On with Kara Swisher - Can The Washington Post Be Saved from Jeff Bezos? By Kara Swisher?

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

For months, Kara has been assembling a group of investors to buy The Washington Post. Although it's not actually for sale, the ongoing exodus of journalistic talent, combined with Bezos's decision to kill an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris days before the 2024 presidential election, made it both plausible that Bezos might entertain a bid and crucial that someone step forward. Now, after watching Bezos remake the opinion section in ways that seem designed to curry favor with President Trump, the chances of persuading him to sell seem increasingly remote. Nonetheless, Kara’s quixotic quest continues, and in this episode, she talks to some of the people she’s turned to for advice, including: Cameron Barr, a former senior managing editor at the Post who resigned in the wake of the new changes; Tina Brown, a pioneering journalist and media executive who has led multiple publications, including Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Newsweek, and The Daily Beast; Oliver Darcy, a former CNN senior media reporter and currently the founder and lead author of Status.news; Sally Quinn, the first woman to anchor a CBS News morning show, and a best-selling author, and longtime Post columnist who was married to the late Ben Bradlee, a legendary executive editor at the Post; and Amanda Katz, a writer, editor and translator who worked as a senior assignment editor for the opinion section of the Post until she resigned last year (and wife to Kara Swisher).   And make sure to watch "Becoming Katharine Graham," a new documentary about the former Post publisher's extraordinary life and journalistic courage (now streaming, ironically enough, on Amazon Prime). Questions? Comments? Email us at [e-mail] or find us on Instagram, TikTok and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TV Direct Investing. Hi everyone from New York Magazine and the Box Media Podcast Network. This is On with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher. So today I'm going to talk about my bid to buy The Washington Post from its current owner, Jeff Bezos. Or at least my attempt to do so since it's clear,

he's not interested in selling and definitely not interested in selling to me. Nonetheless, I've been yammering on about this for a while, including with Scott Galloway on Pivot. What do you think, Scott? You want to buy The Washington Post with me? This is such peacocking. First off, if I'm going to spend a lot of money to be put in pain, he or she better be wearing leather

and be hot. I just... What do you do? Anyways, no, I'm not crazy. No matter what Scott thinks, I'm not peacocking and I'm not wearing leather. More to the point, I'm not trying to shame Jeff either. It's neither a troll nor a tale of business daring do, though I certainly have the ability

to raise the money needed and I have a plan I think would help get the Post back on its feet. But here's the simple truth. This is a love story. So let me begin by telling you it, and I'll keep it brief. I got my job at the Washington Post by calling the Metro Editor and yelling about a story I had seen in the paper. I was covering the story from my college newspaper,

which was Georgetown University, and the Post did a terrible job of it, and I was angry because I loved the Washington Post, and I was disappointed that they did such a bad job. I got the Metro editor on the phone on my first try and he invited me down to the Washington Post, which at the time was on 15th Street. So I jumped on the M2 bus and rode it down to the Post and I walked into the Post newsroom for the very first time and it was love at first sight. and it was love at first sight. I told the editor my problems that I had with what they had done and how angry I was,

and he told me I was obnoxious. Well, I was, but he had let me down, and I said I could do a better job. Right then and there, he hired me as a stringer for the Washington Post, and I wrote innumerable stories about the college I was going to, so many that it got me into the graduate school of journalism at Columbia. I got my first job in journalism by being irritating, so why should I stop now? Back to my career there, I later went on to work in the mailroom as night copy aid, as a news aid, an intern for Style Plus, a fill-in for the business section which morphed into a reporting job including covering retail workplace issues,

and ultimately being the first reporter to cover the nascent digital services business in DC in the form of a small company in Vienna, Virginia called AOL, America Online. It was there I met many people who are now the richest and most powerful in the world. For the most part, they were scrappy entrepreneurs with only a germ of an idea, a difficult road, but lots of aggressive drive. That included Jeff Bezos, whom I met in Seattle when I went to check out his startup called Amazon in the 1990s. As I described him in my memoir, Burn Book, up in Seattle, a short and energetic

man was lousy at hiding his wanting ambitions, masking behind a genuinely infectious maniacal laugh, a curiously baby fat face, and an anodyne presentation of pleated khakis, sensible shoes, and a blue Oxford shirt. Still from the start, I had no doubt that Jeff Bezos would eat my face off if that's what he needed to do to get ahead. Feral, in fact, was the first word that jumped into my head when I met Bezos in the mid-1990s. He brought me to an industrial area near the airport, and I watched as he skittered around the warehouse like a frenetic mongoose. We talked a lot in those days, largely because he needed me to shine a light on his efforts at a very dicey time for Amazon. First, when I was at The Post,

and then at The Wall Street Journal, where I went in 1997 as its first reporter specifically covering the internet. After a lot of ups and downs, Amazon soared on that mongoose energy. Fast forward to 2013, when he suddenly, and a surprise to me, bought The Post from the Graham family for $250 million. By then, it was struggling to deal with the digital age, and I was hopeful

that Jeff's innovative spirit and piles of money would save the paper. Even before Bezos came on the scene, I had been warning former post owner Don Graham that print newspapers were done for. Despite worries about the tech takeover of media, I hope Jeff would fully embrace online journalism while holding true to the journalistic standards and ethics of the legacy paper. So I wrote an open letter to Bezos on my media startup, All Things D, and offered some advice. Don't treat the post like some precious thing

that cannot be touched or changed. While you certainly should respect its vaunted traditions and hue to ethical standards, that does not mean it gets to stay as it is. That's the big danger here, that you start acting like the steward of history rather than using the fantastic Washington Post brand to make some new history. And for the first decade of owning the company, he was a very good owner, trying all manner of updating tech and supporting the newsroom, and hiring a really great editor named Marty Barron. It was not the glory days of Ben Bradley and Kay Graham, but it was a solid effort, even if the paper always seemed to lag behind the

New York Times. Mostly, he kept his mitts off, which was the right thing to do. He even quietly endured endless attacks from President Donald Trump in his first administration. Again, it was the right thing to do, and he was public about that commitment. Here's what he said to Axel Springer's CEO, Matthias Döpfner, about his role at The Post back in 2018. As the owner of The Post, I know that at times The Post is going to write stories that are going to make very powerful people very unhappy.

Are you upset if they are writing critical stories about Amazon, which they do? No, no, I'm not upset at all are writing critical stories about Amazon, which they do? No, no, I'm not upset at all. When I first bought the book, after 23 years, never. And I'd never, I would be humiliated to interfere. I would be so embarrassed. I would turn bright red and it is nothing to do with, I don't even get so far.

I just don't want to. For me, it would feel icky. It would feel gross. It would be one of those things when I'm 80 years old, I would be so unhappy with myself if I interfered. Why would I? I want that paper to be independent. He went on to say that telling the newsroom what to do would be like taking controls from the pilots of a plane.

But when the Trump circus left town and the inexorable decline of the traditional media business accelerated, losses mounted, and Jeff started to make one bad move after another. In 2023, after bringing in former Microsoft executive Patty Stonecipher, who was well liked at the Post despite having to preside over layoffs and buyouts, Bezos then chose Will Lewis to take over as the new CEO. Lewis had tried to be a media entrepreneur, emphasis on tried, and had been a former CEO of Dow Jones and publisher of the Wall Street Journal and before that a senior executive at Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Back in the days of the UK phone hacking scandal. And one of the first things he did after taking his job at The Post, after trashing the reporters for not wanting to change,

which was entirely untrue and obnoxious in not the good way, was apparently trying to kill a story about his own alleged involvement in that scandal. And then Lewis ousted then executive editor Sally Busby, the first woman to serve in that role. Newsroom morale plummeted. first woman to serve in that role. Newsroom morale plummeted. Then, last October, Bezos decided the Post would end a decades-long practice and pull the newsroom's planned endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. That Bezos himself made the decision, not Lewis, is according to the Post's own reporting. While he certainly was within his rights to do so, the timing was curious and there was fallout.

300,000 post readers cancelled their digital subscriptions in response. No surprise, a growing number of editors and reporters started leaving as newsroom morale plummeted once again. That included my wife, former opinion editor Amanda Katz. And at the dawn of Trump 2.0, there have been other examples of the Post seeming to obey in advance. In January, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Anne Telenes resigned after she said opinion editor David Shipley rejected her cartoon, depicting Bezos and other tech billionaires

bending the knee before Trump. Last month, the Post pulled an ad deal that called on Trump to fire Elon Musk. And just in case that wasn't enough, Bezos and many other tech billionaires paid a million dollars plus to yuck it up on stage with Trump during the inauguration. Jeff looked like a prop and a stooge. Finally, last week, Bezos announced that the Post's opinion section would be refocused to only published pieces that are, quote, in support and defense of personal liberties and free markets, which in libertarian billionaire, nincompoop speak roughly translates to personal liberties means doing whatever the fuck I want.

