By Adam Pagnucco.
In a remarkable opinion column, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos – defending his decision to end endorsements in presidential elections – wrote that “Americans don’t trust the news media.” When he wrote that, I wondered how Washington Post employees would feel about their boss saying that their customers did not trust them. Well, one Post employee spoke out – and blamed Bezos!
Katie Mettler has been a reporter at the Post since 2016 and covers criminal justice issues in Maryland. Here is what she had to say about Bezos, the Post and its local coverage in a stream of posts on X two days ago.
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Okay, I’ll bite.
We cannot talk about our decline in local subscriber penetration in the DC region without talking about the company’s failure to invest in local news business strategy — and local news journalism — under Jeff Bezos’s ownership of The Washington Post.
It’s no secret that The Post’s Metro desk is a shell of itself when comparing our current staffing numbers to decades past.
Just look back to this time last year, when the company cut 19 Metro journalists during the buyouts, then moved another dozen job slots off the desk.
I don’t subscribe to Men’s Health magazine because there’s not much in Men’s Health magazine for me.
Why would we expect our local readers — our most loyal and most direct audience — to subscribe to The Washington Post if our owner/publisher’s priorities have left them behind?
It’s not rocket science — pun intended — that a key business AND trust-building strategy for The Washington Post MUST be re-investing in our local communities and the coverage they care about.
I’m not talking about Washington elites.
I’m talking about residents of the District and Maryland and Virginia, and all the wonderfully diverse and complex and culturally-rich neighborhoods within them, and all the issues that matter to the people who live there.
Trust that we’re doing the best we can with what we have to report the journalism local readers need to be informed, working hard every day to build trust and fulfill our mission of serving our neighbors in and around the nation’s capital.
I wish our owner would do the same.
