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| Home Front: Culture Wars | |
| Jeff Bezos Is Bad News: Why the Washington Post Should Worry | |
| 2013-08-07 | |
| The New Republic editor Alec MacGillis vying for this year's Fisk Award for the dumbest editorial. Sometime in the summer of 2009, back when I still worked as a reporter at The Washington Post, That you're no longer there is one point in favor of WaPo... I found myself chatting over beers at the Post Pub, the unvarnished establishment cater-corner from the paper, with a business-side employee who mentioned a rather disconcerting stat: On one day in March of that year, in the very darkest days of the recession, there had been in the classified ad pages one job-wanted ad. One. That sux, really. But I guarantee you that for every one story you print about how it is so hard in the media industry, I can personally relate 10. Business isn't like the government where you can print money and ignore the consequences. In the world outside Washington DC, economics have consequences. I didn't need any primer on the troubles facing my industry--I grew up in a newspaper family and had worked at six papers, several of which were seriously diminished by 2009--but that stat has stuck with me ever since as the ultimate signpost of a crumbling business model. The public discussion of newspapers' decline tends to focus on circulation, but newspaper people know that the devastation came as much on the ad side and above all in the lowly classifieds, which in their humble agate type had for decades delivered a disproportionate share of newspaper revenues. Which we've only seen coming this past twenty years or so. Ten if you were especially blind. This was where the digital revolution first exacted its toll--how could you keep charging $10 a line for a used car or apartment or job listing when there was a guy who was letting people post ads for free online--all the while subsidizing that operation by charging $5 or $10 for prostitution ads of the sort no respectable daily newspaper would ever think of running (the law eventually made him shut it down, but not before it was bringing in $36 million per year). The digital side has its problems as well, Alec. For instance digital advertizing is way too expensive for the impact it has, and I speak from experience. And that comes from a rightwinger, so I am certain at some moment some from your side have reached the same conclusion. Digital advertizing won't save the newspaper business model. Bezos is smart, but he ain't that smart. Craigslist's Craig Newmark has not bought the Post, thank goodness--that would be too much to bear. It could have been worse. Bezos could have bought The New Republic and recognized it to be a loser, and then shut it down. But Amazon's Jeff Bezos as the white knight provokes only slightly less shock and dolor. We knew the other guys had won a long time ago, but it's another thing when they can waltz in and, in the charmless guise of "Explore Holdings LLC," drop $250 million in cash for a legendary paper (that's a mere one percent of Bezos's net worth), as flip and easy as plucking an Apollo rocket engine from the ocean or building a $42 million, 10,000-year clock in West Texas. Capitalism is a terrible thing if you are a leftist, and you sound like a leftist, Alec. You a leftist, Alec? As much as I hate Bezos' political views, it's still his money. If he wants to drop $250 million on the craps tables at Vegas, he still has the right to do that. This is still America. Pretty soon you'll need a permit to drop $250 mil on a newspaper. Maybe even at the craps table. But a donation to the Donks? That'll never require permission... There are already hopeful noises coming out of the corner of 15th and L about Bezos as owner, compared with other possibilities. He is promising independence. He is, for now, keeping the leadership team in place (let's hope in particular that he keeps editor Marty Baron, under whose leadership the paper has been doing some notably hard-edged and influential journalism). Unless it's about the White House, then it's rosey scenario and soft focus... His politics are not visibly objectionable. But let's not kid ourselves here: The company that made him one of the richest men in the world has had a less than benign impact on our nation. It has devastated the publishing industry, from the big presses to the small booksellers. Just because you can't get YOUR book published...
Amazon may have devastated the publishing industry, but it has also launched one of the great periods in literary history where now anyone can publish anything they want and sell it on the open market, taking on all the risks associated with that. And Alec, even more fun fact: I work without air conditioning routinely in 100 degree heat sans paramedics, doing a helluva lot more than pulling books from shelves, but with plenty of water. The trick is to prehydrate and keep alert and on your feet. It ain't ideal, but it beats the hell out of going to the emergency room Or standing in a welfare line. At least for some of us... More generally, Amazon has embodied, more than any other of the giants that rule our new landscape, the faster-cheaper-further mindset that scratches away daily at our communal fabric: Why bother running down to the store around the block if you can buy it with a click? No risk of running into someone on the way and actually having to talk to them, and hey, can you beat that price? Why would I want to talk with random strangers? These days that can get you arrested and maybe even shot down by a overly-militarized police unit... No thought given to the externalities that make that price possible--the workers being violently shocked every time they pull a book off the warehouse shelf, or losing a chunk of their lunch break to go through the security checkpoint set up by their oh-so-trusting employer. They're Somewhere Else, working for a company that is Out There, in the cloud. The subtext Alec wants you to think is that if you buy from Amazon, you have no life. Nice try, but no sale. And Alec, if prices on books are low, that means more people can buy and read. That's a good thing right? Not that we should let ourselves go overboard in our lament for what came before. The Grahams are a remarkable Washington family, and I was as grateful as any of my fellow reporters for the notes that would occasionally arrive from Don with a kind and utterly sincere word for a piece he had liked. Do you need a breath mint, Alec? But ...you saw that coming, right... we also should bear in mind the many decisions that can be second-guessed in hindsight--among many others, the decision not to make the paper national in scope and distribution, like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal; ...there's room for only so many national newspapers... to keep the online operation separate as long as it was; to hold off so long on