Free markets means doing whatever the fuck I want. Now I love capitalism too, but what that means in practice is incomprehensible and really just dumb. That move essentially forced the resignation of the opinion editor David Shipley, who declined, as Bezos noted, not to say, hell yes. Hell no was the right response. That was a far cry from that 2018 interview. I would be humiliated to interfere.

I would be so embarrassed. I would turn bright red and it is nothing to do with, I don't even get so far. I just don't want to. For me, it would feel icky. It would feel gross. I don't know if Bezos is now so comfortable with all this interference that he's gotten over the ick factor, but the rest of us haven't. As far as I'm concerned, he has killed the post legacy of justice, fairness, commitment to the First Amendment,

accountability, and epic badassery created by Ben Bradley and Kay Graham. Here's former post reporter Martha Sherald. We were always asking more and we're pretending we didn't know things that we maybe we thought we knew. But at the same time, you had to kind of have the balls to put the story together. The problem is that Bezos isn't just any owner. He's one of the top tech titans in the world and his real business interests are in Amazon and Blue Origin and not the post. Now the biggest competitor to Blue Origin, Elon Musk is working directly with Trump running Doge. Now, the biggest competitor to Blue Origin, Elon Musk, is working directly with Trump,

running Doge, and I think Jeff wants some of that sweet, sweet government money. Owning an independent media company that is reporting on a presidency and administration that could make or break him, even if he was not such an embarrassing cheerleader, has become a clear conflict of interest. I don't want to buy The Washington Post to put it on a nostalgia shelf like some precious tchotchke. Even though The Post reportedly lost $100 million last year and about $77 million the year before,

I believe there's an opportunity here. And Scott is just one of the many people I've been talking to about it. I've been having lunches, receiving solicited and unsolicited texts, chatting with tons of people in business and in media. Today we're going to hear from some of those people. None of them are actual investors. I'm keeping those names under wrap for now, but they are all folks I've trusted over the years and who have very specific takes on The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, the media industry and business.

Sally Quinn was a famed style writer for The Post when it pioneered that section and has worked there for decades. She was also married to Bradley. Media legend Tina Brown is also famed for turning around Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and launching the Daily Beast, and she now writes a substack called Fresh Hell. Media critic Oliver Darcy, who covered the biggest moves at the post in his must-read media newsletter, Status. And then later I'll talk to former Top Post National Letter,

Cameron Barr, who helped oversee 12 Pulitzer prizes and has now cut ties with the paper after 19 years in protest of Bezos's partisan antics. A lot of listeners have been asking to know more about this project, so here it is, Kara's quixotic mission, the acquisition episode. We taped this panel on Thursday, February 27th. Stay with us. Oliver, Tina, Sally, welcome. Thanks for being on On.

Good to be here. Thank you for having us. All right. So we're going to be talking about my interest in buying The Washington Post, which I really am interested in. If people think I'm just playing games or trolling or anything like that, but I have talked to a lot of people. I have an investment banker.

I've been trying to reach out to Jeff. I have reached out to his investment company. They have responded. At the same time, Jeff Bezos is not interested in selling the Washington Post. So let me just state that very clearly. But I'm glad you're here anyway because I want to talk about what's going about the Post and the state of the industry. So we got to start by talking about what just happened. Bezos emailed the Post staff with an announcement about changes to the Post's opinion pages. I'm going to read what he wrote exactly. Quote, we're going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars, personal

liberties and free markets. We'll cover other topics too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others. So you can't even debate that, apparently. His reasoning, according to the memo, was that the internet now offers a broad-based opinion section the paper used to provide. He seems to think that personal liberties and free markets

are underserved areas of coverage that are, quote, right for America. I'd like to hear from each of you what your reaction was to the announcement. Sally, why don't we start with you? Well, I was surprised. I didn't see it coming. Although when Bezos decided to yank the endorsement

of Kamala Harris, that was a surprise too. And what interests me is where the post is going. I think that's the one thing that everybody is sort of confused about, is what is the vision, what is the plan, where is it going? Is it going to be more conservative? It would seem so. So that's the editorial page. I think a lot of people don't know the difference between the editorial's opinion section and the news section. That has nothing to do with the newsroom, the opinion section. And that's what he's doing right now. Generally, the publisher, the owner, has some say

over what goes on in the opinion section and the editorials because it represents the owner's views. And so when the Grahams own the Washington Post, The Washington Post editorial page, represented their views. And the op-eds, the things that people provided, the writing columns people provided, were varying opinions on both sides, on all sides. So that's what you got. And generally, they were more liberal than they were conservative in the old days in The Washington Post. So it's not clear to me now exactly what this means. I think

it means the paper it sounds like is going to go in a more conservative direction and that they don't want that much input from other points of view. Yeah. So that's not, that's definitely a real departure from what the Washington Post has done from an editorial opinion standpoint. What I do know is that they have sworn that they're not going to mess with the newsroom, with the report, general reporting of the paper. And so the editor of the newsroom, executive editor, does not answer to editorial page editor. He answers to the publisher, and so does the editor of the editorial page. So one of the interesting questions

will be who will take over David Shipley's job, because I think that will give you a much more idea of what direction they want to go into. Right, but I think people in the news section are certainly worried. All right, Oliver? Well, I think you need to go back to why did Jeff Bezos do this? And wouldn't he have done this? And why now?

Exactly. Would he have done this under Kamala Harris if she were president? It's really hard to imagine, at least for me, that he would have decided to remake The Washington Post in such a dramatic way had a Democrat one office. And it seems pretty clear everything you've seen him do is push the paper and his businesses in a more pro-Trump direction, whether it's eliminating diversity initiatives

at his other companies, or whether it's blocking the Kamala Harris endorsement before the election. That's one, so I think his motive is not pure. But the second thing is it doesn't even make any sense, is what he's saying. So I don't know of any writers on the Washington Post and the editorial page who would write against civil liberties or the free markets. Maybe there are some communists on there.

I'm not aware of any pro-communism editorials on there. So it's pretty clear this secret language. You know what it means. Exactly, we know what it means. Just say personal liberties to him from my experience with him is, I want to do what I want. And free markets is, I want to do what I want. But go ahead.

Well, I guess the question is, if someone has criticisms of capitalism's excesses, is that going to be banned by the Washington Post? I mean, you can be pro-capitalist and say, hey, maybe someone doesn't need $300 billion, right? Like, I don't know. And so like, I think these are legitimate questions. There's no answers.

The Washington Post employees, hundreds of them, have been begging Jeff Bezos to visit them, to offer some clarity, to touch base and kind of reunite. He has declined to do that. He's really busy with his Blue Origin space rocket situation over there. And so I think just generally this adds to further turmoil at the Washington Post. Tina, what are your thoughts? Well, I mean, you know, I have two sort of views about this. I mean, on one level, you know, when I took over the New Yorker, I let go 71 people and I hired 50.

And a lot of people yelled and screamed and said, the magazine would never be the same and how could I have done this? And all the rest of it. And now, you know, that same group that I hired are all the people who are there now, who are now the sort of golden oldies, as it were, who were the ones who were the renegades. So part of me feels, you know what?

Yes, shake by all means, you know, shake it all up. But I didn't understand what he was saying, A, it was so kind of heavy-footed and irrelevant. I don't even know why he's shouting about this. I mean, you know what, you're bored with David Shipley as opinion editor, perfectly legitimate. He's like the owner of the paper. Maybe it was time for Shipley to move on.

He'd had a good run. I don't even know why it's necessary to sort of say, announce that you're going to have these two pillars, as he puts it. Just hire a new op-ed editor, and you know, somebody who's more in tune with your taste, and let the guy sort of come up with a really interesting new opinion section, which will have more counterintuitive voices, a few less, you know, sort of tired liberal voices, as would see it, bring in some fresh sort of, you know, plumbed free press for some of those kind of voices. I don't understand why he needs every time he seems to do anything, Jeff Bezos, it is this massive kind of drama and sort of pronunciamentos that just seem

to cause enormous amount of aggravation. So to go back to what Oliver said, you can only think he's making the pronounciamentos because he wants to catch the eye and the ear of Trump and Musk and say, please pat me on the head. Look what I'm doing. I'm totally remaking the post in your desirous image, as it were. So that's what I don't like about it.

