The fallout from the non-endorsement of Kamala Harris astatine The Washington Post is here: more than 200,000 canceled subscriptions, NPR reports. This is astir 8 percent of the paid subscriber base, and the number of cancellations is still growing.
To put that successful perspective, successful an Oct. 15th communicative astir Post CEO Will Lewis’s strategy to get much paying subscribers, The New York Times reported that the Post had added 4,000 subscribers since the opening of 2024 done September. Like, I americium really flabbergasted: that’s fifty times arsenic galore cancellations successful 1 play arsenic The Post earned successful the amended portion of a year.
“This is evidently an effort by Jeff Bezos to curry favour pinch Donald Trump successful the anticipation of his imaginable victory.”
Now, location person been aggregate reports astatine this constituent — from NPR, The Columbia Journalism Review, and The Washington Post itself — that the telephone to extremity endorsing candidates came from Jeff Bezos himself. The aforesaid time arsenic Lewis’s bizarre announcement of The Post’s non-endorsement, executives from Bezos’s abstraction company, Blue Origin, met pinch statesmanlike campaigner Donald Trump.
I suppose I should mention the various authorities contracts Bezos’s different businesses person — among them, Amazon’s $10 cardinal NSA contract and Blue Origin’s $3.4 cardinal NASA contract. Trump has antecedently targeted Bezos for The Washington Post’s reporting. A columnist who discontinue the Post over the decision, Robert Kagan, told CNN, “This is evidently an effort by Jeff Bezos to curry favour pinch Donald Trump successful the anticipation of his imaginable victory.” Kagan pointed to the business contracts arsenic motivation.
Lewis would for illustration america to time off mediocre Bezos alone. Bezos “was not sent, did not publication and did not opine connected immoderate draft,” the CEO told CNN successful the benignant of connection that we successful the business cognize arsenic a non-denial denial. That is — it is simply a carefully-worded recitation of things Bezos did not do. It doesn’t contradict that Bezos made the telephone for nary endorsement. And today, The New York Times’ Ben Mullin reported that Bezos had expressed reservations astir a statesmanlike endorsement arsenic early arsenic September.
Bezos made his bones astatine Amazon by relentlessly focusing connected customer satisfaction. Over and over, he told group to attraction connected making customers happy. Here’s a nosy quote from his 2016 missive to shareholders:
There are galore ways to halfway a business. You tin beryllium competitor focused, you tin beryllium merchandise focused, you tin beryllium exertion focused, you tin beryllium business exemplary focused, and location are more. But successful my view, obsessive customer attraction is by acold the astir protective of day one vitality.
That’s astir apt bully proposal for moving a business, and it appears to beryllium proposal nether Lewis nor Bezos himself took. By spiking a statesmanlike endorsement, Bezos has created the quality of a conflict of liking — and successful journalism, that is arsenic bad arsenic an existent conflict of liking because now you’ve mislaid the spot of your audience.
(Lewis, though, is nary alien to journalism, since he does person acquisition arsenic an editor. However, immoderate of that acquisition is being investigated successful the Sunday Times phone hacking scandal, truthful possibly he’s not the champion personification to consult connected these matters.)
The blowback is bigger than The Post
Still, if location is 1 point Bezos is known for, it’s his cutthroat attack to capitalism. And here, he has grounded astatine that too. The customers person been speaking very clearly: NPR reports that 3 of the apical 10 stories connected the Post’s tract Sunday were from staffers pissed disconnected astir the killed endorsement. The most-read was by the paper’s beloved humorist Alexandra Petri: “It has fallen to me, the joke columnist, to endorse Harris for president.” When I checked The Post’s tract again today, the apical 2 stories were astir the controversy.
The blowback is bigger than The Post. One point our tech overlords person been very unhappy astir lately has been the government’s renewed attack to antitrust nether Joe Biden. What the Post ungraded highlights — besides Will Lewis’s incompetence — is precisely really galore businesses Bezos owns, and really conflicts of liking could arise. He has skillfully drawn attraction from normal citizens to overreaches of powerfulness successful business. There is, of course, a solution: breaking up businesses that person gotten excessively big.
Well, I conjecture that’s a instruction for america all. This what happens erstwhile you attraction connected yourself and not connected the customers. Not only do they time off you successful droves, they whitethorn really revile you capable to beryllium politically dangerous.