1. A good exercise today is to read what the New York Times focus group of the 12 Trump-voting dude-bros said about where they get their "news" and information to understand how misguided, or naive, or just plain dumb that Jeff Bezos is being here
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I'm very curious about this. Bezos is a smart guy, or was. It is so obvious that insulting your readers that are paying subscriptions in a Quixotic attempt to appeal to Fox/Limbaugh (or whatever the current iteration is) with sane washing is not going to work. And it won't be enough to out Musk Musk
2. It's remarkable to watch someone like Bezos, a brilliant capitalist when it came to creating Amazon, and others like Politico's conservative owners embrace a view of journalism that not giving dwindling customers what they want (and need) while begging for readers who aggressively hate them...
3. ...as both the ethical thing to do and also a good business practice. As I've said before, a) the disappearing audience didn't want biased journalism, just accountability reporting and the passionate defense of democracy (without which, journalism is impossible) that we're not seeing. Also...
4. ...if you want to go after untapped readers, maybe look at the outpouring of anger over health insurance and think more broadly about who's mad about the rent or student debt and not "going after (media-hating) Trump voters"
NO ONE is seizing the opportunity to cover the growing outrage over the HORRIBLE insurance coverage in this country and the extremely high cost of being insured despite said horrible coverage. Not Dems, Not the media, Not local government. NO ONE and it's making me insane.
All of this is just post hoc justification for kissing Trump's ass to ensure that Bezos's actual money-making businesses continue to thrive. At this point, the Post is just a vehicle to do that.
I'm still laughing that Bezos thinks MAGA wants to read WaPo when they have been indoctrinated to believe it's all lies and it's not as if reading comprehension or critical thinking skills are in their wheelhouse anyway. They just parrot whatever Dear Leader tells them to say.
I’ve talked with so many MAGA folks. The things they believe are just not true. None of this polarization is about politics or policy. It’s the media and misinformation.
Clearly he thinks the way to get the MAGA crowd to buy his paper is to bow down before Trump, sanewash his insane rants and ignore his lies.
That is exactly what they are doing. Know why it isn't working? Because that market is saturated.
He should try being different and telling the truth.
You want the dude bros to read you take down the paywalls. You want ME to read you for that matter that down the paywalls. Paywalls are WHY people don't read the news.
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Ask him how USA Today has faired.
there was 1 reason to read: get your sports scores when no longer in your teams locale. the internet killed that.
Bezos is not trying to reach a broad audience by appealing toMAGA
Like Ned Beaty in Network, he is pushing “an important message that people need to hear” (i.e. fascist propaganda)
This is the long game. Propaganda will become “normal” & readership will return
That would be a good description for a lot of fairy tales.
That is exactly what they are doing. Know why it isn't working? Because that market is saturated.
He should try being different and telling the truth.