Before getting to that, let me be a Lying Skank Jen Psaki and Circle Back to turmoil at the Washington Post. I've quoted some of this but some of this is new (unless you saw it on other websites, which you probably did).
As you know, the Washington Post employees are revolting. But the new news is that they're also rebelling.
When Washington Post publisher Will Lewis and new interim executive editor Matt Murray met with staff Monday, the newsroom was still coming to terms with the abrupt exit of Sally Buzbee, who had led the paper since May 2021.
"Everyone was pretty shocked with your email last night," one reporter said at the meeting, according to a source present. The reporter suggested that "the most cynical interpretation sort of feels like you chose two of your buddies to come in and help run the Post, and we now have four white men running three newsrooms," and expressed surprise at this development given Lewis's prior commitments to diversity.
Murray, who previously led The Wall Street Journal, will replace Buzbee as executive editor through the presidential election, at which point, Robert Winnett, a veteran of the UK's Telegraph Media Group, will take on the new role of editor. Murray will move over to a new division of the paper that Lewis referred to as its "third newsroom"--Opinions being the second--which will focus on "service and social media journalism" and run separately from the core news operation.
I mentioned that but I didn't have the quote -- so the Washington Post is taking all of its SJW/activist basketcases and labeling them "service and social media journalism" (the "service" being "servicing leftwing activism") and attempting to wall that off into an Animal House asylum.
The (giggle) reporters are complaining about trifling bullshit, like that they're finding out about this by email on a Sunday night. "That's not how a well-functioning newsroom operates," one sniffs. Well, a well-functioning newsroom also doesn't lose half of its readership in three years due to extreme and unembarrassed leftwing hackery.
Whenever bad employees are fired, they start complaining about how the firing was done. When Gail Simone -- a leftwing hack who got a job at DC comics by ginning up a feminist outrage mob against them-- blew off her editor for six months and refused to answer his many, many phone calls, he fired her by email.
She then activated her "army of cat-ladies" on Twitter and shrieked that she had been disrespected by being fired (by a man!) over email.
Well, asshole, you refused to answer any of his phone calls. How was he supposed to get the word to you?
So now we have unqualified SJWs #Triggered that there are going to be changes -- and firings, of course -- due to them losing the company $77 million in one year alone, and of course they are attempting to change the subject to the form of communication used.
BTW, the Post's management explained the reason for the Sunday night email -- media companies were getting ready to run their own scoop on the changes, and they were forced to send out a quickie email so that the employees wouldn't hear about it from other "news" outlets.
If they hadn't rushed out this quickie email, the SJWs would be complaining, "A well-functioning news room does not allow its employees to be blindsided by news about their own workplace from a competitor!"
This is a very low and callow mode of argumentation. People who are unacquainted with the concepts of accepting criticism and attempting to do better always immediately claim that the criticism is being offered out of bad faith and in an inappropriate form. They do this to change the subject from their failings to your failings in noting their failings.
The CEO said "it's not great" that the new leadership is white and "penisy," as Megyn Kelly mocked them, but vowed he'd do better in the future.
Once he gets done firing the DEI hires.
No, just kidding, they won't do that. Anything but that.
....
Later in the meeting, another reporter asked Lewis whether "any women or people of color were interviewed and seriously considered for either of these positions," a question that prompted applause. Lewis said there will be "significant opportunities" within the new organizational structure. Asked by another staffer about which people he met with, Lewis said, "It was an iterative, messy process, which I don't want to go into the details of."
At one point Lewis was asked whether he was intentionally bringing in people who come from a different culture than the Post.
Players on a team with a three-year losing record demand to know if the newly hired coaches come from a "different culture" than the last batch of losers.
"We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. I can't sugarcoat it anymore," Lewis said. "So I've had to take decisive, urgent action to set us on a different path, sourcing talent that I have worked with that are the best of the best."
I know I've quoted that before, but it's so wonderful.
