All the Publisher's Mendacity

Where did all the newspaper presidential endorsements go? Long time passing.

The recent editorial page explosions at the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post caught my attention, along with that of every other journalist and serious news consumer in the United States.

I happen to have some light personal experience with some of the players involved in both of these messes.

First, there is an open effort by many legacy media owners to just murder opinion, period. I will skip a past newspaper situation I am intimately familiar with. But I can tell you that, for example, Gannett killed opinion a few years ago. You know, opinions are controversial—we can’t have that! That’s 236 newspapers right there.

I remember getting an attaboy-OMG-you’re-such-a-talent e-mail from the editorial page editor of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel a few years ago. I was then with Tribune Content Agency.

Because I am obsessed with the movie All The President’s Men, I left Tribune for The Washington Post Writers Group, which I then thought would be a fun new opportunity that ultimately turned into an economic disaster for me. I stayed with Writers Group for 6 and half years, and then the little darlings got rid of all the editorial cartoonists and comic strips.

When I approached the Milwaukee editor to ask him to make the change to Writers Group, he never even responded. That’s unprofessional.

The explanation for getting rid of cartoons was that we didn’t fit into the long term digital future that Jeff Bezos had in mind for The Washington Post. Heads up: do not think for a split second—A NANOSECOND—that this man isn’t rather intimately involved in opinion at the Post. He is, and I have it on very good authority that he is.

I’ll give you a few examples of this with which I am personally acquainted at the Post.

A few years ago, for some inexplicable reason, the Post decided not to run three or four editorial cartoons on Saturday’s op-ed page. This feature had run for decades, and was very popular. In fact, this is where I got my start in 1980, because Meg Greenfield, the late, great editorial page editor picked me out of the pile, along with another excellent cartoonist, Tom Meyer, then of the San Francisco Chronicle, where I now hang one of my hats.

Not sure why they did this, because Fred Hiatt, who was the long-time editorial page editor at the Post, died at the far-too-young age of 64. A new guy came in, with whom I was also lightly acquainted.

His name is David Shipley. I have spoken to him on the phone. I have not met him in person.

Now, Shipley is a talented guy. He’s from Portland, and he went to the Catlin Gabel School, where my kids went for an awhile, and I was even the commencement speaker there in the early 2000s. His parents were major arts hitters in Portland, too. He was married to the author Naomi Wolf, had been a Clinton speechwriter, a former WAPO op-ed editor, ran opinion at Bloomberg, and was very much a comer. I was the editorial cartoonist at The Oregonian.

Around 1992, I got a call from Shipley, who was then executive editor of The New Republic, another publication I have had a rather frustrating non-relationship with. Shipley said he was a fan of mine from high school, and this was the first time someone had said this to me, because I was only 31 years old at the time. Now when people tell me this, I nod appreciatively and not in shock.

Shipley wanted me to be cartoonist for The New Republic. He said he would run this idea by Andrew Sullivan, who was the top editor. For whatever reason, Sullivan didn’t dig my material. OK. It happens.

It has also happened two other times, including last year, the most recent editor not even bothering to return emails after his owner wanted to hire me. Ghosting is so cheap.

Again, oh well. Whatev, ibid.

Anyway, Shipley took over for Hiatt, and proceeded to dismantle the Saturday cartoon page. Not only that, he decided that mostly bland cartoons were the order of the day. He hired a couple of New Yorker-type cartoonists to do “editorial cartoons”.

One of them did one a few weeks ago on the pressing national subject of how jeans fit, if I remember correctly.

A good friend of mine was a political cartoonist and a regular feature in The New Improved Washington Post Political Cartoon Environment. He was adept at working the intake editor, which is a real skill. I never bothered to butter this guy up, thinking, well, pick my stuff on the merits. The arrogance of a Pulitzer winner, I guess, but I found myself not appearing in the Post hardly at all.

Why?

Well, the little darlings who run the editorial page told my friend that they weren’t in the market for strong editorial cartoons anymore. I think the word the intake editor used was “non-controversial”.

I am excepting Mike deAdder and Ann Telnaes here, who are hard-hitting artists.

But the addition of these other artists who were, generally speaking, demonstrated a new kind of softball attitude. Pia Guerra is very good, though, and I don’t want to name too many names, but I can tell you that all of a sudden, Herblock is dead and I’m not feeling so good myself.

David Shipley decided that Michael Ramirez was a good fit for the Post, and with all due respect, he is not. They also hired him at the Los Angeles Times after the liberal Paul Conrad, inexplicably, and he was bad fit there as well. He’s a great fit working for the MAGA Adelson’s Las Vegas “newspaper”, however.

The other day I noted another very conservative cartoonist on the pages of the Post, and this cartoonist is a moron on every level, artistically and intellectually. I have seen quite a number of hack right-wing cartoonists making surprise debuts in the past few years as well. I’m not seeing some truly talented cartoonists there now, like Rob Rogers, Clay Jones, and Clay Bennett. I had exactly one cartoon in WAPO this year—it was on the French elections. It was observational, shall we say.