Otherwise, I have no idea why he would make an announcement like this. I mean, look at Emma Tucker. Emma Tucker's totally wonderfully, I think, you know, revived. Changing the Wall Street Journal. You're not hearing her scream about it. You're not hearing her scream about it. I've just let go of the editor of the, you know, she doesn't do that.

She just like has a very good new group of people who are writing for her. And everybody says it's better. So what's, what is the problem here? It's, there's a lot of look at me with these fellas, just so you know, look at me, look at me over here and by the way, do. Look at me, look at me over here. And by the way, do you like my shirt? No, I do not. So David Shipley, as you mentioned, the opinionator has exited after Bezos gave him this ultimatum.

If your answer isn't hell yes, then it has to be no. That's a very tech thing. If you're not hardcore, you're not in. Small men always have large language around these things. Oliver, what are you hearing from your sources in the opinion section about the announcements? Have you talked to Shipley? Who'd want to stay after this and who will they, from your perspective, hire? Well, I think they certainly want more conservatives, so I don't even think that's a mystery. They've got a lot and they're pretty weak sauce, but go ahead.

I think it's sort of shocking, you know, Shipley too. Let's go back a second. Shipley was someone who has been with Bezos through quite a bit. I mean, I guess we finally found out where his red line is. He was trying to cover for Bezos when they killed the Kamala Harris endorsements and he's been... Cartoon and tell-ness. There was the cartoon.

Yeah. So it's not like David Shipley, some snowflake liberal who is like resisting. He was actually trying to go along with Jeff Bezos. And I think we actually saw where his red line is. And it's remarkable that he's saying, this is even too much for me, right? But I think inside the Washington Post, the people that I speak to are deeply frustrated because they even acknowledge that Jeff Bezos can do whatever he wants with the Penian pages.

It's his prerogative, he's the owner, whatever. But why is he constantly overshadowing the newsroom and the good work that's happening? I think the people at the Washington Post, whether on the Penian or in the newsroom, I think that they're frustrated because they finally felt like some of that bad news cycle was put behind them. And particularly in the newsroom, they feel like they've been scooping and they have been scooping. They have been great stories.

Despite the turmoil, they've still been doing a good job covering this White House. You know, they've been doing a good job holding Elon Musk accountable. Some really sharp-edged reporting, to be honest, from the Washington Post. Despite all the chaos, despite the fact that Will Lewis is so far a failure of a publisher, despite the fact that Jeff Bezos keeps interviewing, they've been doing their best. And so they finally felt that the train was sort of back on the tracks.

They were in the news cycle for the right reasons. And then Jeff Bezos drops this. And it's like, why? Why? Like Tina was saying, if you want to remake the paper in the opinion page, whatever, do that. You hire an editor and they carry out your vision. Why is he doing this?

And the only thing that makes sense to people is he wants to show off to Donald Trump. And that really sickens a lot of people because their job is to hold power to account, not to cozy up to it. So Sally, talk about this. I mentioned the Wall Street Journal's editorial page. That newsroom has often been directly at odds with the editorial side, by the way. They have not always been in lockstep. And post CEO, Will Lewis and executor, Matt Murray, worked together at the journal. Murray told the newsroom that the new decree will not impact the broader

newsroom. If you were in a newsroom right now, would this worry you, this meddling? If I were in the newsroom now, what I would wonder is, what's the end? Where is this going? I'm not quite clear what the mission is or the vision. Right. So... Because he hasn't stressed the independence at all of the newsroom. He has not, Bezos. That's one thing that he's silent on.

Well, Matt Murray has stressed it recently. Yes, but the owner has not. But Jeff did in the beginning when he first took over. And when he first took over, he was this wonderful, adorable person. He came in the newsroom and he gave this fabulous speech. And beforehand, Ben at that point had dementia. And he went up to visit Ben in his office and they talked.

And Jeff, I guess, pretended to understand dementia and he went up to visit Ben in his office and they talked and Jeff I guess pretended to understand what Ken was saying but Ben was really happy about that and he loved Jeff's speech that day and he was so all in on everything the post stood for and when Ben died Jeff apparently wasn't going to come to the funeral, and Woodward called him and said, you really need to come to the funeral because you own

this paper now and you need to understand what it's about. If you come to the funeral, you'll understand what it's about. And he did, and he said he was really happy to be there. But he was always so excited about what the Post stood for. He was so great when he got Jason Rosian and sent a plane for Jason and brought him back and honored him. Yeah, for the ownership, he's been quite a good owner. I would agree with you. Right. And something he said to Matthias Döpfner in 2018, when Döpfner asked if Post journalists were writing critical stories about Amazon and he also meant the editorial section,

he says, no, I'm not upset at all. And D Dockner asked, did you or would you ever interfere? He said, never. I would be humiliated to interfere. I would be so embarrassed. So again, he was very much, I mean, because of this, people at the Post are feeling nervous and they've been hemorrhaging talent. This has been a boon to the Atlantic and New York Times and the Wall Street Journal where all these people have gone to and various other places too, their own substacks, et cetera. A lot of people have left and I could make a list of really great reporters and they're still doing great journals and they've got a real wealth of talent there. As somebody who's cultivated great talent in the past at Vanity Fair, Tina, at New Yorker,

at Daily Beast, what be concern be given the number of editors and reporters who've left and at what point does it undermine the quality? Because both you and I know it's good to have a little bit of shift at any publication. Well, I think there's always kind of certain talents that make everybody else quake, you know, when they go. I also think that in some ways, Will Lewis, for one, I'm sure, is absolutely delighted every time any one of them walks out the door because it enables him to hire another one. And this is what my biggest beef, I think, unfortunately, with Jeff Bezos, it should not be true of Will Lewis, but it seems to be. I don't think he understands journalism. You know, I don't

think he understands who's good and why. I mean, at any old institution like the Post or in my case, the New Yorker, it's like there are the people who are there because they were good and the people who think they're good because they're there, if you know what I mean. And we all know the difference, right? And you just want to get rid of the second lot, right? But there's some very, very, very good reporters, wonderful people at The Post, and you do not want to lose them. And it was very stupid to lose Mattea Gold, who seemed to me to be sort of just a really

good, amazing, managing, you know, brilliant journalist who could be relied upon to do excellent work. I mean, you don't want to lose someone like that because those are the kind of lynchpin people that you do not want to lose. And they can really cause a lot of damage because, you know, the talent goes with them. I mean, one of the things that I like about writers is they're very loyal to their editors really. I mean, they know the help they need. They form strong bonds with their editors. So if you go firing some of the best editors, you're going to lose the best writers. Peter Walston is someone people didn't know. He's gone to the New York Times, incredibly important

editor. And he called me and he didn't know what to do because I can tell you every single one of them wanted to stay and then couldn't. That was what was really interesting. In Marty Barron's book, I was very interested that whenever he asked for more money for editors, Jeff Bezos would say, you can have the money for the reporters, but not for the editors. He said they don't have the direct influence on the content, which was obviously a retail guy's like, you're not the direct to customer person. He didn't understand what editors do. I mean, basically people who are person. And he didn't understand what editors do.

I mean, basically people who are not in our business sort of don't know what editors do. They think they're sort of gratuitous people who fiddle around with sentences and semicolons. They don't realize that half the writers that we know, if they did not have their editor with them, they would be publishing gibberish for mistakes. It wouldn't make any sense.

They would do the wrong stories. Editors are really, really important to writers. So he never got that. And that actually was something that really stuck out to me in Marty's book because it irritated him profoundly. I mean, he had to kind of create budget lines that were sort of slightly masking the fact that, you know, he wanted to have a few editors in there as well as reporters. So I don't think he understands journalism or has really troubled himself to understand it actually, unfortunately. No, all right, go ahead, Sally. Well, I was going to say that what baffles me about this is that the exodus has been tremendous.

Kara, you and I have been to a number of farewell parties for all of our friends who are leaving the papers, just crushing. I mean, one week there were three parties. Everybody was in tears halfway through. They did not want to leave. Not one person wanted to leave. Each person I talked to said, I'm crushed. I thought that I was going to make, spend the rest of my life at the Washington Post. This is my career. Every single one of them.

