burnt out on US media.

According to NYT there is a new mission statement, but the "slogan" isn't changing:

> After Donald J. Trump entered the White House in 2017, The Washington Post adopted a slogan that underscored the newspaper’s traditional role as a government watchdog: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

> This week, as Mr. Trump prepares to re-enter the White House, the newspaper debuted a mission statement that evokes a more expansive view of The Post’s journalism, without death or darkness: “Riveting Storytelling for All of America.”

> The statement is meant to be an internal rallying point for employees, according to two people with knowledge of the decision. Executives are not planning to replace its more strident public slogan. Suzi Watford, The Post’s chief strategy officer, has been previewing it to some employees this week.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/16/business/media/the-washin...

The linked article is updated now too to clarify that the premise was incorrect.

I have nothing against dark themes either

I take it this means it has moved to the obituaries?

Trump and his sleazy tech bros will go down in history as the gravediggers of democracy.

World is healing

"Democracy, like mold, flourishes in darkness"

the reason is simple - they lost

> Donald Trump’s first term, and now, as he threatens the fabric of democracy once more,

The breathless hyperbole never ends.

> That’s a little too much to bear.

You were fine the first 4 years you'll be fine the next 4 years.

> Instead, let’s focus on the fact that the paper’s new slogan is “Riveting Storytelling for All of America,” which specifically includes “conservatives”

Oh no! A diverse point of view. Let's wring our hands throughout an entire article about a slogan change. :|

> You were fine the first 4 years you'll be fine the next 4 years.

Women have less rights now than they did before his first term. That is an observable fact. Some of them are not fine. Some of them have died do that loss. Others have had their futures stripped or their paths altered in a way in which they did not want but by an outside Authority backed by the hand of the police and judicial system that will put them in jail for doing things that they were legally allowed to just before.

Other people don't have their heads in the sand and understand exactly what the incoming administration sets out to do, as they have been quite vocal about it.

Yes, the last several presidents have also worked to weaken our democracy, but this time the effort is much more concerted among the administration, and detractors will be removed from their posts.

It's not dramatic to be concerned with the health of our democracy or to recognize clear assaults on it.

> You were fine the first 4 years you'll be fine the next 4 years.

No, we were not fine. And that was with a House, Senate, and Supreme Court actively stopping him in every way they knew how. Now he has all of those in the bag and carte blanche to do whatever he wants, and with Project 2025, all of those pesky lifetime civil servants are now blindly loyal political operatives or they are fired. Our society is going to go down in flames.

The COVID death toll that could be attributed to Trump's (in)actions is north of hundreds of thousands.

And it looks like he might get a second go at beating that high score.

> You were fine the first 4 years you'll be fine the next 4 years.

That's not a given. Donald Trump spent most of his first term on the golf course, with all of the work done by staffers. Those staffers were Bush staffers, so it's not surprising that the first Trump term felt like another Bush term in many ways.

This White House has a very different set of staffers, and will result in a very different presidency.

At least they are honest about storytelling and not journalism...

The only time they've been honest in years.

Care to back up that extraordinary claim?

My hyperbole was simply to express that they're finally going "mask off" and admitting they're not a serious, journalistic enterprise anymore. It's a shame to see them go from the exposers of Watergate to their current state of "nah we're just going to print ai-generated slop". Ever since Bezos started shoving his tentacles into every aspect of the paper, their trust and integrity has eroded to where we are now.

I don’t read it much at all so I haven’t noticed this, but if it’s as you say then that’s a great shame.

That is a significantly better comment than your original, which reeked of yelling "fake news" and being mad at "the media".

Of course they do, because it doesn't. Democracy dies in broad daylight. It takes a bullet in the head like a mob hit in the center of town, and no one sees a damn thing.

Or at a political rally.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com