The Washington Post has laid off more than 300 journalists, dismantling its sports, local news and international coverage. “Everybody is grieving, and it’s a loss for our readers,” says Nilo Tabrizy, one of the paper’s recently laid-off staff, who describes a “robotic” meeting announcing the cuts. “They didn’t have the dignity to look us in the eye.” The shocking staff culling has been widely attributed to the paper’s leadership under Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who bought the nearly 150-year-old institution in 2013. Karen Attiah, the former global opinion editor at the Post, was hired soon after Bezos’s arrival. She recounts how the arrival of a billionaire backer initially revitalized the paper with resources and creative freedom, before souring over the next decade. “We thought [he] shared the same values that we had,” says Attiah, who was fired from the Post last fall over comments she made about the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. “Journalism deserves better than a billionaire owner who decides that partying in Europe is more important than people’s lives.”
  • mavu@discuss.tchncs.de
    91·
    14 hours ago

    Counterpoint: The type of “journalism” they did the past decade absolutely does not deserve better. You helped make this bed, now lie in it.

  • Fedizen@lemmy.world
    4·
    12 hours ago

    Can we just use “squawk at” instead of “slam”?

    Its more accurate to the real world.

  • totesmygoat@piefed.caEnglish
    13·
    19 hours ago

    They have been down playing bozos assholery the whole time. The boat sailed before the ink dried. If you were a rat caught on that boat… I hope you like water.

  • Ooops@feddit.org
    72·
    23 hours ago

    Sadly the people that refused to pay to get informed and love to rage about imaginary stories they got from reading headlines only, don’t deserve any better. They killed journalism despite massive amounts of warnings and now have to live with the idiot circus that replaced journalism.

    • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net
      3·
      12 hours ago

      Pay for a newspaper? Thanks, I will rather spend my money on supplements advertised between conspiracy theories served to me by some crazy person on YT.

    • sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      9·
      20 hours ago

      I’m not sure what the fix is, aside from a foundational change in society, UBI, etc… When I was growing up, the paper was a couple bucks a month. Really cheap and there weren’t all the online alternatives. Reporting was pretty solid. Then the internet came along embracing the capitalist race to the bottom. My mom (80+ years old) still gets a Sunday paper, instead of daily, but I know that she is one of the only people on her block who even get that. And to be honest, the newspaper coverage is pretty shitty.

      There has to be a way to pay reporters to do in depth reporting, taking weeks or months to do all the digging and research, but that takes a financial backing that billionaires could do, but aren’t interested in doing. And it seems more and more people don’t put their shrinking disposable income in support.

      I’m in no way saying you’re wrong, I just don’t see a solution. We now just jump from outrage to outrage, informed by idiot tiktokers and uneducated ideologues. But it’s free and flashy…squirrel!