Have you been following the anguished writhings (with an h) at Washington Post? I have – reluctantly. I say reluctantly because business is quicksand for the intellect, sucking mine away from subjects I prefer

I spent most of my earthly stay thinking business thoughts. My interest began innocently enough when, at age 25, I found myself at the helm of a floundering national magazine with a glorious name and inglorious prospects. How I got there with no business experience is a tale told elsewhere, but there I was, with a prominent intractable problem and a chance, so I thought, to exhibit my brilliance to the world. My stupidity rivaled my vanity. My first day on the job I had to ask, “What’s a balance sheet?” Saturday Review magazine was an early casualty in the avalanche away from literacy. For roughly four centuries – from 1550 or so – humans had been getting their information, entertainment, and ideas from reading. Electronic inventions – telephone, radio, and TV – were prying away that attention: quicker, easier, more real somehow. The Internet would abduct those eyeballs almost entirely. Fewer read any longer, and those who do, I included, spend the preponderance of their “reading time” on screens.

In the holocaust of America’s daily newspapers in the twenty-first century, Washington Post (along with The New York Times and Wall Street Journal) was a survivor. Their medium had moved online, but their business remained the news, reported and presented in the interest of truth. Truth, we all know now, is an iffy concept, made iffier by various thugs’ insistence that any unwelcome news is “fake.” Most folks with brains will concede truth exists behind the inevitable biases and misperceptions. America’s three surviving daily newspapers could be trusted to report what they found, welcome or not.

When the world’s richest guy purchased Washington Post, many of us breathed a sigh of relief. Jeff Bezos could save it, if anybody could. Businesspeople, though, grow impatient with quixotic adventures that fail to turn a profit. “Turnarounds” must turn around or to hell with them. I’m guessing Bezos got sick of suckling Washington Post incessantly. Let’s just hire some proven honcho, he growled, to turn this pain in the ass into a feather in my cap.

Alas, news is no widget, that is, the same product everywhere you can manufacture better and sell for less. News is a matter of opinion, always changing shape, like the clouds in the sky. It’s only as good as the folks who produce it, who aren’t robots: even the best can get it wrong or skid off track. Reporters and editors need paychecks, but they’re not serfs; idealism energizes them. True-blue businesspeople deem idealism a crock of ****

I’ve no inside knowledge but I’ll bet you Bezos started treating his newspaper like any other business: fix it or fuck it. He hired a proven tough guy, with the casual ethics of tough guys, to “do whatever it takes” to get this done. The tough guy swaggered into the newsroom treating reporters as robots – “content producers” – replaceable if they didn’t “play ball” or “toe the line.” (Businesspeople talk in cliches – saves time and thought.) The newsroom erupted in rage. They’d rather starve than be treated this way! Now Bezos, who safeguards his reputation, has a noisy mess on his hands. Like his ham-handed fellow plutocrat at X (né Twitter), he mistook a relationship for a product.

I’d rather be musing about morality, history, literature, God, America’s misdirection, puppy Henry, or the enthralling saga of me. Oh well – curiosity will sniff where it will. The Post’s woes are must-watch TV.