From: fedora@fea.st   
      
   On Sun, 8 Feb 2026 16:58:50 +0000, Julian    
   wrote:   
      
   >What does Jeff Bezos’s gutting of the Washington Post say about   
   >America’s sense of itself and of its place in the world? Bezos has   
   >scrapped much of the paper’s foreign coverage, as well as the books and   
   >sports sections. Over three hundred reporters and editors have been   
   >fired – including publisher Will Lewis. The Ukraine bureau has been   
   >closed, along with Berlin and the entire Middle Eastern and Iran team.   
   >You’d think there wasn’t much going on in the world.   
   >   
   >Does that mean that American readers are no longer interested in books   
   >or foreign news? That doesn’t sound true. The numbers of literate,   
   >educated and interested readers in the US who were devoted followers of   
   >the Post’s world-class books section and prizewinning foreign coverage   
   >haven’t collapsed. What’s changed is something different. The people who   
   >do care about world affairs and literature are not the kind of people   
   >whose attention Bezos wants to attract. His new demographic is fans of   
   >Amazon’s new Melania documentary.   
   >   
   >Many agonized Post readers – as well as veteran journalists, the most   
   >Twitter-literate boomers around – have observed the bitter irony that a   
   >man whose fortune was founded on selling books has so callously scrapped   
   >such a storied literature section. But they miss the point. Amazon does   
   >indeed sell about half of the 300 million books sold in the US – but   
   >that now accounts for just $28 billion of the company’s $718 billion   
   >2025 revenue.   
   >   
   >The axing of the foreign news section – including the firing of the   
   >entire Kyiv bureau, the Middle East staff and most of the Iran team – is   
   >also an obvious chop if your focus is on a core readership of Beltway   
   >politics obsessives and local Washington city-beat readers.   
   >Comprehensive worldwide news coverage is a prestige project now reserved   
   >for publications whose readers either have bucks in the global game –   
   >Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the Economist –   
   >or number themselves among the few outlets with aspirations to be papers   
   >of record. In the US, the list of general-interest, non-financial   
   >newspapers with a serious international presence has now dwindled to   
   >just one – the New York Times.   
   >   
   >Even in the heyday of American print journalism, foreign news was always   
   >a hard sell. When I joined the Moscow Bureau of Newsweek – then owned by   
   >the Washington Post Company – as a correspondent in 1997 getting a   
   >Russia story into “the book” was as hard as pitching a foreign film to   
   >the Oscars. There were dozens of categories for all things American, but   
   >just a handful of tiny slots for News from Elsewhere. It was only on a   
   >few seismic occasions when the outside world came to bite the US on the   
   >ass – most notably on 9/11 – did a shocked newsroom sit up and take   
   >notice. For a little while at least. “Why they hate us” was the half   
   >incredulous, half-indignant cover line of Fareed Zakaria’s cover story   
   >explaining the road to 9/11 to domestic US readers.   
   >   
   >Bezos doesn’t care about foreign news because most of America doesn’t   
   >care. This is not irrational. The fundamental disinterest of most   
   >Americans about the rest of the world is founded not so much on   
   >incuriosity as a sense of the absolute distance of everywhere else from   
   >their country, and the perception that the distant world is basically   
   >unimportant to most day-to-day American lives. In Europe, a foreign   
   >country is a short road trip away. For most Americans, especially the 53   
   >percent that don’t have a passport, abroad is a distant and probably   
   >dangerous planet.   
   >   
   >The most seismic part of Bezos’s jettisoning a third of the Post’s staff   
   >is what it says about what it means to own a major newspaper in the   
   >world today. A century ago the likes of William Randolph Hearst and the   
   >great British press barons Lords Northcliffe (a Canadian), Beaverborook   
   >and Rothermere (Irish-born brothers) made and broke governments and   
   >policies. Today Rupert Murdoch stands alone at the apex of media and   
   >politics – and even he long ago shifted the seat of his power to TV’s   
   >Fox News. Clearly, Bezos quickly came to see his ownership of the Post   
   >as a political liability rather than a tool of influence. When the Post   
   >declined to endorse Kamala Harris for president (though stopped short of   
   >supporting Trump) the furore in liberal media circles was huge – and a   
   >lose-lose for Bezos who caught all the flak for allegedly interfering   
   >with editorial policy but without being able to deliver the Post for   
   >MAGA. If you want real political influence today, buy Twitter. Or Joe   
   >Rogan – though he’s probably the only podcast host with a little   
   >ideological wiggle-room. Most of the podcast universe, from Breitbart   
   >across to Pod Save America – exists in tight ideological corrals. The   
   >general-interest, politically-balanced podcast either hasn’t been   
   >invented or its so niche that nobody listens to it.   
   >   
   >Even when owning a major US legacy publication ceased to be a political   
   >power play, until relatively recently it was at least prestigious in   
   >elite circles. US News and World Report owner Mort Zukerman famously   
   >joked that without his magazine he would be “just another rich Jew on   
   >the beach.” In November 2023 Bezos brought in big-hitting media manager   
   >Will Lewis as chief executive and publisher in a bid to turn the paper’s   
   >fortunes around. He now departs alongside the newsroom staff who are   
   >paying the price for his failure to turn the Post into an enviable   
   >asset. It now seems that the Post is no longer a prestige property – at   
   >least not in the kind of elite circles that interest Bezos. “He bought   
   >the Post thinking that it would give him some gravitas and grace that he   
   >couldn’t get just from billions of dollars, and then the world changed,”   
   >Post associate editor David Maraniss said of Bezos. “Now I don’t think   
   >he gives us – I don’t think he gives a flying fuck.”   
   >   
   >One thing Bezos’s purge of the Post is definitely is not about is the   
   >money. “If Jeff Bezos could afford to spend $75 million on the Melania   
   >movie & $500 million for a yacht to sail off to his $55 million wedding   
   >to give his wife a $5 million ring, please don’t tell me he needed to   
   >fire one third of the Washington Post staff,” blasted Senator Bernie   
   >Sanders. It has been calculated that Bezos could afford to cover the   
   >Post’s $100 million annual loss for five years with the profits Amazon   
   >generates in a single week.   
   >   
   >“Democracy dies in oligarchy,” fumed Sanders. But the one thing about   
   >the Post story that is completely unsurprising – and historically-rooted   
      
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