The Washington Post is about to embrace the darkness

One of those news stories is not like the other, and I think you know which one it is. While Marty Baron had his failings — enormous ones, in fact — neither he nor Buzbee was the type to falsely equate the felony conviction of a former president/current presidential candidate who still faces three other criminal indictments with Joe Biden’s dumbass kid buying a gun while he was high as balls. That the man who will now lead politics coverage from the premier paper in our nation’s capital would do so is a red flag. Hung upside down.

This is good stuff.

Related news scoop at NPR today, 'Washington Post' publisher tried to kill a story about him. It wasn’t the first time.

The Washington Post has written twice this spring about allegations that have cropped up in British court proceedings involving its new publisher and CEO, Will Lewis. In both instances Lewis pushed his newsroom chief hard not to run the story.

According to several people at the newspaper, then-Executive Editor Sally Buzbee emerged rattled from both discussions in March and in May. Lewis’ efforts were first reported by the New York Times. The second Post article in May, which was thorough and detailed, ran just days before Lewis announced his priorities for the paper, which is financially troubled.

On Thursday, a spokesperson for Lewis denied the publisher had pressured his editor, saying, "That is not true. That is not what happened."

Buzbee did not recuse herself from the stories, which were overseen by Managing Editor Matea Gold, and drew upon reporters from three desks. Lewis did not block the story from running. He unexpectedly announced Buzbee’s departure on Sunday night, about three-and-a-half weeks after the longer story ran, along with a restructuring of the newsroom’s leadership structure.

It is not the first time that Lewis has engaged in intense efforts to head off coverage about him in ways that many U.S. journalists would consider deeply inappropriate.

...

In December, I wrote the first comprehensive piece based on new documents cited in a London courtroom alleging that Lewis had helped cover up a scandal involving widespread criminal practices at media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloids. (Lewis has previously denied the allegations.)

At that time, Lewis had just been named publisher and CEO by Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, but had not yet started. In several conversations, Lewis repeatedly — and heatedly —offered to give me an exclusive interview about the Post’s future, as long as I dropped the story about the allegations.

At that time, the same spokesperson, who works directly for Lewis from the U.K. and has advised him since his days at the Wall Street Journal, confirmed to me that an explicit offer was on the table: drop the story, get the interview.

NPR published the story nonetheless. On Thursday, the spokesperson declined comment about that offer.

Bolding added, archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240606210359/https://www.npr.org/2024/06/06/nx-s1-4995105/washington-post-will-lewis-tries-to-kill-story-buzbee

That was a thoroughly entertaining read. The topic was scary, but the way it was written was great.

Washington Post is the only newspaper app I have, mainly because I have a free subscription. I have really enjoyed it thusfar and use it as my usual source for news. It's "War In Ukraine" was a great section till they really toned down the coverage of it. This is really concerning and this was a great story by sfgate. I am about to be much more skeptical of what I am seeing by them.

NPRs "up first" podcast today had an entire section about this today.