Last week, social media was piling on the Washington Post’s firing of Executive Editor Sally Buzbee and the hiring of several Rupert Murdoch disciples, at least one of whom seems to be quite the piece of shit. This possible shift in editorial decisions (both op-ed and news) to the center-right is all in the context of a $77 million yearly loss and several years of losing online and print subscribers. I’ll have another post about what the Washington Post should be according to this D.C. native, but it’s important to note that we don’t have good information on who actually stopped subscribing, so much of what follows in this post is partly based on speculation.

While it is often mentioned that Trump was good for the news business (more viewers and readers), there really isn’t as much discussion as to why he increased viewership. Frankly, much of the increase, including the pre-2020 surge in Washington Post subscribers, in my opinion, was due to ‘hate reading’: they wanted critical coverage of Trump, which, depending on the outlet, they received. The Washington Post, in particular, leaned hard into that. Despite conservative claims to the contrary, it didn’t become Jacobin or even The Nation, but it did have room in its stories and op-eds for criticisms of Republicans, including criticisms from the left (or at least leftish Democrats). It really did.

But then, starting post-election, there was an editorial backlash to this (moderate) leftward movement and they tried returning to their standard centrist ideological position (this centrism is an ideology, not a hybrid of left and right positions), which is the kind of thing one would expect from Buzbee. Then they started hemorrhaging readers. Certainly, in D.C., I don’t think this was angry conservatives (or that many).

What Buzbee (and I’m using her as a proxy for the editorial board) didn’t understand is that the median Washington Post reader, especially the median white reader is very different from where they were ten years ago, never mind twenty or thirty years ago (as an older GenX guy, I’ve learned one has to work really hard to update antiquated assumptions and instincts, and I don’t think Buzbee et alia ever did that). While D.C. is still a Democratic stronghold (e.g., Biden’s overwhelming support), that’s not due to being overwhelmingly black anymore. Time was, D.C. was 65-70% percent black, but now it’s around 42% black, yet Democratic support is still sky high (and it has increased in the surrounding suburbs too). That’s a massive shift among the local white readership.

In other words, the readership, while not becoming Bernie stans, has shifted to the left, and is also very partisan. The median reader (at least among the white audience) is no longer a centrist ideologue, it’s a liberal wine mom who is very partisan–they absolutely don’t want what Republicans are offering at all. Yet post-2020, the tenor of the Post changed. Some of that was unavoidable: when Democrats control Congress and the White House, they’re going to receive criticism. But it’s worth noting that most of the criticism was bog standard Republican talking points, not Democratic or left-wing criticism. That’s not what the readers want.

In other words, the ground shifted under the Washington Post: they returned to the centrist ideology of the 1990s and 2000s, when they really needed to align with the editorial judgement of the Washington Monthly or American Prospect (or perhaps a small bit to the right of them).

Of course, Bezos’ answer is to install a center-right Tory* leadership, which won’t help matters. There’s a very good chance I’ll be cancelling my subscription in a year….

*For all I know, moving to the center-right is where the money is, though I’m not sure we need another Wall Street Journal. As I’ll discuss in a follow-up post, we need a center-left newspaper–and Boy Howdy, don’t even call the NY Times one such paper.