And I talked to many of them on the phone before they made their decisions and hoping they wouldn't leave. But they just had to. They felt they had to. And I think Tina's dead right about editors. People just don't understand what a great role editors play. I couldn't function without an editor. I would not publish anything that I didn't have somebody read.

But I think what's so dispiriting about the people leaving is that if you want subscribers, you've got to have good content. And if you don't have good talent, then you don't have content. They don't understand that, Sally. You can have great editors, but if the editors don't have any writers, they can't put it out. And so one top reporter after the other has walked out the door. And going to other places.

And a lot of those people who were drawing subscribers. So this is what I find really disheartening, is losing this talent because it's going to take years to get it back. These are 30, 30, 40 years worth of talent. We'll be back in a minute. Support for On with Kara Swisher comes from Poly AI. Sometimes calling customer service can feel like more trouble than it's worth. Most automated voice assistants don't understand what you're saying

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That's poly.ai slash Kara. Hey, it's Kara. We're taking our show on the road alongside a number of other great Vox Media podcasts. We'll be heading back to Austin for the South by Southwest Festival March 8th through 10th. We're doing a special live episode there and you can also see a number of other hit shows including Pivot, Where Should We Begin with Esther Perel, A Touch More with Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe, Not Just Football with Cam Hayward, and more presented

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in the game. I normally don't like Ed Tech, but I really like you. I echo those sentiments. I do want to push back though. Toughen up there, lady. That's healthcare. I feel like I'm the lone dissenter. Ooh, Charles, spicy.

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Oliver, one chance to just before this happened, I talked to people about potentially making a bit for The Post, as you all know. One of them was Henry Blodgett, founder of Business Insider. Bezos invested in Business Insider and Blodgett worked for him in that capacity. Here's what he said to me a couple weeks ago about what the Post needed to do to survive and just what Sally and Tina are talking about. I think that the Washington Post will need to decide what it is that it is going to do

that's going to be important, important enough for people to subscribe and better than everybody else so that they are number one at something. So the value proposition is not we're like the New York Times, but not as big. That's not a great value proposition. And Jeff, and I know you may disagree with it, has outlined a plan. His plan is, listen, we are preaching to the left the elites I want to move everything to the middle. I'm gonna make that a much bigger market. I Understand why he's doing that that would be the Amazon positioning but again

Extremely difficult. I would agree with the organization where it is exactly So given as ladies his basis move past the muddy middle all the way to the right, Oliver, what do you, this is like, Henry was talking about, you gotta be something, right? You gotta decide what you wanna be, especially in this media environment. Can you talk to that?

Yeah, I think it's misguided that there can be this middle thing and we can talk to Republicans and we can talk to Democrats. I agree that would be an amazing world to live in where you could have a fact-based discussion on What's happening in government with both conservatives and liberals and they both agree on the facts. That's not the world we live in anymore Unfortunately, thanks to people like Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk Shared reality has been destroyed. That says it doesn't exist anymore And so you have to really decide am I going to be talking to the people who believe? in Elon Musk, shared reality has been destroyed. That doesn't exist anymore.

And so you have to really decide, am I going to be talking to the people who believe in just basic facts about society and government and the world we live in? Or are we gonna be catering to people who actively deny those basic facts and spread lies and conspiracy theories about them? And this idea of a middle, I don't really know where it

is. And so the problem really is, if you want to be truth tellers, you are going to be speaking just by default to really center left people. And it's going to alienate people who are center right, which is really I mean, the center right has moved. It's really right, right? You're talking about Donald Trump controls the Republican Party because most people in the Republican Party like Donald Trump, and Donald Trump is actively at war with truth. And so it's really a confusing thing. But the days in which you had a Republican on Meet the Press or whatever, and you had a liberal on Meet the Press, and then they went out to brunch afterward, and you know,

those days are gone. And so I don't understand actually this idea of being for all America. It sounds like by being for all America, you're really for nothing because you're not gonna be aggressively pursuing the truth and you're gonna be muffling the truth so you don't offend people on the right.

And it's ironic because those are the people who complain all the time about safe spaces and being, you know and the left being triggered. They're the ones who get triggered by basic facts. So I don't actually understand the business plan here from Jeff Bezos. I think the smarter plan would be to be, just get scoops, get information other people don't have.

Everyone has to pay attention to that, even if you're on the right and you don't like the ideology. And also be clear-eyed about what's happening in this country because there's a real audience out there for those people. And it seems like, you know, the Washington Post is trying to get the scoops, but the clear-eyed nature of the Post, I think, and I think there's some work to be done there,

and Jeff Bezos is doing the opposite of that. Yeah. So let's talk about those glory days. As I said, I've been hearing people about my idea to launch the Bid to Buy. Some of the conversations were with my former colleagues from back in those days when I was a young reporter. And what made it so special, Laura Blumenfeld really put a point on it. Let's listen.

In a word, balls. I think that's what made the paper great back then. Everybody had balls. Every story we wrote was a love story, whether it was a love story to the subject we were writing about, the people, the topic, and also our responsibility to connect with writers in the newsroom. Everybody was collaborating and also the audiences that we were reaching. It was the universal human experience. It wasn't about division. It was about connection. So we were raxing nostalgic about what it was like in the 80s and 90s, but Sally, you

were there for the Pentagon Papers and Watergate and before that you were also there in the 80s and 90s. The paper forced an American president to resign. There were moments that defined the post, the creation of the style section under Bradley. Talk about that. It did have a product everyone wanted to read, even if you opened a story and it was the entire two pages, right? Like people, it really did have that moment

of gelling with the audience before things changed, obviously. Well, you know, Ben gets a lot of mention for overseeing the Watergate coverage, but I really think the most important thing he ever did was start style. I agree. Because every single newspaper in the world now

has a style section. And I started out in style a couple of months after the style section was launched. And my one recollection was how much fun we had. We just loved, everybody loved every minute. People were running around sort of excited about, Ben used to say he'd sit in his glass office if he saw more than three people at the water cooler

he'd get up and run over to find out what they were talking about what they were gossiping about and he's could walk through the newsroom and ask people if they were having fun and Telling people they did great stories and really cheering people on. I mean he's a great cheerleader and During those days even during Watergate, it was so exciting to be there. It was one of the most exciting. You can imagine the stories that break and Woodward and Bernstein had a story today and tomorrow. And it was so exhilarating to be there. And one of the great stories was in the middle of Watergate, the Nixon White House called Ben and they said, we want Woodward and Bernstein sources. And Ben said, you're not going to get them. They called back the

next day and said, okay, we're going to come get them or else we're going to put them in jail. So Ben got their notes and took them up to Kay and said, guard these with your life. Went back and called the White House and said, Bob and Carl don't own the notes. The Washington Post owns them and Kay Graham is the owner of the post, so you're going to have to come get her and she's prepared to go to jail. Right. And then they caved, but Ben was so depressed because he said he just couldn't wait to see the car pull up in front of the post and drag Kay out in handcuffs.

Yeah, right, right. And that was the serious part. Tina, talk about the fun part, because there was a lot, you know, you created a lot of really in Vanity Fair and everything else, what was critical that I think you can still do today in a different way or perhaps you don't think that. I know, actually I was going to say exactly what Sally said, which is I think that when Will Lewis talked about this thing called the third newsroom or whatever, I thought, don't you want to stand your biggest asset is the style section.

And I was thinking the other day, wow, they keep on and on in their boring way about, you know, all of these things that it should be and not be. I mean, you've got Trump's Washington to cover boys and girls. Come on. I mean, you know, it's like, forgot, come on. I mean, I go out there and hire the Sean McCrish's and the, you know, all of these great young writers who are out there doing amazing stuff and let them loose on Trump's Washington, then every day there should be a piece about these crazy people, these wild marginals who've sort of taken over the government. I mean, the stories are unbelievable and that should be the pulse point of the paper.

You should not be able to open up your phone without going right to the style section before anything else. That's the big mistake that I think they're making. That's certainly what I took away from the post. I mean, listen, I was well aware of Woodward and Bernstein, all of the kind of the newsroom stuff. But to me, the style section, that is what made me want to be a magazine editor.

