Nolte – Washington Post-Mortem: A Suicide in Five Acts

With this week’s welcome news that the Washington Post has laid off a third of its staff, killed its sports and book sections, ended its daily podcast, and gutted its local and international coverage, what was once a national newspaper is now just another left-wing blog.

Like Newsweek and Rolling Stone, the Washington Post will exist in name only, a shell of its former self.

Tee hee.

The elite media are blaming this glorious collapse either on “uncontrollable market forces” or on Post owner Jeff Bezos for refusing to use his billions to subsidize failure at the rate of $70 to $100 million per year in losses.

The “market forces” excuse proves that these people have no business working in the news media because they have lost touch with the real world. After all, news is a bigger commodity than ever before. Countless news outlets thrive in this environment.

So it’s all blame-blame-blame without a moment of introspection. The smugs just can’t face the truth, which is this: The death of the Post was a suicide in five acts.

ACT ONE – NOT CORRECTING LEFT-WING BIAS WHILE THERE WAS TIME

For as long as anyone can remember, the Washington Post has been a liberal newspaper. Two decades ago, its editorial page was obviously left-leaning, and while this bias did bleed into its news coverage, it was not so blatant. It was a subtle bias. Nothing like the overt lies and hoaxes that land on the front page today.

Once New Media began its rise in the mid-aughts and a cottage industry came alive, exposing media bias (I started in 2004), this is when the Post should’ve reformed. Back then, this reform could have been done quietly and not caused a backlash from the Post’s liberal readers, especially with the editorial pages to sate them. Additionally, the Post had not yet alienated right-leaning readers to a point where it could not attract more.

Instead, just like every other left-leaning news outlet (that is now dying), the Post arrogantly responded to New Media’s policing with a self-destructive defiance in the form of an increasingly flagrant bias. This planted the seeds of Post’s destruction in two ways I’ll explain further below: 1) sameness and 2) making reform the fifth and final act of suicide.

ACT TWO – THE SAMENESS OF GOING FULL ANTI-TRUMP

Already in financial trouble, the Post was so outraged that the Great Unwashed would elect That Man! in 2016, and so humiliated by what that said about the Post’s waning influence, that the Post made the dumbest marketing decision possible – to offer the exact same Resistance Product everyone else offered. Dumber still, what the Post was selling, others gave away free.

The Post had absolutely nothing to offer anyone who did not hate Trump. More importantly, the Post had nothing unique to offer Trump haters. The Post joined the corporate media Hate Blob, put it behind a paywall, and then wondered why no one would pay for their hate when that same hate was available everywhere without a subscription.

ACT THREE – WHORING OUT CREDIBILITY

You can read the whole hoax-list here, but it really was something to watch the Washington Post go from a liberal newspaper to a fevered propaganda outlet publishing straight-up lies, such as the Russia Collusion Hoax (which it knew was a hoax). Then there was its coverage of the war between Hamas and Israel, which turned its Middle East section into Pravda to Soothe Jew-Haters. The Hunter Biden Laptop Hoax. The Covington KKKids Hoax. The serial lies about COVID. Embracing the trans lunacy. All that wishcasting about how Trump was on the verge of political annihilation.

What the Post didn’t understand was how this would backfire among its core left-wing subscribers.

You see, the Post played checkers. Its simplistic and immediate goals were twofold: 1) damage Trump and the GOP, and 2) troll MAGA. But…

These stories ultimately demoralized core Post readers because these stories kept making a false promise about the imminent death of MAGA. Then the hoaxes were exposed as hoaxes – bummer. Then Trump and his movement enjoyed bigger and bigger victories – massive bummer.

If you think about it, the Washington Post (and this is also true of CNN and MS NOW) became a cult whose leader kept moving the doomsday goalposts until his exhausted and demoralized believers slowly withered away, grumbling, I’m done paying for this bullshit.  

ACT FOUR – ALIENATING NORMAL PEOPLE

Starting with the Obama years — from the Tea Party to the Red Hats — the Post spent two decades relentlessly dedicated to trashing as dangerous bigots anyone who opposed high taxes, gun confiscation, open borders, men in women’s sports, drag queen story hours, child mutilation, riots, revolving prison doors, and endless wars.

I get the short-term logic… The Post needed to please its subscriber base of leftist loons. But as I mentioned above, the mistake was expecting the left to pay for the same Hate-MAGA content that was available for free most everywhere else.

And then came the kill shot…

ACT FIVE – REFORMING TOO LATE

Anyone familiar with my work knows I regularly warned these far-left outlets that they were painting themselves into a corner. If I may mix a metaphor… Once you grab the ferociously intolerant left by the tail, you cannot let go…

The Post tried to let go of the tail in late 2024 by refusing to endorse a presidential candidate. (The subscribers demanded a Kamala Harris endorsement.) Then Bezos announced modest reforms.

That was the self-inflicted kill shot.

You see, it was too late for reforms. Way too late. By this time, Normal People had been so alienated and insulted that they would never return to the Post. So, this move didn’t attract new subscribers. All it did was…

Cause a revolt among current Post subscribers, who are almost all leftists who demand total fealty.

That was when the bottom fell out. Led in large part by the Post’s own lunatic employees, droves of leftists canceled their subscriptions and launched boycotts while Normal People sat back and enjoyed the blue-on-blue carnage.

Yes, karma’s a bitch; but on this day, she’s our bitch.

John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.