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> For decades they have dutifully aired competing perspectives from the political left and right as well as major international players of different stripes.

I'd say they were clearly on the left since ~2017, but had other perspectives as well.

Arguably any main newspaper of a city of any size would obviously align with the beliefs of the residents of said city.

How does that explain the NYT and WSJ (and NY Post) in the same city? The current LA Times?

It doesn't. The above proposition is demonstrably untrue. Journalists in general are left-leaning.

Is that still true? Fox, WSJ, Politico, Washington Post etc. - so many are taking on conservativism. Even 'moderate liberals' are becoming 'conservative-lite', to show how open minded they are and bring people together.

There is kind of a schism happening where Journos are often very left-leaning but the press owners are a conservative (or flipflopping) elite. You can see this exact effect in Germany: https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/33595.jpeg But a lot of press supervisory boards are staffed with members of a political party.

NY Times the main newspaper and it mostly aligns with the left. Not sure what’s confusing about that. The others aren’t the main newspaper of that city.

It’s not a rule or law but an observation and it does seem pretty accurate.

I’m not sure what you’re asking, I don’t read the LA Times, was it bought out by a known right-wing wealthy person or something?

> NY Times the main newspaper and it mostly aligns with the left. Not sure what’s confusing about that. The others aren’t the main newspaper of that city.

The NY Post and Wall Street Journal are among the main newspapers in NYC.

> I don’t read the LA Times, was it bought out by a known right-wing wealthy person or something?

The owner has openly killed left-wing editorial and supported the right (including Trump).

> It’s not a rule or law but an observation and it does seem pretty accurate.

If you can find evidence for it. It doesn't seem true in NY or LA.

Yo. Ask any person what is the main newspaper of Nyc and I bet they don’t say “Ny Post” or “Wall Street Journal”. It is a true observation. Now go to Ricketsville, Nebraska and ask if their newspaper aligns with their political views. I bet it does.

By your own admission of the LA Times this was a recent shift, so it was true before.

> Ask any person what is the main newspaper of Nyc and I bet they don’t say “Ny Post” or “Wall Street Journal”.

In NYC that's probably so, but only if you force them to pick only one.

That’s my point, most people in the US naturally tie 1 city to 1 newspaper even though there may be multiple. That newspaper is usually representative of the view points of the majority of the population.

Only because in recent decades there's been a huge dieoff of newspapers. In the 1980s and before it was quite typical for a US city of any size to have multiple newspapers (as NYC still has). You would have at the very least a Democratic-leaning and Republican-leaning one, and you would often find others (for instance evening newspapers which were published later in the day and had more up to date news than the morning papers).

That is definitely true however irrelevant to my original point. Talking about now, today.

At this point if you have any commitment to the truth, you will have a "leftist" bias.

What, are you going to report on Trump claiming that Ukraine started the war uncritically? That Haitians are eatings pets in Ohio? That vaccines cause autism? C'mon.

The Overton window shifted right in 2016, I don't think the paper's line moved much. But no more, the billionaires are here to ensure nothing will get in the way of their sweet, sweet tax cuts [1].

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp9yx7e13ryo

I guarantee you the vast majority of people reading this will end up paying more taxes under whatever plan the Republicans pass.

Yep, and they still approve of it. Literally brainwashed.

> At this point if you have any commitment to the truth, you will have a "leftist" bias.

This is some grandiose appeal that's shared by both sides of the political coin. People generally assume that reality matches their experience and opinions.

Notice I put leftist in quotes, at this point it's more about how the right is fully divorced from reality than anything related to the left.

Reread the examples I gave and defend them, or show me some as egregious as these ones coming from Biden or Harris.

Reality is independent of experience and opinions - that's the point. 'Leftist' opinions match reality better - e.g., climate change, Ukraine, vaccines, crime, etc. etc.

Reality means different things to each side. It reminds me of the old "Reality-based community[1]" quote by an aide to the G.W. Bush administration, widely attributed to senior advisor Karl Rove:

    The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' [...] 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'.

This school of thought is still alive and kicking among Republicans: Reality is what we conjure up as we do and say things--it's not some concrete, discernible thing that can be observed.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community

That resonates with Kellyane Conway's "alternative facts" [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_facts?wprov=sfla1

What is "reality"? For each of your examples, I can make valid points for both sides off the top of my head. Different things are more important to different people.

The idea of competing perspectives from the political left and right is majorly under attack. In 2020, the NYT fired the editor who oversaw the opinion page for publishing the perspective of an influential senator who had the ear of the president. WaPo had similar internal debates, with many staff members loudly objecting to the publishing of perspectives from the political right. There's an school of thought that says when you can't win, you should try to lose as painlessly as possible. This change looks a lot like that.

> This giant shift in strategy will surely decrease the paper's market size and reputation for breaking news (as it did with Watergate and Snowden).

Bezos's decision doesn't impact the news side, which reports on breaking news. The paper's editor in chief made a public statement backing that notion.

That's what he says, but most of his announcement is obvious falsehoods and propaganda. Why should we trust him? Obviously he intends to use his power to get what he wants, without regard to anyone else's perspectives.

Note that they rejected an advertisement criticising Elon Musk, for example. That's not a news article, but it definitely looks biased.

Changing strategy was inevitable. They lost 90% of readers between 2021 and 2024. It would be a dereliction of duty for the owner of the company to continue business as usual in such conditions.

They lost most of those readers due to an alarming shift rightward in tone and coverage. Not Fox News right but certainly further right than they have historically been.

Seems an odd choice to combat that loss by apparently shifting further right. You are never going to get large numbers of Fox News consumers to read WaPo. They have been told for decades how far left the Post is and that it can't be trusted.

Bezos needs a hobby I guess.

Indeed, with his wealth the financial success of the paper is irrelevant.

Just as with Musk and Twitter, controlling the narrative and pushing an agenda is worth far more than any balance sheets could show.

Right wing news is popular in America, I don’t think this could be the main reason why they had such steep declines.

If you start out being popular among people who prefer one approach to reporting and opinion, and unpopular among people who prefer something entirely different, and then you incrementally move away from what you used to do, at the same time as the second group of people have plenty of other options to choose from ... this is precisely what you'd expect.

WaPo was viewed as a liberal, slightly left-of-center newspaper that did excellent investigative reporting. It therefore was all but ignored by those whose preferred version of the news is presented by e.g. FOX News.

As it has taken some subtle and some not-so-subtle steps to move away from its reputation, that has done nothing to encourage FOX News viewers to read it, and a lot to discourage its former audience from continuing to do so.

So one "side" has declined, and the other "side" has no reason to increase.

WaPo dropped 10% of its subscriber base in just the one week after the endorsement debacle in October. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/oct/29/washington-pos...

It could be. If their reputation changed slower than their content.

Right wing media is popular. Right wing news is a niche. See the WSJ and National Review, now WaPo. Not much other news.

for decades they have been a mouthpiece for the CIA and the deep state. Bezos is clearing house.

It looks like a bunch of billionaires are establishing exactly what they purport to end, cresting that swamp they said they would dry. Makes you wonder how much of those allegations were true in the first place.

> This is a very big change at the Post. For decades they have dutifully aired competing perspectives from the political left and right as well as major international players of different stripes

We must've read two different WaPos.