Well, that's why it was different from the New York Times, right? That's where differentiation is critically important even today. And what is your different, what is your take and what is your, and it has to have substance to it or it doesn't work. There's a new documentary about K. Graham called Becoming Catherine Graham. The Graham family, of course, owned the Post for generations. So I've talked to veteran Post reporter Bill Powers, who was young with me then, about the way they ran the business while they were there. I want to play you something Bill said. The Grahs and Ben had this shared kind of,

I don't want to call it an ethos because it sounds like something very formal and it was very informal, but it was a feeling of like we are actually here to make trouble in society and to stir things up. And the more you can do that in a way that turns into great news, the better we are. And let's go off and be some troublemakers. There was no sense of like, you're in this place where you have to conform to X model. That was the model. I felt it was, you know, Ben was a huge troublemaker obviously,

and he took great pleasure from that. And they backed us up when we did stuff and when we took risks and they treasured when we took risks and when we did, you know, quote unquote dangerous things, things that you weren't supposed to be reporting on, things you weren't supposed to say, that was encouraged. It didn't feel at all like a bureaucracy or a place where there was a kind of a,

some abstract standard to conform to. It was, we got to get some great news in the paper tomorrow. Exactly, so making trouble, taking risks, it doesn't feel like that's what's happening at The Post. Oliver, is the troublemaker ethos alive in journalism anymore and where is it? I think it's dying. I think that this is why you need good leaders

and I think that he was getting at that point. When you're a journalist, you're often going against some very powerful forces in society. And I think the journalists at The Post and other institutions that don't have good leaders are still doing that because it's in their DNA. But it's certainly a lot easier when you have a leader who you know is going to be a heat shield around you, who is encouraging you, go after them, I have your back, you know, when you have an owner who's doing that.

And I think at the Post, particularly, you know, just under Marty Baron, when Jeff Bezos was the owner, it felt like that was the place. It felt like Marty Baron was committed to good, tough journalism. No one was going to push him around. And Jeff Bezos had his back. And I think that was the case, you know, you can go down the line, but really at a lot of institutions, and that's no longer what you see anymore. I think leaders have been replaced by a lot of mental managers. In some cases, there are no network see anymore. I think leaders have been replaced by a lot of mental managers. In some cases, there are no network presidents anymore. It's been split up into a bureaucracy. And I think as a result, you're seeing journalism that's not as fearless or troublemaking as

it was before. And that's really unfortunate because right now, in this particular moment in American society, I think you need that kind of spirit going after the powerful, especially as they're dismantling institutions, warping law enforcement agencies like the FBI. And I think that when we talk about Jeff Bezos has not interfered with the newsroom. No, he has not overtly interfered with the newsroom.

But he certainly has not equipped it with the leadership it needs to really be firing on full cylinders. And that's unfortunate. Well, I think standing right at that inauguration in the front row said everything. I think he is meddling with the fucking newsroom. I was like, get the fuck off that stage right now.

Like move along. Well, it is really hard to imagine K. Graham writing a check for the inauguration of, you know, Richard Nixon or, you know, I mean, It's insane. And if he doesn't want to own the Washington Post, just sell it. Kara is right here. She's willing to buy it. Like, it's not that hard. I mean, he has some fancy PR people who can find a good excuse why he needs to sell it. Just sell it if you actually don't want to be committed to doing strong sell it. Just sell it if you actually don't want to be committed to doing strong, tough accountability

journalism. But if you're going to be the owner of the Washington Post as an autocrat wannabe sits in the White House and literally disfigures American institutions, you've got to be tougher than what Jeff Bezos is doing. Let me ask you. This is much bigger than the Washington Post. As you said, the media is in a crisis.

The White House is going to handpick the pool of reporters to the press room. The Associated Press has been banned from covering events at the White House or in Air Force One or elsewhere because of its unwillingness to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Tina, you wrote that, quote, U.S. media owners are digging their own grave by capitulating to a temporary tyrant. The question is why? How much do you think the recent lawsuits, the ones Trump filed against CBS and ABC, are impacting the decisions publishers are making?

And I would like you to comment of someone like Bezos standing at the inaugural like that, and never mentioning the Post in any of his praise of Trump saying, and also, I happen to own the Post, and we're gonna still cover you tough. I mean, unfortunately, I think that journalism has been wrecked by several things at once. I mean, we all know what the digital kind of disruption did and the way that we allowed

Silicon Valley to just eat our lunch and without any kind of copyright or care for what everyone was doing. And we stupidly and supinely went along with it. But there's also the corporates who've just been an absolute anathema. I mean, having a company like Disney own anything to do with news, forget it, you know, the crumbling on the George Stephanopoulos case recently and you just know that the 60 Minutes case, we know of Kamala Harris is going to be another crumble. And there's just a sense that they just don't want to take it on. They want to be safe, tepid, corporate sort of stooges who just don't want to get into trouble.

I mean, there's a new phrase around that I've been hearing, you know, when people I know write pieces that have some kind of danger to them, you know, which a good news lawyer can help them to publication. Essentially, you know, the management doesn't want to hear about it. They say, we don't really have an appetite, they say, to take this on, you know? And it's like, isn't that the whole thing? Is it you're supposed to have a good lawyer with the paper whose job is not to kill the piece, but to help you to get it to publication. And the Post did. And the Post did. And so did the Sunny Times under Harry. And like, you trust these people to like, their goal is to let you,

get you to publish, not to kill it. But that now has gone. And basically, it's very quick how people develop this sort of fear where they get self-defeating and the writers themselves say, you know what, there's no point in me even doing that because I'll never get it through, you know, I'll never get that story through the hierarchy here. I just won't get it done. And you know, it really does very quickly permeate an institution and turn it into a very timid institution. And that is what we're seeing in a great many places as a new timidity. Yeah, I think and they also, they don't trust. I mean, I think I speak pretty factually when I say nobody at the Washington Post, for example,

thinks Will Lewis is trustworthy. No, no, no. Nobody. Like, they don't. Maybe you do, Sally. But Sally, do you think Ben and Catherine and Don would have been tough against an administration like Trump's? I mean, they took on Nixon, obviously, who was dangerous in a whole different kind of way.

Well, first let me say that I think the byword of the Washington Post has always been morals and ethics and values. The paper stood for integrity and decency, and I think that's what everyone cares the most about in the newsroom. And I think that one of the reasons so many people, my colleagues, have left is because they worry that those values have been or are being or will be eroded.

There's a big saying on the wall in the main newsroom. It's a quote from Ben that says something like, the truth is never as bad as a lie in the end, something like that. But lying was just the anathema to Ben and to Kay and all of them. I mean, he used to say, we print lies all the time because people lie to us, but the main thing we try to do is get to the truth.

And I think that the way they would cover it would be the way the Post is covering it now in the newsroom is you get the stories. You go out and get the stories. That's the only thing you can do is just make sure you have the facts and make sure that either accurate and you got the truth and make sure that they get in the paper. That's the key. Yes, but you also had owners and editors that backed you up. I mean I think that's a paper. That's the key. Yes, but you also had owners and editors that backed you up. I mean, I think that's a feeling. Well, that's what I mean.

Make sure you get in the paper. You have to have the owners and the editors behind you. And so what I think is that we haven't seen any danger in that area yet. Well, I think him appearing at the inaugural was that. I think that was it. We'll soon find out, because there'll be a story that the Post gets that is really,

really an explosive story that is very dangerous to the administration. And that will be the big test, won't it? It's like whether it gets into the paper or not. Exactly. Or it goes somewhere else, right? So I was talking to Mr. Shark Tank Mark Cuban about this last week before the Opinion page news landed, and he was pretty straightforward about why all these tech billionaires are in the thrall of the president. And I have to say, I think it is not going to get in. Listen to the clip. So why are all these people kissing the ring or more?

Because AI is a single sum game. It's a single winner game. Because if with one stroke of the pen, the president could basically eliminate you from that race to have the dominant AI platform. And that's a multi trillion dollar business. So you know, whether it's Amazon, Google, Meta, Twitter, you name it, if you're doing a large language model that you want it to be the foundational model for everybody, if it takes, you know, given a million or $5 million in

20 minutes, you know, or an hour to the president, so what? Why would you not do it? And so, you mean, it just, only one person survives again, this idea of, or at least there'll be one dominant. Most likely, right? We don't know for sure, but you can't take the risk that, you know, if it is going to be one dominant winner, that it's not you. Oliver, do you buy that, or is it about AI or basis protecting businesses he actually

cares about, like Blue Origin and Amazon, which depend on government contracts? His competitor, Elon Musk, is sitting at Trump's right hand, or, and left hand, he seems to be living together. Yeah, I think it's certainly that these guys are trying to protect their business interests. I don't think there's any doubt about that. I think though that the issue is deeper than this. I think it really comes down to a lack of integrity and honor and courage amongst these business leaders and these newsroom leaders.

