Jeff Bezos has decided journalism isn’t worth his spare change–where does that leave literature?
On Wednesday, The Washington Post laid off one-third of its newsroom staff, a cost-cutting measure in part provoked by a massive subscriber exodus from the paper whose motto is “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” That exodus was prompted by owner Jeff Bezos’s decision, going against longstanding tradition, to kill the Post editorial board’s endorsement of presidential candidate Kamala Harris, and announce a new policy of non-endorsement—a blatant attempt to curry favor with Donald Trump. If readership means anything to those in charge at the Post, that decision backfired.
Wednesday’s blood bath affected some three hundred Post staffers; among the victims were eight of the nine critics and editors who worked on Book World, (above photo is of late critic William McPherson, my former boss and the Pulitzer Prize winner who founded Book World )after Post management decided to shutter the department, one of the country’s few remaining book review sections that was published as a separate Sunday broadsheet. It also nixed its podcast, and other book-related extensions. The lone remaining editor was reassigned—and many, if not all of its already assigned reviews were scrapped. Reviewers I’ve spoken with who had outstanding assignments were not offered kill fees. Ron Charles—who has been the Washington Post’s book critic for upwards of twenty years—was among those who got the boot, despite the popularity of his Book Club newsletter and his beloved series, “Totally Hip Video Book Review.” …
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