It’s Clearer Than Ever What Jeff Bezos Wants With the Washington Post

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. For Bezos, it surely didn’t hurt that this editorial strategy also made good business sense: In 2019, CNN reported that “the Post went from hemorrhaging advertising revenue to becoming a profitable business in 2016, and continuing to be profitable not just in 2017, but also in 2018.” Trump left town in disgrace in January 2021, seemingly bound for an ignominious retirement. On Wednesday, various outlets reported that Bezos had informed Post staffers that the newspaper’s opinion section would thenceforth be focusing on “personal liberty and free markets.” Claiming that the internet had obviated the daily newspaper’s previous responsibility to offer “a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views,” Bezos argued that “free markets and personal liberties are right for America,” and that he was excited for Post Opinion to focus on those topics going forward—as opposed to, you know, the jackbooted horrors of the second Trump administration. In January, the New York Times reported that the Post had internally debuted a new motto, one that was much less strident than its public-facing slogan: “Riveting Storytelling for All of America.” The All in that motto tells the tale, with its tacit implication that the newspaper’s previous focus on carefully reported and argued stories and columns that reflected poorly on Donald Trump was only for part of America—the liberal part. If Bezos plays nice with Trump by refocusing the Post’s coverage away from his administration, then maybe Trump’s Federal Trade Commission might even wind down its antitrust lawsuit against Amazon.