And I guess if you want to sell your soul, I mean, everyone, these people apparently have a price, right? And so that's what they're doing. And I think a strong leader would say, you know what? We're not going to do that. We're going to stay the course. We're going to carry out our mission. And I'm an owner of a newspaper or a newsroom. And we're not going to bow before Donald Trump.

And if he wants to go after us, you know, our newsrooms are going to report on that. Jeff Bezos before when he was denied the government contracts there was a legal mechanism that he took advantage of. I think they just they don't want to do that and I think really what you're seeing it broadly across society is people don't have integrity anymore like they just they just feel like oh if you know I'll just sell my soul for some money and they do it. I mean, I think that's what you're seeing.

And I think that's disturbing. And I think also it's not just the owners. It's also these newsroom leaders. It's the millionaires that work for the billionaires. And it's sad to me that often now we're seeing journalists who make not so much money show these very powerful people what courage looks like. It should start from the top. It should start from the top of society. And none of these billionaires would be there with all their wealth if they didn't live in a free society.

And to see them not safeguard it is, I don't know, I think it's frankly very shameful. Does anyone think that when this big story happens, whenever it will be, that is really damaging to Trump and Trump picks up the phone to Bezos. Do any of us think that Bezos will say, we're hanging tough, it's the newsroom? No. I don't think so. I also think, too, obviously the owner can do whatever they want

with the opinion section, but there's something about using the opinion section to curry favor. That's, you know, technically I guess it's okay. I mean, I don't know. I think there's something certainly icky about it. It's one thing if you are Rupert Murdoch, let's say, and you believe in conservative free market ideals and you want your institutions to reflect that. And they've always reflected that. The journal has often been pro-free markets and whatnot.

That's Rupert's prerogative and so be it. But the journalism is excellent there under it. But it's also another thing though when there's an administration you're trying to curry favor to, to remake the opinion page seemingly because of that one reason, to use it to show off and say look at me Donald Trump, I'm being a good boy, look I'm remaking the the paper Look at me, Elon and that's sort of what way it seems like Jeff Bezos is doing and that's what's kind of gross I guess he's allowed to but it's not really ethical either. Someone just asked me What's the point of having fuck you money if you never say fuck you? But but but telling what was it about K Graham came from that higher level class. She came from the rich of the time

Right. What was it about her this documentaries came from that higher level class. She came from the rich of the time, right? What was it about her? This documentary is appearing. How did she become Catherine Graham? I think she was an extremely strong person, but she was extremely insecure as well. Yes, she talked about it in her book. And after Phil died, it was a very hard time for her when she had to take over and she was the only woman

and the men were sort of putting her down. Kay was, she had more integrity than anybody had ever known and she also was a proud liberal and really cared about those positions. I have to say that I do believe that when Ben came along, Kay and Ben hit it off immediately, literally. They just fell on each other like thieves. And I think that Ben gave Kay a lot of courage

because she was personally insecure as having been brought up in the kind of family she was in. Her mother was never particularly flattering to her and she was just the girl, she was Phil Graham's wife and he was the publisher. So suddenly she was the publisher and she had been by her side and I think that gave her an enormous amount of courage and strength to all the courage and strength she already had but was able to exercise it. Yeah.

Tina, Elon turned Twitter into his own megaphone. Are we seeing a version of that here? I actually do think that Bezos is beginning to think, I thought I bought this big, heavy, powerful paper, but I'm not sitting next to the president. And this is just like a piss on newspaper compared to what Musk now has got, which is this sort of massive, uh, bigger rocket, a bigger, a bigger rocket. And I think he's, there is some of that in what we're seeing. I think he wants to remind the administration, you know, particularly Andy and on, I too have a big powerful media

thing. I control opinion. You've got to be nice to me, because I can make that opinion happen in the Washington Post. It's now going to be the kind of opinion that you're going to need and want. So I think there is actually a competitive element now to this change in Bezos. Because as you say, Sally, he was different in that first round, you know, with Marty Barron. He's changed a great deal in the last few years. All right. Last question for all of you. Can the post be saved and what would it take to save it?

Are you, everything changes, everything shifts, but is it something that should be saved and where does it go from here? Oliver, let's start with you and then Tina and then Sally finish up. Yeah, I think it's definitely something that should be saved. And why? Well, it's a story of institution. And I think, again, in society right now, we need institutions that are going to hold power to account

and shed light, spotlight corruption. And so the Washington Post is incredibly crucial when it comes to those things. And so hopefully it can be saved, and it will be saved. I don't know if it can be saved and it will be saved. I don't know if it can be saved though under Will Lewis's leadership. And I don't know if it can frankly be saved under Jeff Bezos's ownership anymore. But if it were to change hands, if the guard were to change, if someone else were to come along who's actually committed to journalism, likes

journalism, has a little bit of courage, and it's maybe a bit of a troublemaker. I certainly think that would attract talent in an audience and it would come back to life. Tina? I think it's essential that the Washington Post survives because we don't want to just be depending on the New York Times. I mean, there has to be competition

to make democracy vibrant. You know, you want that tension between and the competitive streaks between these news organizations because it makes people better and sort of hones them. I think it absolutely can be saved. I think they've made an absolute sort of mega drama out of just hiring a good new editor, you know, and a good new publisher.

It's like, it's not that hard, but unfortunately he got it wrong. And now he's in this kind of muddle with Will Lewis whereby, you know, he's got Will who doesn't, the newsroom doesn't like at all and who sort of hardly speaks to, it's just such a mess, you know, the leadership, it's such a mess. And I don't know unless he's prepared to say, okay, Will Lewis has to go. I have to start again. It was a bit embarrassing that I got it wrong, but you know what? Who cares? And I can get it right. One of the things I loved about Cy Newhouse, who owned Condé Nast when I was there for 18 years, he was never afraid to make a mistake. You know, he would put an editor in and they were a disaster. You know, and you know what? Three months later, he'd fire them and say, you know, I got that wrong. And he'd bring in another one. He'd pay them off very well. And that was it.

He wasn't embarrassed to say, I got this wrong. And Bezos should stop defending what he's done up to now. Just say, you know what, I made a mess of this after Marty Barron left. You know, I just got this wrong. You know? Have you met Jeff Bezos? He never does that.

That's one of the qualities that is so not endearing about him. He's never wrong. Okay, well, if he's never wrong, he's never gonna be right on this one. Yeah, that's a good point. Sally, why don't you finish up? Well, I started a religion website when I was at The Post

and I ran it for seven years and people used to say to me, what is your religion? And I always said my religion is the First Amendment because that was really the thing I cared the most about. The thing I believed in most was in this world, is the First Amendment. And I think the Washington Post represents the First Amendment in the best possible way.

And I can't imagine not having the Washington Post, because as Tina said, that everybody at the New York Times does not want the paper to fold, the post fold, because they feel like that would really be unhealthy for journalism. And I absolutely agree with that. There's damn few brands like it. No, the thing is, I'm not opposed to change. When Will came, everybody was all excited about, oh, we're going to shake the newsroom

up, we're going to do all these exciting new interesting things, we're going to make the paper profitable again. And so change is not the issue is. The issue is what kind of change. And I just will always believe that the post will be saved and remain saved, no matter how. All right. On that note, Melinda, thank you guys so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Kara. We were just talking about the exodus of top reporters and editors from The Post in the wake of all these controversial moves by Jeff Bezos.

One of those who has left is former senior managing editor Cameron Barr. I'm surprised by what has happened recently. I'm surprised by this turn of events. My conversation with Cameron when we come back. This week on Profgy Markets we speak with Mike Moffitt, founding director of the University of Ottawa's Missing Middle Initiative and a former economic advisor to Justin Trudeau. We dive into the state of Canadian politics and we get his take on the biggest challenges facing Canada's economy.

Canada's economy is like three oligopolies in a trench coat. We have a lot of inequality that way. We have high levels of market concentration because we have this tension in Canada where we want things to be Canadian, we want Canadian ownership. But when you do that, you create a moat. And whenever you create barriers to entry, you're going to naturally create oligopolies. You can find that conversation exclusively on the ProfG Markets podcast.

Hey, Cameron, welcome. Thanks for joining me. Kara, good to be with you. So you were at the Washington Post for 19 years. You started in the Metro section as a lower level person, just like I did. And when you left full time in 2023, you were senior at Mandler, which is the number two slot.

