RISK AVOIDANCE FOR WASHINGTON POST IN BEZOS’ WORLD? WRITER PLEASE

The only risk avoidance for the Washington Post firings, layoffs, retirements?

Avoid holding their place at the top of the print media pyramid.

No matter the metric, The Washington Post was among the top five, if not top three with The NY Times and Wall Street Journal.

Maybe it will stay up there, but not likely. There’ a lot of competition, you know.

Whatever will the newly independent writers do?

Just don’t start writing a blog, for heaven’s sake.

Take some time to get organized, after all you just cleared out your desk, your  cubicle, your workspace, where you’ve done your writing work for the past decade, or more.

Or maybe you were a new hire last year for ‘surge reporting’, an administrative response to the rising competition.

Either way it’s got to be stressful.

It’s stressful just hearing about people unceremoniously let go with ‘here’s a box, take your crap with you on the way out. You’ve got another half an hour before you’re locked out.’

Along with, ‘if we find anything left behind we’ll notify you and leave it with a guard in the parking lot.’

You were into the job, the challenges, making a name, getting noticed for your seamless integration into the culture of The Washington Post.

Then laid off like an Oregon logger. You got the boot.

From Google AI:

 

The Oregon logging industry’s decline has been driven by a combination of reduced federal timber harvests, strict environmental regulations (such as the Northwest Forest Plan and state habitat conservation plans), high production costs, and a lack of skilled, drug-free labor.

Recent mill closures are also linked to weak market demand, high tariffs, and shifting international markets. 

 

Did The Washington Post face a decline in news to cover?

Was it a shift in environmental regulations? High production costs?

Was it lack of skilled, drug-free, labor?

 

Or A Tongue Cramp From Talking Out Of Both Sides At The Same Time?

From The New Yorker:

 

How Jeff Bezos Brought Down the Washington Post

The Amazon founder bought the paper to save it. Instead, with a mass layoff, he’s forced it into severe decline.

By Ruth Marcus

February 4, 2026

Ruth Marcus, a former columnist for the Washington Post, became a contributing writer at The New Yorker in June, 2025. She is the author of “Supreme Ambition: Brett Kavanaugh and the Conservative Takeover.”

 

Today is February 5, 2026, a day after that story was published, and here’s the interesting part:

Ruth Marcus is a former Bezos employee, wrote a book she’s selling on Bezos’ amazon website, and probably has packages of stuff she bought on amazon delivered by Bezos’ Prime trucks.

Probably watches Bezos Prime TV.

It’s a Bezos world and we’re all just living in it?

In Lake Oswego’s Lake Theater And Cafe there’s no decline in Bezos world news:

 

Got a call that the higher ups (i.e., at Amazon) were upset with how our marquee marketed their movie (i.e., Melania), that, per them, Sunday would be its last day here.

Also got, before then, countless emails and voicemails and Google / Yelp reviews (Google / Yelp took them down) wondering why the hell we had Melania here, or disdaining our disparaging of her.

Now that it’s prematurely over, the plug pulled on us not from public outcry (always listening, thank you) but by some corporate executive (fair enough, sorry AMZN, please don’t cancel my Prime), Jordan figured he’d …say something? Link in bio. TLDR: welp.

 

Did the environment shift?

From Google AI in no particular order:

 

Amazon MGM Studios produced and distributed the 2026 documentary film Melania (also referred to as Melania: 20 Days to History). The documentary, which focuses on Melania Trump’s life during the transition to her husband’s second inauguration, was acquired by Amazon for a reported $40 million, with total costs estimated at $75 million. 

Jeff Bezos’ custom-built superyacht, named Koru, cost approximately $500 million to build. Delivered in 2023, the 417-foot (127-meter) vessel is one of the world’s largest sailing yachts. 

The wedding of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez, held in Venice, Italy, in June 2025, is estimated to have cost between $46 million and $56 million.

 

The Environment Of Blog Risk Avoidance

One of the richest men in the history of the world needs to tighten up expenses? Check.

So ax a bunch of writers? Check.

They all start blogs? Stop.

Find another way.

Get a substack and be a creator in a new economic engine for culture.

That’s the right platform for Post writers, not a blog.

You’ve just been shit-canned by people sucking up as hard as they can to the man sucking up as hard as he can.

We all do it, just not as publicly as others.

You’re a former Washington Post writer. You can do better than writing a blog, or blogging.

Do a podcast?

The emotional pain of being cast out of the big time writers’ group will only be worse when you find no traction with your new blog.

For example:

 

Something happens when older men, men who know better, who should know better, who do know better, decide something is missing in their lives.

Maybe it’s their innate appeal, their hyper-masculine appearance, the feeling that being a master of the universe wasn’t enough?

Here they are, at the top of their game, the peak of their profession, the only alpha-male in their life and dominating the lives of everyone they know.

Here they are, and they hear whispers.

Not from the aging ex-wive’s they jettisoned for updated versions, not from the army of first-divorcee sharks circling him and his ilk in their pond, and certainly not from serious young women looking for foundation blocks to match theirs and build a meaningful life together.

Instead, they hear whispers about a guy, a house, an airplane, an island.

 

I bury the lede in blog posts to create obscurity, which is where you’re going if you don’t snap out of it.

 

PS:

If you must blog, do a stand alone blog, not some page indexed on the sidebar of your ‘real’ website.

 

PSS:

If you muster the energy and shake the sense of failure because some megalo-man’s need to rub another megalo-man just right, do something worthy of the name ‘Former Washington Post Writer.’

What would Ben Bradlee do?

What would Katharine Graham do?

Woodward and Bernstein aren’t walking through that door any time soon, but you are.

Risk avoidance? Writer, please.