He turned to that "third newsroom," the SJW Romper Room. He upset the Failures and Zeroes further by saying that even in that Safe Space, he's be seeking to staff it from outside the company.
In other words: Prepare your resumes and seek opportunities elsewhere.
He continued to take a blunt approach when asked about the "third newsroom," specifically how it would be staffed. "I'll be looking for people to put their hands up internally, but also sourcing talent externally," said Lewis. (Of the "third newsroom," Lewis said in Sunday's memo, "The aim is to give the millions of Americans--who feel traditional news is not for them but still want to be kept informed--compelling, exciting and accurate news where they are and in the style that they want.")
The SJW Failures continued insisting that dishonest activism must be part of "journalism" and screamed about being ghettoized in a non-news division.
Listen to this guy's answer. It's an energizing spa day for your boner.
"Don't we need our brilliant social journalists and service journalists as embedded in our core product to make sure that people are actually reading the thing that's out at the center of the mission of the Washington Post?" one staffer asked, to which Lewis replied, "You haven't done it. I've listened to the platitudes. Honestly, it's just not happening."
"So we're just going to give up on--"
"No, I want you to be inspired," Lewis said. "It's the most important thing: untapped audiences. If what I cause to happen is you all get it, great, but the game is up," he said. "I'm setting up a structure where I'm not going to be guessing."
"I've listened to the platitudes." "The game is up."
The SJW Failures who know they're on the short-list for rapid firings continued complaining that he was reaching outside of the failed newspaper and its activist shitlib "culture" for staff.
"The fact that Will Lewis keeps going to his network rather than plucking Washington Post leadership implies that he finds everyone lacking, and I think that's kind of the most disturbing thing," a second staffer told me.
He didn't "imply" he found the leadership lacking -- he straight up said it.
The reason he isn't relying on current "leadership" is that they are proven irredeemable failures.
More complaining by DEI hires who worry, rightly, that the CEO has all but announced they will be fired:
"I don't think [failed former Editor in Chief Sally Buzbee] deserved to go out this way," the first staffer told me, noting that in conversations with their colleagues, people >"don't feel good about the fact that the first female executive editor of The Washington Post got a one paragraph goodbye note at 8:30 p.m. on a Sunday, and that she's being replaced by more white men we don't know."
Hey everybody -- racism and sexism are bad, m'kay?
Axios comments on this and the woes of all the propaganda media.
Media scrambles for survival ahead of 2024
Newsrooms typically immersed in political coverage during a presidential election year are instead focused on saving their own businesses.
Why it matters: Major restructurings, layoffs and newsroom overhauls are unusual for America's biggest news companies just months ahead of a highly anticipated presidential race.
With business headwinds growing stronger, news leaders know they can't afford to push off changes any longer.
Subscription media growth has slowed as publishers struggle to replace customers who canceled their Trump-era subscriptions.
Zoom in: The Post is one of several major newsrooms trying to find new readers willing to pay for their journalism online before their traditional products die out.
- CNN began testing a new strategy last month that asks readers to submit personal data, like their email addresses, if they want to continue reading a certain amount of daily articles for free.
It marks the company's most significant consumer-facing effort to begin re-establishing a direct-to-consumer relationship with readers after the fall of its subscription video app, CNN+, in 2022.
- The Wall Street Journal, similarly, has undergone massive changes to its editorial structure under new editor Emma Tucker, including layoffs announced last week.
On Wednesday, the paper introduced a new, multimillion-dollar brand advertising campaign geared toward broadening the Journal's subscriber appeal to a wider set of business professionals, not just finance investors or C-suite executives.
- ABC News President Kim Godwin, the first Black woman to lead a major broadcast news division, stepped down in May after staffers began to lose confidence in her leadership.
Disney executive Debra OConnell will lead the news division for the time being.
Disney executive, huh? That's a surefire recipe for success.
Below, Megyn Kelly and Dave Rubin make fun of the post as Kelly reads the VF article.