You worked for the Post in a contract position until last week. And you and I have talked many times about the Washington Post over the years. I can't believe we sort of missed each other. I left before you got there. But it's the same day that Bezos made his announcement about the opinion pages. You wrote a strong post on LinkedIn announcing your decision to cut ties with The Post once

and for all. Yeah. Would you mind reading a bit of it? We'll put it on the screen for you. The news today that Jeff Bezos has decided that The Post's editorial page should stand only for certain views, represents an unacceptable erosion of its commitment to publishing a healthy diversity of opinion and argument.

His decision not to endorse a candidate 11 days before the last presidential election was an abdication of journalistic responsibility. His public expression congratulating Donald Trump and his prominent presence at the inauguration indicated to me that he is unwilling to maintain the discretion engumbened upon the owner of an institution as important as the Post. The Washington Post in my lifetime has always held power to account. It has been an independent newspaper to cite the longstanding motto on the editorial page, dedicated to the truth telling and journalistic rigor that sustains and strengthens American

democracy. I have sadly concluded that the Post is retreating from this mission. I love this. This is great. I think this is hard for you to make this decision. You love the Post. Talk about why you decided to do this. This is great. I think this is hard for you to make this decision. You love the post. Talk about why you decided to do this. Well, for me, the curtailment of the ambit of the editorial page and the opinion pages was kind of the last straw. You know,

I was willing to sort of overlook the congratulations, overlook the withdrawal of the endorsement because, you know, there is a reasonable basis for doing some of those things. And frankly, look, my whole career has been on the news side, not the opinion side. I'm not an opinion journalist. And I was able to say for a time that I want to continue supporting the work of my former colleagues in the news departments. And they asked me to, I worked on contract for all of 2024. They asked me to continue doing so in 2025. And what we saw happen yesterday just became too much for me

because I didn't want to have to continue to make apologies and to try to defend things to people who queried me about them that I found indefensible. And I just thought I can't, right, well, I can't do it anymore. And so I declined to extend the contract. And I put that statement on LinkedIn to be very clear about my reasons for doing so. I do it with a sense of sadness and disappointment. This has been a turn in Jeff Bezos' conduct as the owner of The Post. In my time as a managing editor, He seemed an exemplary owner. And, you know, we were always proud and impressed with what I used to call the three no's, right?

Jeff was never shown an article before publication. He never criticized one after publication, and he never proposed an article. In other words, he respected the independence of the then editor, Marty Barron. And he talked about it. He talked about it extensively in interviews. That's right. I was a candidate to succeed Marty when I spoke with Jeff. I asked him to recommit to the three no's and he did. So I'm surprised by what has happened recently. I'm surprised by this turn of events. Other people, Marty, others have offered reasons

to try to account for Jeff's conduct. Business. His relationship with a reelected Donald Trump, et cetera. I can't read his mind. I don't know what that is. But I do know that the way he has conducted himself lately strikes me as inappropriate, as lacking in a kind of discretion and a certain independence from power that I think is necessary if you're going to be an owner of a news organization like The Post.

Do you have an explanation? Marty had the business that he wants to, that it's all in his Amazon's or Blue Origin's business interests. That makes perfect sense to me, right? I think Jeff has said it's his own balancing of principles is the only way that this can be made whole and or made sense of. And as I said, I can't read his mind. I just know what I see, and what I see is unacceptable and represents to me an erosion of the kind of credibility, independence, and standing that the post needs in order to do its job.

For sure. What reactions have you gotten to this? Lots of support from people. I think some of my former colleagues in the newsroom have been a little pained by it, and I respect that, and I'm sorry about that. That they don't want you to trash the newsroom, right? That you'll hurt them. Yeah, and I'm...

Oh, right. They're on the sinking ship, right? And it looks like it. Well, I wish them well in, and I'm, all right. Well, they're on the sinking ship, right? They, you know, and it looks like it. Well, I wish them well in their work, which is important work. And as I said, they've done an outstanding job and continue to do an outstanding job. But at the same time,

it's not the post as we once knew it. And it's not the post as it should be. American democracy needs the Washington Post. American democracy thrives when there is a robust competition among strong journalistic organizations. And when one of them starts to look weak, that's not good. So one of the things was this idea of these two pillars of which seem incomprehensible.

Like the whole thing doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Tariffs are a curtailment of the free markets, right? Is the post not to engage in public debate over a president who wants to increase tariffs on our trading partners? I mean, it makes no sense. It muzzles and silences the opinion pages in a way that doesn't serve the goals of

the Washington Post, which is to inform the public debate and to inform voters and politicians and everybody who's interested. It hamstrings everybody on everything. And the explanation that it's on the internet, like what? That's not the point. That's not the... You can find anything on the internet, right? You can order your dinner too. Yeah. You know, like's on the internet. Like what? Like that's not the point. That's not the, you couldn't find anything on the internet, right? You could order your dinner too.

You know, like what the fuck? But two more questions. One is, I've been talking about buying posts, you know, and you and I talked about, we had a lovely breakfast about it. Does it still have a relevance and a pathway from a business point of view and from an editorial point of view, or is it lost to you?

I mean, obviously not, it's one of the greatest brands in history, right, in the American journalism history. No, it can't be lost, right? It serves too important a function. Some people like to think of Washington as the capital of the free world. Sitting here, maybe that doesn't sound so right. It's an incredibly important city in the world. The conduct of the American government has to be scrutinized, has to be held to account.

The Washington Post is one of the organizations that can do that well. And people with good ideas about how to monetize that kind of journalism can make the Post succeed. It was profitable for years in the first Trump administration. That can be restored under the right leadership. Mm-hmm. And what would you, how so, how do you differentiate? Like you said, it can't be lost. It certainly can be. Obviously the New York Times is doing well.

Wall Street Journal's got a lot of zip to it these days, right? And we'll see what happens, whatever happens with the Murdoch family, which seems like a hot mess. What is the place for the post going forward? I think the place for the post has always been the scrutiny of power, right? First and foremost, the power as represented by the American government and its political system. And then I think you can go out from there in concentric circles, right, to talk about

cultural power or tech power or economic power, right? That is the post story. It always has been. And I think some of that has been lost in coming up with new slogans and not being focused about where exactly the post can excel. That, journalistically speaking, that is the path forward. We've been talking a lot about whether democracy is dying.

Ironically, the post-Mass head still reads democracy dies in darkness. I think it dies in the full light of day, which is adopted in 2017 when you were there. What's this mean beyond the post for independent big J journalism and for American democracy? The business is under siege. All of the businesses are under siege. And yet there's a lot of exciting stuff happening with media entrepreneurship. Absolutely. There's a lot happening that's interesting in nonprofit, even in some billionaire supported spheres, right? I'm thinking about the Baltimore Banner and other organizations like that. I mean, journalism in America continues to be vibrant. There does need to be a reinvention

of business models. That continues. We've been talking about that for longer than a decade, and we need to continue focusing on that. Some models are working well. You mentioned the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, all good. The Post can be in that set by doing what it does well journalistically and finding more ways to make money doing it. How are you feeling? This is the last question about the post right now. After doing this, it's obviously tough. Everyone I talk to who's left and gone to the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal

or CNN or wherever they happen to go or the Atlantic are not happy to have left. I can tell you that. I've never seen so many people not wanting to quit their jobs and quitting them anyway. Well, I watch with concern and dismay. I'm in a different place in my career than the kind of people you just mentioned. I want very much for the Post to succeed. I think these are perilous times. There's a tremendous story out there to be covered. Great story.

What are you talking about? Fantastic fucking story. And the post needs to be part of that. And I'm sorry that what is happening is happening. I'm sorry to see people leave. I understand why they're doing it. Myself just said, I don't wish to be part of the changes that are taking place,

because I find them too concerning. And I took the wish to be part of the changes that are taking place because I find them too concerning. And I took the opportunity to vote with my feet and I did. I feel okay about that. But I am cheering from the sidelines, especially for the reporters and editors and photo journalists and everyone else in that newsroom who wants to tell the story of their times and to do it well and they're doing a very good job doing that. Yeah.

All right. It's a damn shame that you had to do it. I'll tell you that. I agree. That's what I say. It's a damn shame. All right, Cameron, thank you so much. Kara, good to see you. I want to end this by going back to the most important question.

