The Death of a Great American Newspaper

I began reading The Washington Post in the summer of 1982 when I moved to Washington, D.C., to attend law school. Ben Bradlee was then Executive Editor, and I immediately fell in love with the paper. After Bradlee retired in 1991, Leonard Downie, Jr., and later Marty Baron filled Bradlee’s shoes with equal competence and skill. When I moved to Philadelphia at the end of 1995, I missed The Post as much as anything else about Washington.

The Post’s reporting was hard hitting and fair, the writing excellent, its political analysis and coverage of domestic politics and government the best in the world. With foreign bureaus in twenty-one countries, The Post’s international coverage rivaled that of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. But what I most liked about The Washington Post was its well-rounded and comprehensive coverage as a hometown newspaper. Its first-rate national and international reporting was supplemented by one of the best Sports sections in the country, with writers like Thomas Boswell, John Feinstein, Sally Jenkins, Christine Brennan, and the legendary Shirley Povich. The paper had a vibrant Metro section that provided detailed coverage of local affairs in Northern Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. And the Style section, the first of its kind when created in 1972, introduced literary journalism through innovative and imaginative articles on culture and the arts, profiles of engaging personalities, and interesting aspects of life that provided energy and elan to the daily news and inspired lifestyle sections in newspapers across the country.

The paper became famous in 1971 when it published the Pentagon Papers, the 7,000-page study commissioned by former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on the history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. The historical import of the documents was explosive, for they proved that the government’s official pronouncements about American involvement in the war were incomplete and untrue. The Post’s decision to publish occurred days after the Department of Justice obtained a court order prohibiting The New York Times from further publishing the documents on the grounds that it threatened national security. Katherine Graham, Ben Bradlee, and The Post’s leadership courageously defied the Nixon administration’s threats to prosecute the Washington Post Company for publishing in alleged violation of the Espionage Act. The paper risked everything and won a seminal Supreme Court victory along with the New York Times in defense of the First Amendment.

Of course, it was The Post’s single-handed pursuit of what became the Watergate scandal that cemented its reputation as a world-class newspaper. Following a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in 1972, two young and inexperienced Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, relentlessly investigated every aspect of the case. Through their hard work, and with the support and guidance of talented editors, we learned of illegal surveillance activities, cover-ups, and corruption that implicated the top levels of government. The Post’s reporting exposed the abuses of power that led to Nixon’s resignation. By digging for facts in the early stages of the story, before it became a scandal and when it seemed almost no other news outlet wanted to touch it, The Washington Post stood alone and proved that courageous journalism, combined with thorough fact checking and high ethical standards, is essential to a thriving democracy.

Two of the best journalism movies of all time are All the President’s Men, with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman portraying Woodward and Bernstein during the Watergate scandal, and Spotlight, about the unflinching investigation by The Boston Globe into the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse coverup in the early 2000s. The Globe investigation occurred under the editorial leadership of Marty Baron, who would later become Executive Editor of The Washington Post. Both films revealed the unglamorous side of the news business, the drudgery of reporting, everything that occurs before an article is published—fact checking, running down leads, reading through old court filings and phone books (when they were still a thing), dead-end phone calls and door knocking, the difficulty of persuading reluctant sources to talk, and typing up a story late at night on strict deadlines, only to have the editor question the reliability of sources or the soundness of the reported facts. And the films showed why important news stories require time, resources, and a publisher willing to let reporters and editors do their jobs.

Good journalism not only searches for the truth and provides facts about key events, but also explains things, embraces ideas, and places the news in context. Apart from The New York Times, for the past half century no U.S. paper has been better at this than The Washington Post. After I left Washington in the mid-1990s, I continued to read The Post whenever I could find a copy at a local newsstand. In 2014, I subscribed to the digital edition of the paper. By then, like most papers throughout the United States, The Post struggled to make a profit. But despite financial constraints, under the stewardship of the Graham family, the paper continued to provide world-class reporting and writing and remained a full-service, all-around great paper with some of the best writing on domestic politics, the workings of the federal government, foreign affairs, sports, books, and culture.

I was concerned when Jeff Bezos, who had no prior experience with newspapers, bought The Post from the Graham family in 2013. But his wealth offered a means to restore financial stability and expand the paper’s news coverage at a time when public accountability and transparency were suffering due to hundreds of newspapers failing across the country. When Bezos bought The Post for $250 million, which then represented one percent of his net worth of $25 billion, he promised to maintain The Post’s high-quality reporting and ethical standards. When he met with the paper’s staff shortly after purchasing the paper, he predicted a new “golden era” for The Post and said:

The values of The Post do not need changing. The paper’s duty will remain [with] its readers and not [with] the private interests of its owners. We will continue to follow the truth wherever it leads…. Journalism plays a critical role in a free society, and The Washington Post—as the hometown paper of the capital city of the United States—is especially important.