My guess is Bezos all of sudden decided that the Post needed “balance”. Now, historically, the Post has been a liberal newspaper. You may have heard of Herblock and Tom Toles—who were generational talents.

Fast forward to the other day, when Will Lewis, the Fleet Street Murdoch-weaned publisher who sullies the name of Katharine Graham each and every day he sits in the office, decided that newspaper endorsements are no longer necessary.

I might add the country is facing the possibility that a true fascist has an even chance of coming to power on January 20, 2025.

But hey, the Post’s Smith decided that doesn't matter, so he punted.

The Washington Post has lost 200,000 subscribers in a few days, after Smith had crowed about growing the digital list by 4,000 rather recently. But hey. Now he’s still only down 196,000. Smart play.

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Down in Los Angeles, Mariel Garza, who was the editorial page editor of the Times, found out that the Times owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, wasn’t interested in her endorsement editorial favoring Vice President Kamala Harris. Instead, he wanted a comparison chart.

Hmm.

“ADOLF HITLER/ FAVORS HIGH TARIFFS”

“PAUL VON HINDENBURG/ FAVORS LOWER TARIFFS”

Anyway, you get the picture.

Apparently Soon-Shiong’s daughter Mika, who is all of 33 years old, decided that because she wasn’t supportive of the Biden/ Harris position on Gaza, so therefore the Los Angeles Times wouldn’t take a position on the most critical election in the United States since 1860, and maybe ever.

Oh, OK.

Garza is a good friend of mine, and she quit the Los Angeles Times in absolute disgust. I worked with Garza at The Bee for several years, and I can tell you she is smart, tough, fair, and very nice to boot. She had been working toward getting hired by LAT for years, and was deeply knowledgable and extremely prepared for the job. Now her career in opinion is over.

My guess is Soon Shiong will not only sell the Los Angeles Times, but sell it to Alden Global Capital, which was his dance partner in the San Diego Union-Tribune sale.

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What does a sensible news consumer do now?

Well, 200,000 digital WAPO subscribers thought they gave Bezos the Big Digital Gesture, which dropped the total subscriptions by 8 percent. That’s likely going to lead to further staff cuts.

Does this hurt Bezos? Nope. He’s losing money on The Washington Post. He makes his nut on Amazon Prime and his associated entities. They had a big buyout recently, and it was painful.

A good and talented editor and writer friend of mine, a former Postie named Bill Turque, wrote this on Facebook today:

“I rarely post here, but news of the 200,000 WP cancellations just floors me. I spent 15 years at The Washington Post, working with some of the finest journalists on the planet. Every day they show up and do the hard work, the real work, of serving readers as best as they can in a truly dark moment. In some spots across the globe, their lives are at risk when their feet hit the floor in the morning. Without them, platforms like MSNBC would turn into the Home Shopping Network. They are the only ones who will be harmed by this -- not Jeff Bezos, not Amazon, not Blue Origin -- in the form of budget cuts and job losses. I totally get the anger and frustration. But why is it so difficult to understand that they had nothing to do with this, and that pulling your support only hurts us all? I'm asking folks who cancelled to please reconsider.”

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I want to point out that I made a big deal of canceling my New York Times subscription a few months ago, with the light caveat that I was studying it. I still have access to it until November 19. I have decided to continue that subscription after reading Bill’s post, and will keep subscribing to the Post.

Hell, at least the NYT made a presidential endorsement, and they’ve slowed down the sane-washing. Actually, they have had some kick-ass true fact stories which heartened me greatly.

I also will continue my LAT subscription.

Having said that, Bezos wrote an op-ed yesterday that I would say is, well, disingenuous. I know damned well, for a fact, he’s a regular meddler in opinion, period.

Just admit it, buddy.

Lying is what really puts democracy in the darkness.

What I don’t understand is what Bezos and Soon-Shiong are doing in the newspaper business. They could be national heroes for running them out of the change underneath the seats of the their Ferraris, and that’s how they should handle it.

Instead, they want profitability now, which in this environment, seems, well, fanciful.

What both of these men did was destroy the very brands they are trying to make profitable.

Huh. Funny strategy, that.

Almost deliberately stupid, really.

Bezos said something like, well, there’s a problem; people don’t trust the mainstream media.

Heads up, man: they don’t because of antics like this, not because of newspaper endorsements.

All the President’s Men was about journalistic courage, not chickenshit games, in the words of Robert Redford/Bob Woodward in a parking garage.

God help us if the evil bastards wins, because they’ll do a lot more than cancel their newspaper subscriptions.

UPDATE: Semafor reports that Jeff Bezos indeed made the decision, and Publisher Will Lewis decided to take the fall for it and opposed ending the endorsements. So Bezos lied and Lewis lied. Again, democracy ends with lying. No newspaper should engage in deception in any form. Duh.

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Hey folks, I wanted to tell you that I am so appreciative of your subscriptions, paid or not. I am enjoying the work here, and hope you are as well. If you become a paid subscriber, I can keep doing this for a long time. So if you’re looking under Bezos or Soon-Shoing’s Ferrari seats, pass what you find on to ya boy here. Have a great evening! —J.