instituting a paywall. And we should most definitely not forget the failure to prevent what unfolded at the company's Kaplan education division, which was raking in huge profits from for-profit colleges with a highly dubious business model; when those improprieties were exposed and the Obama administration proposed new rules to protect students and taxpayers from being exploited, Don Graham went to Capitol Hill to lobby aggressively against them, seemingly unaware that his indubitable virtue as grandfather of the Post did not necessarily transfer to this other realm. Profits are bad, Alec, we understand that, except that profits are what keeps businesses in businesses, even media. If the profits aren't there, money goes elsewhere. I understand that as a leftist economic logic is beyond you but do try to keep up. The only difference between the size of the office of the Kaplan's boss and that of the average university president is that the office of the latter is larger and more nicely appointed... Now the Grahams can go back to doing as they see fit with Kaplan, without worry that they are in any way imperiling the newspaper's public trust. That trust has been passed to Jeff Bezos, who will hopefully treat it with more care than his company did those heat-stricken workers deemed undeserving of an air-conditioning system. I avoid buying from Amazon as best I can, but I'll keep subscribing to my old paper as long as they keep printing it, which, to hear Bezos himself tell it, will likely end sooner than the mogul's 10,000-year clock. Whatever public trust the WaPo may have had it was pissed away more than 20 years ago, Alec. | |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #10 rjscwarz, I get what you are saying and agree. It just seems that going to college to learn how to write at a 3rd grade level would require the suppression of any talent possessed. Here's some newspapering: "Now we do assert and we declare, despite all the bolts and bars of the iniquitous legislature of Kansas, that persons have not the right to hold slaves in this territory. And we will emblazon it upon our banner in letters so large and language so plain that the infatuated invaders who elected the Kansas legislature, as well as that corrupt and ignorant legislature itself, may understand it—so that, if they cannot read, they may spell it out, and meditate and deliberate upon it; and we hold that the man who fails to utter this self-evident truth, on account of the insolent enactment alluded to, is a poltroon and a slave, worse than the black slaves of our persecutors and oppressors. The constitution of the United States, the great Magna Charta of American liberties, guarantees to every citizen the liberty of speech and the freedom of the press! And this is the first time in the history of America that a body claiming legislative powers has dared to attempt to wrest them from the people. And it is not only the right, but the bounden duty of every freeman to spurn with contempt and trample under foot an enactment which thus basely violates the right of freemen. For our part we do and shall continue to utter this truth so long as we have the power of utterance, and nothing but the brute force of an overpowering tyranny can prevent us." John Speer, Sept. 15, 1855, commenting on a Kansas Territory law forbidding any discussion or action deemed offensive to pro-slavery by a 2 year or more imprisonment. "so that, if they cannot read, they may spell it out, and meditate and deliberate upon it;" Love that line, lots going on there. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2013-08-07 20:23 |
| #9 Well I remember the time when ordering English books at your local bookstore in Germany it took them at least 6 weeks to deliver at a price usually twice as high as in the UK or U.S. Then came Amazon. Most English books arrive the next day, at the same price you'd pay in the country of origin. |
| Posted by: European Conservative 2013-08-07 19:08 |
| #8 swksvolFF, I'm not sure lack of talent is really the right term for the failure of newspapers. I would say subverting truth for messaging while alternatives exist is what did them in. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2013-08-07 14:42 |
| #7 Yes, it's a shame the Grahams and Jeff Bezos were not as smart as Alec MacGillis! Had he been a consultant, he could have sold his advice to them for a profit. Oh, there's that bad word, again... |
| Posted by: Bobby 2013-08-07 12:35 |
| #6 I grew up in a newspaper family and had worked at six papers, several of which were seriously diminished by 2009 Sensing a trend Alec? Here's a hint...Amazon didn't destroy your precious, technology and a lack of talent did. Humble agate type, horrid. Everyone in the waiting room knew that mag sold at a loss for the circulation numbers for advertising revenues, now I can carry the entire works of Shakespeare and Vivaldi in a space smaller than my wallet - or throw birds against a brick wall, depending upon what kind of customer I am. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2013-08-07 10:28 |
| #5 WAPO, you DO remember the evil formula, right ? In 1992, Mitt Romney was running Bain Capital, a private equity firm. Bain Capital bought American Pad & Paper Co. (Ampad) for $5 million. Over the next several years Romney's firm bled the company dry. Hundreds of workers lost their jobs. Stockholders were left with worthless shares. Creditors and vendors were paid less than 50 cents on the dollar. While they were exploiting the company, Romney's firm charged Ampad millions of dollars in "management fees." In all, Romney and his investors reaped more than $100 million dollars from the deal. Snicker, snicker. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2013-08-07 09:24 |
| #4 Spot- on- Regressive progressives. Democratic political rag for years. They want welfare, they want votes from guess who? the takers. Who is left to pay the bills. Who is left to make donations. Who is left to purchase the Post. Long overdue reset. Woodward go cry to your handlers and that other guy? Bernstein, Who? :) |
| Posted by: Dale 2013-08-07 08:44 |
| #3 "Progressive" hates progress. Stop the presses! |
| Posted by: Spot 2013-08-07 08:06 |
| #2 I avoid buying from Amazon as best I can So he buys from Amazon. A few years I was waiting in line at the bank because I had no option with a physical cheque, and the man in front of me was saying he never he used online banking when banks were open, because he didn't want to make bank workers out of work. I thought, presumably you came here by horse and cart to save the jobs of blacksmiths and farriers. Self interest on the Left is always rationalized to be the public good. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2013-08-07 05:32 |
| #1 Imagine what Alec's squealing would be if the Koch brothers had been the buyers. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2013-08-07 01:01 |