For the next eleven years, and throughout Trump’s first term as president, Bezos maintained a hands-off policy and financially supported the paper’s mission. He did not interfere in the paper’s editorial decisions or news coverage. I remained impressed with the paper’s resolute and in-depth reporting even in the face of President Trump’s lies, unfair verbal assaults, and threats of lawsuits and adverse regulatory actions.

As the 2024 elections approached, and as a second Trump term become a real possibility, things began to change. In October, Bezos overruled The Post’s editorial endorsement of Kamala Harris ending The Post’s long-standing, well-considered history of endorsing presidential candidates. Bezos’s decision to censor the Harris endorsement so upset the paper’s readership that 250,000 people almost immediately canceled their subscriptions. Although I was angry at Bezos for his cowardly act to appease Trump, I remained a subscriber. There were still excellent reporters employed there who I wished to support.

Following the election, The Post’s news coverage remained first-rate. The paper reported daily on the administration’s actions and executive orders that threatened to radically alter American life and the traditional workings of government. It published detailed and thoroughly fact-checked reports on Trump’s efforts to financially and corruptly benefit from his office, outlaw diversity, equity, and inclusion from American life, cut life-saving medical and scientific research, reverse sixty years of U.S. “soft” power abroad by shutting down USAID and other foreign aid agencies, attack free speech on college campuses, weaponize the Justice Department and seek retribution against his political adversaries, fire thousands of dedicated government workers and impose loyalty tests on those who remained, threaten our closest allies, and overturn the rules-based international order.

Unfortunately, Bezos made clear by his actions that his personal wealth and commercial interests were more important than protecting the reputation and survival of a great American newspaper. In early 2025, he imposed a new editorial policy: Henceforth, Washington Post editorials would address only issues touching upon personal freedom and free markets. The well-respected opinion editor, David Shipley, abruptly resigned, as did the paper’s best political opinion writers, including Ruth Marcus, Jennifer Rubin, Philip Bump, Jonathan Capehart, Eugene Robinson, and Catherine Rampell. Bezos hired a new, conservative opinion editor. So much for his hands-off policy. And despite contributing $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and spending $40 million on the making of the vanity film Melania, Bezos then implemented deep budget cuts that threaten The Post’s long-term existence.

The cuts imposed by Bezos were devastating. He fired hundreds of reporters, including most of the paper’s foreign correspondents. He eliminated bureaus in the Middle East and Ukraine, which included four Pulitzer Prize finalists and reporters who risked their lives in conflict zones. He ended the Metro and highly revered Sports sections. Although he kept the Style section, he fired its excellent arts and culture critics, eliminated the stand-alone Books section, and limited The Post’s primary focus to covering politics and government, although his drastic spending cuts have significantly compromised that coverage. Because of the financial and editorial decisions imposed by Bezos, the paper has become a shadow of what it used to be. By September, I had enough. Despite my love for this revered paper, I cancelled my subscription.

Violating all his promises, Bezos has destroyed one of America’s great independent newspapers. NYU journalism professor Adam Penenberg has written that “journalism doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It depends on institutions willing to support it, audiences willing to listen, and journalists willing to take risks.” Sometimes, the most impactful stories “are hiding in plain sight, buried in archives, waiting for someone to connect the dots.” Although Bezos is among the five richest people in the world and currently has a net worth of $224 billion, he has chosen to treat The Washington Post as a run-of-the mill business rather than the public trust he acquired. His failure to protect and nurture an institution whose independence he promised to uphold when we need good journalism more than ever to hold the powerful to account, and as the president of the United States and his cronies are engaged in the most sustained attack on a free press in American history, is heartbreaking.

Legally, Jeff Bezos is free to do what he wants with his money, even if it leads to The Post’s demise and destruction. This is the essence of capitalism, after all. But is there not a better way? Does Bezos believe in a free and independent press of which he spoke at the time of his purchase? Does he believe in The Post’s official slogan, created under his watch, that “democracy dies in darkness”? If not, why did he buy The Washington Post in the first place?

By simply committing a tiny fraction of his wealth, Bezos could easily restore The Washington Post to the great newspaper it once was. If he has lost interest in the cause of democratic accountability, he has other options. He should either sell the paper to someone who wants to nurture and sustain it or commit $2.5 billion (approximately 1.2% of his net worth) to establish a foundation that will operate the paper as a non-profit.

“[T]ruth alone isn’t always enough,” wrote Adam Penenberg. “The bigger battle … the one we’re still fighting today, isn’t just about getting the story. It’s about making sure there’s still a place to tell it.” Legacy should be an important consideration for Jeff Bezos, for his will define how people remember him and whether his life had meaning. He will be remembered not for the money he earned, but for what he created or destroyed along the way.

If things stay on their current path, Bezos will go down in history as the person who destroyed a great American newspaper. That he did so to protect his commercial interests by appeasing a narcissistic and irrationally hateful president will be his legacy. Bezos has the power to restore The Washington Post as a great institution of American democracy, one with a rich history of informing and educating the public and helping millions of people understand the key events that affect our country, our lives, and our futures. With immense wealth and privilege comes great responsibility. Mr. Bezos, what will your legacy be?