Rooting For WaPo’s Return to Its Roots

Letter to Ephesians: Protesting WaPo writers “seem to want owner Jeff Bezos to run the paper as a type of vanity project, bankrolling [it] as readers leave en masse.” Bezos, of course, balked & explained “the Post should write for people other than themselves & even make a profit.” Duh?

The above observations were recently made by George Washington Law School’s Prof. Jonathan Turley based in Sweet Home DC. What the good professor is hinting at his hometown paper returning to is what I got to know and grew to love way back in the 1980s as “Old School Journalism.” AI tells us Old School Journalism is about “traditional journalistic practices emphasizing objectivity, accuracy, thorough research, and strong ethical standards. It values meticulous fact-checking, in-depth interviews, and a commitment to presenting information fairly.” Yet, like so many of my colleagues, I had no choice but to watch as America’s newspaper industry at the turn of the century morphed into a kind of woke advocacy machine from hell. To distract from the potential hypocrisy involved, papers like WaPo adopted catchy logo slogans, in its case, “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” while arguably fostering progressive ideologies that fought bitterly to overshadow their conservative colleagues.

Well, it maybe took WaPo ownership three decades or more to realize what their true aka “Old School Journalism” mission was. The rest of today’s mainstream media should try going back to its roots as well.

Davd Soul