What Jeff Bezos should have done
Billionaire newspaper owners should take themselves out of the endorsement equation
In 1972, Bill Attwood, the new publisher of the Long Island newspaper Newsday, decided to break a decades-long tradition and stop endorsing presidential candidates.
If the paper had endorsed a candidate that year, the one closest to its editorial point of view would have been a liberal, the Democrat Sen. George McGovern, rather than the incumbent President Richard Nixon, a conservative Republican.
In sentiments similar to the ones Washington Post publisher Will Lewis used last week to defend the Post’s decision not to endorse a candidate, Attwood “insisted, without convincing many, that it was a policy that had worked well for him at Look [Magazine],” according to Robert Keeler’s book, A Candid History of the Respectable Tabloid.
Attwood also said the decision not to endorse had nothing to do with the views of the conservative Chandler family, owners of the Los Angeles Times, whose company Times Mirror had acquired Newsday in 1970.
But Keeler, a gifted Newsday reporter, revealed the full story in his book:
“In 1972, the new owners didn’t expect Newsday to endorse Nixon, as the Los Angeles Times was doing. But Otis Chandler did discuss the endorsement question with Attwood.”
According to Attwood, Chandler said, “I know you would never endorse Nixon, knowing how you feel. But gosh, I hope you don’t endorse McGovern.”
The Newsday publisher added, “He didn’t say ‘Don’t do it.’ He just said, ‘I hope you don’t. I immediately said, ‘We’re not. We’re not going to endorse either of them.’”
The not-so-subtle dynamics between owners, publishers and editors take place behind the scenes and only occasionally burst into the open as they did at two major newspapers in the past week.
Outrage at two papers
At the Washington Post, the publisher Will Lewis took the heat for the failure to endorse in the Donald Trump-Kamala Harris race, but the decision was reportedly made by Post owner and Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos. Former Washington Post editor Martin Baron lambasted it as “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty.”
Robert Kagan, a longtime Post editor, resigned in protest. He told CNN, “this is obviously an effort by Jeff Bezos to curry favor with Donald Trump in the anticipation of his possible victory. Trump has threatened to go after Bezos’ business. Bezos runs one of the largest companies in America. They have tremendously intricate relations with the federal government. They depend on the federal government.”
Nineteen opinion columnists at the Post said the decision to withhold an endorsement from Harris was a “terrible mistake.”
“An independent newspaper might someday choose to back away from making presidential endorsements. But this isn’t the right moment, when one candidate is advocating positions that directly threaten freedom of the press and the values of the Constitution,” the columnists wrote.
At the Los Angeles Times, a similar drama played out. The owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong nixed an endorsement of Harris, prompting the editor in charge of editorials to resign. At both newspapers, readers cancelled subscriptions in protest.
Billionaires and the news
Why does a billionaire purchase a newspaper? In the last few decades of the 20th century, part of the motivation was to make a lot of money. In a 1987 article in Fortune magazine, Carol J. Loomis calculated that the Newhouse family, which owned 26 newspapers, along with magazines and cable TV outlets, was worth $7.5 billion, the largest private fortune in the nation.
“Assessments of monopoly newspapers have in particular changed. Once considered endangered by both the decline of the central city and competitive media, they are now widely viewed as near essentials for readers and local advertisers -- and as gold mines to own,” Loomis wrote.
Retail companies like Sears or Woolworth’s can fail in the transition from one generation of owners to the next, “but it is almost impossible to wreck big monopoly newspapers. About all they will let you do is get richer and richer.”
But it wasn’t long before the rise of Craigslist and other forms of internet advertising actually began to “wreck big monopoly newspapers.” In the first two decades of the 21st century, they collectively lost tens of billions of dollars in ad revenue (see the Pew Research Center chart below). Many drastically cut their staffs. Some shut down or got sold off to private equity firms. The ones still surviving have pivoted to a reliance on digital subscriptions.
Other motives
So Jeff Bezos and his like don’t buy newspapers for profit, but for one of two other reasons: to bolster their political, commercial and social influence or as a public-spirited gesture to sustain a vital voice in their communities. Or in some cases, for both reasons.
Newspaper endorsements usually don’t motivate enough voters to make a substantial difference, and it’s hard to see how such pronouncements would sway a presidential election.
Last week’s New York Times/Siena College poll of 2,516 voters asked “What single news source do you turn to most often?” Less than 1% of respondents cited “local print or online news organizations.”
“National print or online news organizations, like The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal” reached 7%. The top source of news: social media, at 16%.
Still, an endorsement for president can carry weight. It can be viewed as a news organization using its resources to fairly evaluate the candidates as a public service and applying its values and the interests of its community to making a conscientious choice.
In a healthy newspaper, an owner or publisher doesn’t get to dictate news content, or even generally to review it before it is published. So why should the owner get to determine whether to endorse a candidate?
At Newsday, where I worked for many years as a reporter and editor, the newspaper now provides an explanation of its endorsement process: “Endorsements are determined solely by the Newsday editorial board, a team of opinion journalists focused on issues of public policy and governance. Newsday’s news division has no role in this process.”
There’s also no mention of a role for the newspaper’s owner in this process. Newsday is now owned by Patrick Dolan, who formerly served as news director and president of the New York metropolitan area’s cable news channels for his family’s company Cablevision.
Last weekend, Newsday issued its endorsement in the presidential race.
It said what the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times might have said if their owners hadn’t gotten in the way:
“Whether your litmus test is experience, policy or character, Kamala D. Harris is the right choice for the highest elective office in the land.”
Good point, David. And the next chapter was Harry Guggenheimer selling the paper to the Chandlers, over the objection of Bill Moyers.
Thanks Reg. You make a vital point about why we shouldn't endanger the good journalists at WaPo and LAT because of the mistakes of their owners.