How will all these changes affect the integrity of the Post's writing and reporting? Will critical stories get killed? On Thursday, former Post humor columnist Gene Weingarten, who was an editor when I was a young reporter, reported on his substack newsletter, The Gene Pool, that media critic Eric Wempel had a column about Bezos' moves spiked by management. We reached out to Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post. They got back to us but did not comment. Which is exactly what you don't want from a news organization that spends all day trying

to get other people to comment. On Friday, the Post did publish a piece from opinion writer Dana Milbank that trolled Bezos. It quoted his edict, but laid out why the real threat to personal liberties and free markets was actually President Trump. By the way, Trump says he and Bezos had dinner on Wednesday, the same day the changes in the opinion section were announced. Given the Zelensky debacle in the Oval Office Friday, this makes his embarrassing cheerleading and egregious sucking up seem even worse. He is now a decidedly unfit owner of one of the world's most iconic accountability journalism outfits, since Jeff

is only accountable to his own self-interest. He once said he wanted the Post to be independent. That was then, even if the news pages are trying hard to hold on to their integrity and quality. But unlike the Graham family, its staff simply cannot be sure that the owner has the backs of its amazing reporters any longer. No one understands my love affair with a post like my wife, former opinion editor Amanda Katz. She left the paper in December when it got to be too much, and I want you to hear what she thinks about the situation there as an experienced editor and journalist, and also about my quest to revive and restore the place where I first fell in love with journalism, and which has

given me far more than I have gotten from it. Hello, Amanda. Hello, Carol Schlesinger. I want you to first put on your hat of a journalist who worked, and at many places. You worked all around journalism, the Boston Globe and at CNN and different places, and you did and at many places. You worked at all around journalism, the Boston Globe and at CNN and different places and you did work at the Post. Tell me about why you left and how you feel about the situation there now. I left for a number of reasons. There had been a lot of changes. I was sort of one of the last people who interviewed with Fred Hyatt, the

previous editor of the opinion section. Then COVID hit, positions were frozen, and I ended up coming on after his death in 2022. But under Fred, there were many, many different kinds of opinions published at the Washington Post, and that was the goal of the section. He was trying to give a big sense of a range of opinion, and there were also a sense of kind of higher moral values that were animating the section as a whole. This isn't to say that every piece spoke to this, but there was a focus on democracy, on human rights,

on the US as a kind of leader in the free world, but including enforcing standards of democracy and human rights abroad, a free speech in a kind of old fashioned sense, not in a, you know, please don't speak of your life if you're not a white man sense. And I think that, you know, that was the section that I joined and that is most of the colleagues that I had were people who were hired under that model. There has been a kind of attrition of that model in general, I would say, under Will Lewis. And the final straw for me came when the endorsement was blocked, the endorsement of Harris, where we initially didn't know why it wasn't appearing.

But then when we learned that it was being blocked for the ostensible reason that they no longer felt that presidential endorsements in general were appropriate. That became very hard to buy. You didn't believe them? No. I mean, Jeff wrote to say that, and that was what Will Lewis told us in his email. But there had previously been presidential endorsements under the Jeff Bezos ownership. We had endorsed other candidates in this cycle, including Angela Altshubrooks, for example, There had previously been presidential endorsements under the Jeff Bezos ownership. We had endorsed other candidates in this cycle, including Angela Alston Brooks, for example, other important races.

So it wasn't really plausible that they had just suddenly developed a philosophical allergy to presidential endorsements. So then to lose so many subscribers, understandably, in the space of four days, we spend all our time trying to commission stories that are really appealing and informative and delightful to our readers, that really show them things and also help people to subscribe. Right. And so as he moved more to the right, I guess, or closer to Trump or whatever he was doing, what did that feel like to be there? The movement was really subtle.

I would say that in recent years, the movement has been more that within opinions, there were no longer such strong standards, sort of higher principles about what we were aspiring to do. The goals became to present a variety of opinion and to encourage people whose rights were being rolled back to not be so loud about it. That was not a comfortable atmosphere for a lot of people, but the change was really subtle. And a lot of our best known columnists

were very much speaking out about the rule of law, democracy abroad. If you look at the columns of David Ignatius or Ruth Marcus or Dana Milbank certainly or Catherine Rampel or there's a lot of stuff that is really trying to provide accountability. What do they do now under this twin pillars? Well, I think we don't know. The editor is gone. There is no editor leading the section at the moment. There will be soon. So we don't know what to write? Nobody knows. All they have to go on basically is the email that was received on Wednesday.

Right. So we handed down unspecific instructions. Yeah. I mean, from what I understand, and this is from speaking to people, I was not in these meetings obviously because I left in December, there's a lot of uncertainty about what you are and are not allowed to publish. Some people think that the answer is to try to push the envelope as much as you can. Dana Milbanks Calm is a great example of that.

He said in this kind of hilariously tongue-in-cheek way, he said, okay, let's run with this idea, but I'm going to use it to criticize Trump. Is that allowed? And Bezos, right. And implicitly Bezos, right. But you can only do that for so long, right? Well, and will that be continued to be allowed once there is a new editor appointed of the section?

I have no idea. Yeah, so you don't know where it's going to go. Yeah, I think the people who are hired under this previous model will leave. This is not an opinion, what he is proposing is not an opinion section as traditionally understood. The idea of an opinion section is that you provide,

even if there's a certain ideological bet in the editing, the goal is to provide a variety of reported opinion in a way that informs the audience. That's the goal. This is different. This is saying, here's what you're going to believe and to think, and the columnists are just there to put forward my thinking. My belief. My beliefs. And something that serves my own interest. Is that the end then? We don't know.

It does. Why not? Why don't we know? Well, the reason I left is because I came to feel that the problems I was perceiving were not malleable without a change in ownership. That it couldn't happen at the editor level. It couldn't happen at the publisher level.

It had to be a change in the ownership because of what had been done by the owner. So in that sense, you know, as many of our colleagues and friends have said, if you want to run the post or if a group of people who will put in place a board and let the paper return to its traditional accountability mission, want to oversee the post, they would be thrilled to come back. So there's room. There's so much equity in this brand that people would come roaring back if they were given a chance.

So you think this is a good idea? It's not going to happen, you know that. I'm very skeptical now. I kind of feel like this podcast is not helping. No, I don't think it's helping. So do you have hope for the post? Man, I love it. I will say that I have read and posted multiple excellent Washington Post pieces today from the news side and the opinion side because Dana's piece is excellent and it's so smart and funny. And they're doing really important accountability work

right now in the Trump administration and what is happening under Musk and Doge and what is happening in Washington, D.C. right now. There is great reporting happening. I completely understand people who have canceled their subscription, but I'm not going to be among those people yet because I'm very eagerly reading what they do. I think the question comes when there starts to be the same thumb on the news side that there is on the opinion side.

And then I think for now, it will really be a done deal. A done deal. All right, you're still supporting me if I keep going? Oh, go for it. I mean, this is, you know, you were never mayor of San Francisco, but you know, we know that you have many dreams. And if this is the one that comes true,

I will be thrilled for you. Well, what I really want to do is retire to Hawaii, but that's not- It's not going well. No, anyway, thank you, Amanda. world for you. Well, what I really want to do is retire to Hawaii, but that's not... It's not going well. No. Anyway, thank you, Amanda. I know, Cry Me a River are about the death of journalism. I've spent my career trying to innovate it, and at the end of the day, I don't want to

turn the Post into some charity. It has to hold its own as a business. But right now, it's hemorrhaging money, talent, and subscribers. As of Friday, 75,000 more digital subscribers reportedly cancelled their post subscriptions after Wednesday's announcement from Bezos. Bezos can afford to keep writing checks to stem the tide, but when he wants to stop doing that, I'm interested. I reached out to him via my investment banker through friends of his. A rep of his investment arm did respond politely. Then crickets, even though all I wanted was to sit down with him, even if our once cordial relationship has turned, at least in my estimation, testy. And if I could only ask him two

questions, it would be this. Why do you want to own this paper anymore? And do you love it as much as I do? On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castro Roussel, Kateri Yocum, Dave Shaw, Lissa Soap, Megan Burney, Megan Cunane, and Kaylin Lynch. Nishat Kherwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Special thanks to Kate Gallagher. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Arruda

and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you're a troublemaker like the late Ben Bradley and I knew him and he was a troublemaker, the best kind. If not, get down off those two pillars, whatever the fuck those are, and also what the fuck is the second newsroom. Write me Will Lewis if you actually know

what you're talking about Go wherever you listen to podcast search for on with Kara Swisher and hit follow Thanks for listening to on with Kara Swisher from New York magazine the Vox Media Podcast Network and us will be back on Thursday with more